Head of AstraZeneca rejects calls for UK vaccine to be diverted to EU

[Leni]

They haven’t even approved the damn vaccine yet!

While I feel for the people of European countries, the EU have fucked up. Does anybody think that if the situation were reversed, and the EU were delivering a vaccine that the British government had ordered 3 months later, that they’d send us some? Not a chance! They’d be gloating and laughing, and it’d be “haha Brexit fools” from the EU.

We need to play nice with the EU to an extent, we need them. But concerns have been raised for months now about how slow the EU bureaucracy has made this vaccine rollout: that’s not Britain’s fault. They can spit their dummies out all they like, ultimately the EU is responsible for letting their people down.

 

[ZT]

I’ve no problem agreeing with that. Anyone who has ever been in a committee meeting knows that each additional person adds hours on to a final decision being reached - worse is there is going to be accountability.

Maybe it’s Johnson’s ability to shirk responsibility for everything that led to this being a faster process? *jokes

Design by committee - I remember it well *shudder*

 

[ZT]

This also goes to show I think - that “handling the pandemic badly” is not resigned to just the British and U.K. government.

 

[Chris K]

Fcuk 'em...

Sums it up for me.

EU are, as usual, pissing about trying to please every puppet under their wing when time really is a pressing issue.

Prehaps once all this is over they may take a long, hard look at their processes and see if they could be more efficient instead of just blustering and making threats.

 

[eyeball kid]

I'm looking further ahead and the quicker we get our initial vaccinations completed we can set a regular vaccination programme here for the years to come and start exporting the Oxford vaccination out to the many countries that are going to be left with feck all chance of getting any help. Europe will still be chasing their tails trying to get the whole of the union (then the almost in countries) for the next decade.
A fast immunisation of the UK makes good sense as an isolated clean distribution country for many items but I doubt Europe will see that as a logical choice.

 

[Mitz]

The EU would shit on the UK from a great height if they thought it would benefit them. No way on earth would they prioritise UK citizens over EU citizens and rightfully so! But equally - the UK has to prioritise the safety and welfare of its own citizens above the citizens in all other countries. That's just the most basic common sense. A countries responsibilities, first and foremost, are to its own citizens.

Having said that; very obviously, everybody deserves to be vaccinated. Doesn't matter if you're rich or poor; from a rich country or a poor country; in Africa or Asia; Europe or South America; thanks to the UK - through Oxford University and their partnership with an Anglo/Swedish pharmaceutical company - that will happen! They are going to manufacture and distribute BILLIONS of doses worldwide and they will be supplied at COST PRICE!

The EU can call a press conference so that they can go on TV to bang on at AstraZeneca about their "moral and societal responsibilities" but I don't think they need any lectures in that regard from those hypocritical fuckwits. AstraZeneca, Oxford and the UK will do far more than their fair share to help protect the rest of the world from Covid-19 but not until the UK has taken care of her own first. Every other country would do exactly the same and if the EU think they can spit their dummy out and throw their weight around because THEY fucked up and the UK population should pay for their mistakes with more UK lives after having finally got off that floating turd then, IMHO, the EU can suck a UK...

Respectfully, of course.

 

[vapey mcvapeface]

(Full disclosure: British citizen, EU resident)

I don't agree that the UK should be deprived of its contractual rights due to the EU's fuckup at all.

I could however be persuaded that it would be gracious and in the best interest for everyone involved to try and make sure EU and UK front liners get theirs ASAP - even if the UK has to contribute a small amount of their stocks. The old fucks on both sides can isolate for another month or two more, those treating the ill cannot.

 

[Badboybez]

The EU would shit on the UK from a great height if they thought it would benefit them. No way on earth would they prioritise UK citizens over EU citizens and rightfully so! But equally - the UK has to prioritise the safety and welfare of its own citizens above the citizens in all other countries. That's just the most basic common sense. A countries responsibilities, first and foremost, are to its own citizens.

Having said that; very obviously, everybody deserves to be vaccinated. Doesn't matter if you're rich or poor; from a rich country or a poor country; in Arica or Asia; Europe or South America; thanks to the UK - through Oxford University and their partnership with an Anglo/Swedish pharmaceutical company - that will happen! They are going to manufacture and distribute BILLIONS of doses worldwide and they will be supplied at COST PRICE!

The EU can call a press conference so that they can go on TV to bang on at AstraZeneca about their "moral and societal responsibilities" but I don't think they need any lectures in that regard from those hypocritical fuckwits. AstraZeneca, Oxford and the UK will do far more than their fair share to help protect the rest of the world from Covid-19 but not until the UK has taken care of her own first. Every other country would do exactly the same and if the EU think they can spit their dummy out and throw their weight around because THEY fucked up and the UK population should pay for their mistakes with more UK lives after having finally got off that floating turd then, IMHO, the EU can suck a UK...

Respectfully, of course.

Couldn't agree more.
It's just sour grapes from the EU.

They have not even approved the vaccine for use there.

I have worked in manufacturing for many years.
So, you have a production facility that can produce 500 K shots a day.
But you have several countries wanting that amount.
What do you do, allocate the supply you have to the country that has approved it ? or say they can only have 200 K shots a day because you are stockpiling the rest for countries that have not approved it, and may therefore never use it / have it delivered / pay for it................

 

[ZT]

(Full disclosure: British citizen, EU resident)

I don't agree that the UK should be deprived of its contractual rights due to the EU's fuckup at all.

I could however be persuaded that it would be gracious and in the best interest for everyone involved to try and make sure EU and UK front liners get theirs ASAP - even if the UK has to contribute a small amount of their stocks. The old fucks on both sides can isolate for another month or two more, those treating the ill cannot.

Gracious like this ? (Source : BBC)

 

[andipandi]

Part of the problem for the EU is that they ordered/ bought 300 million doses of the French Sanofi-GSK vaccine, which will not be available until the end of the year, plus the Pasteur Institute has abandoned it's vaccine.
.........................

French politicians have reacted with dismay to news that the prestigious Pasteur Institute is abandoning its main coronavirus vaccine after disappointing test results.

Researchers at the institute said clinical trials on its vaccine had shown it was less successful in combatting the virus than hoped. It had been trying to adapt an existing vaccine used against measles, in partnership with the US company Merck. The failures and delays around France’s development of a vaccine have sparked soul-searching in the country, once a world leader in medical breakthroughs and the birthplace of microbiology pioneer Louis Pasteur, who invented vaccines against rabies and anthrax.

The centre-right Les Républicains parliamentary group tweeted: “In a race against the clock, the Pasteur Institute throws in the towel on its main vaccine project, while Sanofi announces a delay until the end of the year, because of a lack of efficiency, after so many grand announcements. This scientific decline is a slap in the face.”

Bastien Lachaud, an MP for the hard-left La France Insoumise, was equally withering. “No vaccine in the country of Pasteur! What a symbol. This is where the impoverishing of public research, the primacy of the private sector and the triumph of management and profit are leading,” he tweeted.

Centrist François Bayrou, an ally of President Emmanuel Macron, lashed out at what he described as a “brain drain” that was causing a national humiliation. “It’s a sign of the decline of the country and this decline is unacceptable,” Bayrou, head of the MoDem party, who was named commissioner for long-term government planning, told France Inter radio.

He referred to Stéphane Bancel, the French national who heads the US-based biotech firm Moderna, whose vaccine was the second given approval for use in the US and Europe. “It is not acceptable that our best researchers, the most brilliant of our researchers, are sucked up by the American system,” Bayrou added.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...fter-pasteur-institute-abandons-covid-vaccine