I was mainly referring to the long negotiation-induced delay in the EU’s contract with Astra Zeneca. They inked their purchasing agreement a full 3 months after the UK, which is one of the primary reasons they have such a low vaccination rate in comparison.
One might say that this simply meant the UK got more vaccines, but that’s not true. The long negotiation period actually delayed the beginning of production https://www.bbc.com/news/explainers-56286235
They’ve also failed to delay the second dose, which would have allowed more people to get vaccinated, further increasing the death toll.
I don’t know the degree to which this is simply due to the wrong people being in charge as opposed to poorly designed incentives or the structure of the EU itself. But as a whole, the EU has made many extremely costly mistakes.
I suspect the delay wasn’t an accident. AZ vaccine was largely non-profit. It hadn’t the same level of funded hard sell as Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. AZ adverse events were hyperbolized in the media. American interests often dictate EU policy, even when it’s to the latter’s detriment. Europeans paid through the nose (10x the price) for the highly profitable Pfizer/Moderns vaccines. In short, the EU got LPG’d by mRNA...
I was mainly referring to the long negotiation-induced delay in the EU’s contract with Astra Zeneca. They inked their purchasing agreement a full 3 months after the UK, which is one of the primary reasons they have such a low vaccination rate in comparison.
One might say that this simply meant the UK got more vaccines, but that’s not true. The long negotiation period actually delayed the beginning of production https://www.bbc.com/news/explainers-56286235
They’ve also failed to delay the second dose, which would have allowed more people to get vaccinated, further increasing the death toll.
I don’t know the degree to which this is simply due to the wrong people being in charge as opposed to poorly designed incentives or the structure of the EU itself. But as a whole, the EU has made many extremely costly mistakes.
I suspect the delay wasn’t an accident. AZ vaccine was largely non-profit. It hadn’t the same level of funded hard sell as Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. AZ adverse events were hyperbolized in the media. American interests often dictate EU policy, even when it’s to the latter’s detriment. Europeans paid through the nose (10x the price) for the highly profitable Pfizer/Moderns vaccines. In short, the EU got LPG’d by mRNA...