Irrelevant nonsense......
I love a bit of irrelevant nonsense, it lightens the mood..........
EU unhappy with astrazeneca
- Thread starter sxturbo
- Start date
I love a bit of irrelevant nonsense, it lightens the mood..........
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News reports that the UK agrees with the EU in as much as pre existing contracts wont interfere with supplies - from the UK. I doubt if we will see our contract. People are as far as I am aware have no idea what AZ have said.
Also that we will be trying to join another trading block. Japan, Oz and some others. Rather long term. I wonder if the one Russia is in will crop up.
Why did the UK go early and change the way the vaccines will be used - economic aspects and supply rates. Boris didn't look too happy when he mentioned getting the UK plant up to 2 million doses. It's not down to him anyway. It's AZ's job. Some going in to see what they are up to isn't a bad idea really.
This is AZ's statement
https://www.astrazeneca.com/media-c...vaccine-european-union-supply-commitment.html
Be interesting to see if they meet it as I suspect we need it running at that level as well. Jam tomorrow isn't just a feature of politics.
Also that we will be trying to join another trading block. Japan, Oz and some others. Rather long term. I wonder if the one Russia is in will crop up.
Why did the UK go early and change the way the vaccines will be used - economic aspects and supply rates. Boris didn't look too happy when he mentioned getting the UK plant up to 2 million doses. It's not down to him anyway. It's AZ's job. Some going in to see what they are up to isn't a bad idea really.
This is AZ's statement
https://www.astrazeneca.com/media-c...vaccine-european-union-supply-commitment.html
Be interesting to see if they meet it as I suspect we need it running at that level as well. Jam tomorrow isn't just a feature of politics.
The backstory to UK's vaccine supply - and Matt Hancock's crucial move to reject one contract that landed on his desk (msn.com)
However, the real source of the government's confidence is its contract with AstraZeneca, which ministers believe commits the pharmaceutical company to delivering UK doses first - a fact confirmed by AstraZeneca boss Pascal Soriot in an interview with Italian newspaper La Repubblica.
Whether that guarantee will hold up under a challenge remains to be seen. Yet, according to a former Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) adviser, the UK nearly missed out on this degree of security.
That is because the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was very nearly the Oxford-Merck vaccine - and under the terms of the agreement with the American pharmaceutical giant, there were no guarantees of supply.
The episode played out against the backdrop of the first phase of the pandemic. During March and April 2020, the University of Oxford negotiated a deal which would allow Merck to manufacture and distribute the vaccine it was in the process of developing.
The arrangement made sense. Unlike British-Swedish AstraZeneca, Merck had experience in making vaccines. Its senior executives had links to Oxford scientist and government adviser Sir John Bell.
Yet when the contract reached Matt Hancock's desk, the former adviser said, the health secretary refused to approve it, because it didn't include provisions specifically committing to supply the UK first.
The fear was export controls - not from the EU, but from the US. Mr Hancock was worried that president Trump would stop vaccines from Merck leaving the country.
With the university and Merck "as close to signing on the dotted line as they could be", he stopped it going ahead, because he didn't want to risk the intellectual property rights for the Oxford vaccine ending up in the hands of a single American company.
"He was just meant to confirm he was happy, and then it would have happened immediately," said the former adviser. "But he wasn't, and overruled officials to block the deal."
Reports have suggested that the Oxford scientists were unsure whether the deal with Merck had strong enough provisions for supplying poorer countries with vaccines. Mr Hancock's objection was more local and political. He wanted to make sure there was enough for UK citizens. The rest of the world could come later.
German MEP Peter Liese said the UK was behaving "like Donald Trump" by trying to guarantee it would receive vaccine doses first. In reality, according to this account, it was fear of Trump - or Trump-like behaviour - that prompted the government to seek additional security.
To see how quickly competition for scarce resources could escalate into conflict, Mr Hancock and his advisers only needed to look at their own recent experience. At the same time as negotiations were developing between Oxford and Merck, DHSC was desperately hunting for ways to replenish its threadbare stocks of Personal Protective Equipment.
In NHS hospitals, nurses were wearing bin bags for protective clothing. Yet the scramble to get hold of PPE was made more difficult by European export controls.
In early March, Germany imposed a temporary ban on PPE leaving the country; shortly after, the EU introduced a similar measure (as did the UK, which has also maintained restrictions preventing hundreds of medicines leaving its borders without permission).
The PPE crisis grew so serious that one former Downing Street insider says it almost cost Mr Hancock his job. It also gave the health secretary a powerful reminder about the Hobbesian nature of global politics in a pandemic.
The other reminder came from a more surprising source: Steven Soderbergh's film Contagion.
Released in 2011, the film followed the path of a pandemic caused by a SARS-like respiratory virus, which killed millions and caused widespread social unrest, until it was finally stopped by an effective vaccine.
However, when the vaccine did arrive, there was not enough of it to go around, so vaccinations were awarded by a lottery based on birthdates.
The episode stuck in Mr Hancock's mind. "He would keep referring to the end of the film," says the former DHSC adviser.
"He was always really aware from the very start, first that the vaccine was really important, second that when a vaccine was developed we would see an almighty global scramble for this thing."
At other times during the pandemic, it has felt as if the government was scrambling to keep up with events. Former insiders in both DHSC and Downing Street acknowledge that they struggled to find a strategy to deal with a virus that spread so rapidly without symptoms.
Yet from the very start there was a focus on vaccines. According to the former adviser, the DHSC started work on it in January, before there was even a case of COVID-19 in the UK.
Back then, scientists said it was unlikely a vaccine would be developed within 18 months, let alone a year - and that they would probably be around 50% effective when they arrived. Yet, encouraged by Mr Hancock, the Department for Health pushed ahead, in order to make sure everything was ready for the moment the vaccine arrived.
"Every extra day it takes to deliver a vaccine comes with a human cost and an economic cost," Mr Hancock told officials in April. "I don't care if people think it's years away - every day we save now is lives we will be saving in a year's time."
Every process had to be accelerated. At one internal meeting in April, a group of vaccine officials were asked to assume that the vaccine would arrive in a year's time. For that scenario to play out well, what would they need to be doing now?
The replies, said one person who was present, were "mind-blowing". One expert warned that there would almost certainly be a shortage of glass vials. Another said that production would be difficult. A third raised the issue of supply chains.
The normal way of doing things would be to fix these issues once the vaccine was ready. But these weren't normal times - so the government determined to resolve them in advance.
Production lines were worked out. Arrangements were made for vaccine "fill and finish". Suppliers for glass vials were found and contracts were secured.
At the same time, officials realised that although there was a Therapeutics Taskforce, overseeing the search for and deployment of treatments for COVID-19, there was no comparable body for vaccines. The Vaccine Taskforce was set up: a month later, Kate Bingham was appointed as its head, and given the task of ordering the vaccines themselves.
As he pushed his team to go faster, Mr Hancock took inspiration from another early failure. In March, the government bought two million antibody tests from two Chinese companies, paying for them up front. Boris Johnson promised that the upcoming shipment would be a "game changer". In reality, they turned out to be unusable.
But the principle of taking a risk on potential new solutions before they were proven was, Mr Hancock decided, the right approach. That might lead to more mistakes - arguably, it did, most notably with the first contact tracing app - but he believed it would produce the best results overall.
However, the real source of the government's confidence is its contract with AstraZeneca, which ministers believe commits the pharmaceutical company to delivering UK doses first - a fact confirmed by AstraZeneca boss Pascal Soriot in an interview with Italian newspaper La Repubblica.
Whether that guarantee will hold up under a challenge remains to be seen. Yet, according to a former Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) adviser, the UK nearly missed out on this degree of security.
That is because the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was very nearly the Oxford-Merck vaccine - and under the terms of the agreement with the American pharmaceutical giant, there were no guarantees of supply.
The episode played out against the backdrop of the first phase of the pandemic. During March and April 2020, the University of Oxford negotiated a deal which would allow Merck to manufacture and distribute the vaccine it was in the process of developing.
The arrangement made sense. Unlike British-Swedish AstraZeneca, Merck had experience in making vaccines. Its senior executives had links to Oxford scientist and government adviser Sir John Bell.
Yet when the contract reached Matt Hancock's desk, the former adviser said, the health secretary refused to approve it, because it didn't include provisions specifically committing to supply the UK first.
The fear was export controls - not from the EU, but from the US. Mr Hancock was worried that president Trump would stop vaccines from Merck leaving the country.
With the university and Merck "as close to signing on the dotted line as they could be", he stopped it going ahead, because he didn't want to risk the intellectual property rights for the Oxford vaccine ending up in the hands of a single American company.
"He was just meant to confirm he was happy, and then it would have happened immediately," said the former adviser. "But he wasn't, and overruled officials to block the deal."
Reports have suggested that the Oxford scientists were unsure whether the deal with Merck had strong enough provisions for supplying poorer countries with vaccines. Mr Hancock's objection was more local and political. He wanted to make sure there was enough for UK citizens. The rest of the world could come later.
German MEP Peter Liese said the UK was behaving "like Donald Trump" by trying to guarantee it would receive vaccine doses first. In reality, according to this account, it was fear of Trump - or Trump-like behaviour - that prompted the government to seek additional security.
To see how quickly competition for scarce resources could escalate into conflict, Mr Hancock and his advisers only needed to look at their own recent experience. At the same time as negotiations were developing between Oxford and Merck, DHSC was desperately hunting for ways to replenish its threadbare stocks of Personal Protective Equipment.
In NHS hospitals, nurses were wearing bin bags for protective clothing. Yet the scramble to get hold of PPE was made more difficult by European export controls.
In early March, Germany imposed a temporary ban on PPE leaving the country; shortly after, the EU introduced a similar measure (as did the UK, which has also maintained restrictions preventing hundreds of medicines leaving its borders without permission).
The PPE crisis grew so serious that one former Downing Street insider says it almost cost Mr Hancock his job. It also gave the health secretary a powerful reminder about the Hobbesian nature of global politics in a pandemic.
The other reminder came from a more surprising source: Steven Soderbergh's film Contagion.
Released in 2011, the film followed the path of a pandemic caused by a SARS-like respiratory virus, which killed millions and caused widespread social unrest, until it was finally stopped by an effective vaccine.
However, when the vaccine did arrive, there was not enough of it to go around, so vaccinations were awarded by a lottery based on birthdates.
The episode stuck in Mr Hancock's mind. "He would keep referring to the end of the film," says the former DHSC adviser.
"He was always really aware from the very start, first that the vaccine was really important, second that when a vaccine was developed we would see an almighty global scramble for this thing."
At other times during the pandemic, it has felt as if the government was scrambling to keep up with events. Former insiders in both DHSC and Downing Street acknowledge that they struggled to find a strategy to deal with a virus that spread so rapidly without symptoms.
Yet from the very start there was a focus on vaccines. According to the former adviser, the DHSC started work on it in January, before there was even a case of COVID-19 in the UK.
Back then, scientists said it was unlikely a vaccine would be developed within 18 months, let alone a year - and that they would probably be around 50% effective when they arrived. Yet, encouraged by Mr Hancock, the Department for Health pushed ahead, in order to make sure everything was ready for the moment the vaccine arrived.
"Every extra day it takes to deliver a vaccine comes with a human cost and an economic cost," Mr Hancock told officials in April. "I don't care if people think it's years away - every day we save now is lives we will be saving in a year's time."
Every process had to be accelerated. At one internal meeting in April, a group of vaccine officials were asked to assume that the vaccine would arrive in a year's time. For that scenario to play out well, what would they need to be doing now?
The replies, said one person who was present, were "mind-blowing". One expert warned that there would almost certainly be a shortage of glass vials. Another said that production would be difficult. A third raised the issue of supply chains.
The normal way of doing things would be to fix these issues once the vaccine was ready. But these weren't normal times - so the government determined to resolve them in advance.
Production lines were worked out. Arrangements were made for vaccine "fill and finish". Suppliers for glass vials were found and contracts were secured.
At the same time, officials realised that although there was a Therapeutics Taskforce, overseeing the search for and deployment of treatments for COVID-19, there was no comparable body for vaccines. The Vaccine Taskforce was set up: a month later, Kate Bingham was appointed as its head, and given the task of ordering the vaccines themselves.
As he pushed his team to go faster, Mr Hancock took inspiration from another early failure. In March, the government bought two million antibody tests from two Chinese companies, paying for them up front. Boris Johnson promised that the upcoming shipment would be a "game changer". In reality, they turned out to be unusable.
But the principle of taking a risk on potential new solutions before they were proven was, Mr Hancock decided, the right approach. That might lead to more mistakes - arguably, it did, most notably with the first contact tracing app - but he believed it would produce the best results overall.
And your imaginative bias too, as well as your bias in general, is showing.
Remember, I'm not a Brexiteer
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Hitler believed Russia could be defeated before winter set in.
He thought it would be one of those "it will be all over by Xmas" jobbies.
Hence he didn't tell his army to take an extra pair of socks and sandwiches with them.
Hitler was well advised that in a war of attrition he would lose but he chose to ignore that advice.
The whole rationale behind Blitzkrieg was to knock your enemy out before they had a chance to put up an effective defence.
LOL.
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They said that the UK contract restricts them from exporting vaccines to EU.
It also displays a glaring over-promising and under-delivering.
a contract is a contract himagin
terms and conditions and all that caper
Any one dealing with the EU and French scoundrels will need pages and pages of terms and conditions blimey u would need an entire
bible thick ness document to get all yer terms and conditions into
thats the problem when you deal with some froreigners
scoundrels
The only way we would know what the UK contract states is to see it. If it truly said that we were due the 1st 100,000,000 doses produced by AZ I am pretty sure we would have seen it by now. What's happened really is purely down to supply rates and the UK went quickly and appear to have gained 15,000,000 doses of various types or more likely a supply rate that will meet that. We find out in the next few weeks also if AZ cough up. It's not difficult to find a group people who can look at what a company in any sphere is doing to get round problems. Trivial really so they sent some in.
More vaccines are coming on line so we will get some of those too. Johnson and Johnson are going produce lots of one similar to the Oxford one.
So what was the EU at. First point is not mandating it but putting the suggestions to the member states. It's one of their problems. They can't mandate anything just as our civil servants can't. So then comes the press and people. Farrage for instance - this means they could block shipments not that they will. Why AZ. There may be some political aspects about that as international politics stink. They wouldn't be going in that direction unless they expected some support from member states. Having a go at Pfizer may not have gone down so well and just what are the supply rates they have quoted? Maybe they are meeting them. Pfizer shutting down a plant to boost production didn't cause a stir. So what are AZ doing. They have a number of plants. They have obligations to meet.
Then one of our lot pops up and says we will supply other countries when we can. Bit odd that she then clarified that with 3rd world. Thank the WHO for making noises so something needed to be said.
Out of interest people around here are being told that their 2nd jab will be in 12 weeks. Put over as a fact not the maximum time. AZ are not anywhere near meeting their targets so that is of interest to some millions here not just people in the EU and elsewhere.
yes that was his big mistake , he under estimated the caspability of the russians and there ability to manufacture tanks planes etc
and than the brutal battle at stalingrad , afaik hitler was advised not to divert the army there but go for moscow ?
Sorry does it make it less fact that it was confirmed by the CEO of az, and was originally printed in Italian?
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I'm quite amazed by your insight, transam.
The level of your intellect is simply incredulous.
When is a door not a door?
(in the style of transam)..... when it's a jar.
We don't need to see it, az and the UK have confirmed it.
It's not like the EU and az where they were at odds with each other
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AZ said that the UK contract restricted them from supplying EU from UK plants. I haven't seen them retract that claim.
I have seen UK government deny that claim.
It's exactly that vagueness and obtuse behaviour why EU sent in their own investigators, to get to the bottom of it.
That is why they were at odds, because EU/AZ contract specified EU could be supplied from UK plants, and AZ denied that.
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