seanj

prismatics said:

It’s good to see such important topics being passed to the courts to judge and decide.

larryjw said:

Why can't ARM just exist as a stand-alone company? I don't get the "ownership" issue. In a significant way, it's just a standards organization, like the RFCs defined the protocols for the Internet, or the standards for relational databases, or Java, or CSS. 

darkpaw said:

It's funny how those who voted for Brexit are the same ones who are blaming the EU (that they're happily no longer a part of) for messing up their vaccine rollout, and those who voted to remain are the ones who present the facts.

avon b7 said:

elijahg said:

avon b7 said:

JWSC said:

darkpaw said:

anantksundaram said:

Brexit certainly didn't hurt its vaccination efforts, considering the disaster that the EU is on that front with its suboptimal common purchasing agreement: the UK leads all major countries of the world, with nearly 20% of its population having got at least one dose. (US is second best -- again among major countries, with ~13%). Plenty of reporting on all this for those interested, so I am not providing cites. 

This was possible whilst in the EU, and actually, the deals for the vaccines were done whilst in the EU. Brexit has nothing to do with this. We merely authorised the vaccines first and earlier than the EU. From this article:

Under European law a vaccine must be authorised by the EMA, but individual countries can use an emergency procedure that allows them to distribute a vaccine for temporary use in their domestic market.

Britain is still subject to those EU rules during the post-Brexit transition period which runs until the end of the year (2020).

The UK's own medicines regulator, the MHRA, confirmed this in a statement last month.

And its chief executive, Dr June Raine, said on Wednesday that "we have been able to authorise the supply of this vaccine using provisions under European law, which exist until 1 January".

So, nothing to do with Brexit.

Au contraire mon frere, Brexit certainly played its role.  Several E.U. nations such as France and Germany initiated their own negotiations with Astra Zeneca a month or so after the U.K. finalized their deal with the company.  But before they could finalize their deals the European Commission stepped in and said, “Hold up.  We need to be in charge of this at an E.U. level.”  That delayed negotiations by an additional two months.  The U.K. was not constrained in any way.

And now the E.U. is upset with Astra Zeneca because they are honoring contracts in the order in which they were negotiated and received.  Comical.

Is that actually correct? The EU said hold up? 

There was bloc negotiation for the entire EU programme and, AFAIK, freedom for member states to negotiate their own supplies too (supposedly at worse rates).

I'll admit to not following much of this as things progressed so it would be nice to know one way or another. 

Yes, it is correct (Halfway down here), the Commission leaned on states to go with them instead. Germany also then bought more vaccines anyway when they saw the EU was making an absolute mess of it.

That link is a quite nice summary of the situation but nowhere does it states can't go alone. The EU pushed for a common front with member state participation for the EU plan (with all the negotiating benefits of acting as a bloc) but makes it clear that member states were free to purchase extra doses on their own terms if they saw fit. The fact that four states banded together to order more doses didn't really fall into the spirit of things but that was sorted. 

At the moment I don't see this as a planning issue but more of a production issue and that's where the 'contract conflict' arose. 

As stated in the article, the EU has one of the best vaccine portfolios in the world AND has more legal weight behind it if something goes wrong with one of the vaccines.