[HN Gopher] AstraZeneca/EU contract
___________________________________________________________________
AstraZeneca/EU contract
Author : hannob
Score : 143 points
Date : 2021-01-29 18:18 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (fragdenstaat.de)
(TXT) w3m dump (fragdenstaat.de)
| ape4 wrote:
| "AstraZeneca has committed to use its Best Reasonable Efforts (as
| defined below) to build capacity to manufacture 300 million Doses
| of the Vaccine, at no profit and no loss to AstraZeneca, at the
| total cost currently estimated to be ** Euros for distribution
| within the EU"
| hannon4 wrote:
| Seems much more convoluted than the pzifer contract with Israel.
| s_dev wrote:
| The fact that the EU and UK are already fighting illustrates how
| imporant the EU is. Imagine if the EU didn't intervene in the
| vaccine programme and it was 28 rich countries trying argue to 28
| contracts with AZ instead of just two -- and all the complexity
| that emerged from just two contracts.
| PJDK wrote:
| The EU is fighting with Astrazenica. The UK has mostly kept out
| of it - only just commenting once the EU decided to change
| export rules and around the Northern Ireland agreement.
| UK-Al05 wrote:
| I'm thinking a lot of countries are regretting joining the EU
| vaccination scheme considering how slow it's been.
| [deleted]
| hannob wrote:
| To explain what this is: The EU mistakenly uploaded a censored
| version of the contract earlier today where some blacked out
| parts could be reconstructed using PDF metadata.
|
| This version has those included in red.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Not sure if it was the EU or AZ that did the (failed)
| redaction. (Yes, despite the fact that it was published on an
| EU website)
|
| Anyway it seems that orgs keep falling for the "PDF redaction"
| caveats
| vinay427 wrote:
| To be fair, I've grown paranoid about PDF metadata and
| redactions, so I prefer taking screenshots and making a new
| PDF out of those as long as the document is only a few pages
| in length, or using imagemagick or similar to flatten it. I
| haven't found an easier way to be absolutely sure that my
| annotations are permanent, and this metadata issue is perhaps
| even trickier.
| toast0 wrote:
| Print, review, and scan is probably easier than
| screenshotting, if you have the equipment.
| tormeh wrote:
| That this is the state of things is pretty amazing
| ur-whale wrote:
| PDF is a shitty format.
|
| As proof, I offer: can't grep on it.
|
| Which, BTW, if it was possible, would have prevented this
| mess.
| statquontrarian wrote:
| Linux has a pdfgrep command which works pretty well
| (unless the PDF has images of text).
| ur-whale wrote:
| Unless the PDF has every letter placed by independent
| PostScript like commands or - worse - text has been
| imported from an SVG file.
|
| pdfgrep is at best probabilistic and I stand by my
| comment..
| Aerroon wrote:
| And yet it is the format documents are in. Government
| websites are full of PDFs.
| [deleted]
| exhilaration wrote:
| If you have a scanner, the easiest way is to take the
| redacted version provided by your attorneys, print it, then
| scan it through a document feeder to PDF. Nobody's
| reconstructing anything from that.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| lhnz wrote:
| AstraZeneca is currently struggling to produce 2 million doses a
| week for the UK [0]. How does the EU expect to use UK production
| to shore up a shortfall of 49 million doses that they require in
| February/March?
|
| The doses that exist in the UK only exist because of a
| manufacturing ramp up done under their own contract during the
| period of time that the EU was still negotiating a lower price.
| How does it make sense that a separate contract with AstraZeneca
| allows them to then get the doses produced for the UK re-
| allocated to another contract?
|
| The Commission is only entitled to those doses that AZ have,
| after best reasonable efforts, produced for them under their
| contract. This attempt to grab doses only in existence because of
| another prior contract is a disgrace.
|
| [0] https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/1505/html/
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> AstraZeneca is currently struggling to produce 2 million
| doses a week for the UK [0]. How does the EU expect to use UK
| production to shore up a shortfall of 49 million doses that
| they require in February/March?
|
| IANAL but it seems to be part of the agreement. From the posted
| pdf:
|
| _5.4 Manufacturing sites
|
| AstraZeneca shall use its Best Reasonable Efforts to
| manufacture the Vaccine at manufacturing sites located within
| the EU (which, for the purpose of this Section 5.4 only shall
| include the United Kingdom) (...)_
|
| In short, AstraZeneca agreed to use UK facilities to
| manufacture doses for the EU.
|
| >> The doses that exist in the UK only exist because of a
| manufacturing ramp up done under their own contract while the
| EU was still negotiating a lower price.
|
| Presumably, AstraZeneca agreed to provide a certain number
| (censored in the pdf above) of doses to the EU after
| AstraZeneca had initiated the "ramp up" you describe. They did
| not object to selling those doses that were manufacture during
| the "ramp up" to the EU. The contract doesn't mention any ramp
| up at all.
| [deleted]
| damagednoob wrote:
| I guess it comes down to the legal interpretation of "Best
| Reasonable Efforts".
| flipbrad wrote:
| I've been a lawyer for quite some time, and I can't recall
| the last time I saw this phrase used. I'm not sure I ever
| have.
| kerneis wrote:
| The term is capitalized, which means it is defined in the
| first section of the document, more precisely on p. 3 in
| that case:
|
| 1.9. "Best Reasonable Efforts" means (a) in the case of
| AstraZeneca, the activities and degree of effort that a
| company of similar size with a similarly-sized
| infrastructure and similar resources as AstraZeneca would
| undertake or use in the development and manufacture of a
| Vaccine at the relevant stage of development or
| commercialization having regard to the urgent need for a
| Vaccine to end a global pandemic which is resulting in
| serious public health issues, restrictions on personal
| freedoms and economic impact, across the world but taking
| into account efficacy and safety; and (b) in the case of
| the Commission and the Participating Member States, the
| activities and degree of effort that governments would
| undertake or use in supporting their contractor in the
| development of the Vaccine having regard to the urgent
| need for a Vaccine to end a global pandemic which is
| resulting in serious public health issues, restrictions
| on personal freedoms and economic impact, across the
| world.
| matthewheath wrote:
| "Best Reasonable Efforts" is defined in clause 1.9 of the
| contract:
|
| > 1.9. "Best Reasonable Efforts" means (a) in the case of
| AstraZeneca, the activities and degree of effort that a
| company of similar size with a similarly-sized
| infrastructure and similar resources as AstraZeneca would
| undertake or use in the development and manufacture of a
| Vaccine at the relevant stage of development or
| commercialization having regard to the urgent need for a
| Vaccine to end a global pandemic which is resulting in
| serious public health issues, restrictions on personal
| freedoms and economic impact, across the world but taking
| into account efficacy and safety; and (b) in the case of
| the Commission and the Participating Member States, the
| activities and degree of effort that governments would
| undertake or use in supporting their contractor in the
| development of the Vaccine having regard to the urgent need
| for a Vaccine to end a global pandemic which is resulting
| in serious public health issues, restrictions on personal
| freedoms and economic impact, across the world.
|
| On this basis, AZ can argue that they have indeed made
| reasonable best efforts to manufacture the vaccine within
| the EU: I believe most vaccine companies are struggling to
| fulfil their targets at the moment because of things like a
| shortage of supplies, worker sickness because of
| coronavirus, etc. It would seem to be difficult for the
| Commission to point to a company who's doing it any better
| except perhaps US-based companies.
|
| Furthermore the contract does not mark their UK
| manufacturing facilities as being exclusively for the EU -
| AZ can then argue that this contract is naturally subject
| to available resources in their UK manufacturing facilities
| and so, given this is a condition precedent, their
| obligations under this part of the contract have not become
| due just yet.
| 7952 wrote:
| That does not say anything about exclusivity of doses. It
| just states that manufacturing has to occur in particular
| places. What the EU gets out of this is parity between
| different purchasers within the group.
|
| Also it doesn't seem reasonable to expect AZ to ignore other
| contracts.
| lhnz wrote:
| > In short, AstraZeneca agreed to use UK facilities >
| to manufacture doses for the EU.
|
| Section 5.1 of the PDF seems to imply that the "Initial
| Europe Doses" are to be manufactured within Europe [0]
| "following EU marketing authorization".
|
| Section 5.4 which you quote from specifies that "this section
| _only_ shall include the United Kingdom ". As written, this
| section does not relate to the distribution of the initial
| doses in Section 5.1, but instead is about where AstraZeneca
| _could_ choose to manufacture the vaccine. That is why it
| explains the process by which they might get prior written
| notice for non-EU manufacturing sites, and discusses how they
| could be contracted with if they are unable to deliver doses.
|
| I think that gives them some leeway to ask AstraZeneca to
| increase capacity in the EU, but it strongly suggests to me
| that the capacity has meant to come from EU facilities,
| particularly for the "Initial Europe Doses".
|
| Somebody also linked to this [1] which implies that
| AstraZeneca stated that they would have no other contracts
| that should conflict with the "Initial Europe Doses",
| however, I can imagine AstraZeneca will argue that this is
| achieved by segregating production in the initial doses stage
| and that the problem is due to low yields in the EU
| facilities and not due to competing arrangements.
| [0]
| https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1355120024378335238
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/antoguerrera/status/1355137923411279878
| Closi wrote:
| Thanks - your explanation gives a lot of clarity.
|
| I assume a lot of people are reading it as "the EU is
| defined as just the U.K. for the purpose of this section"
| but you are right that it's just saying "this section is
| about the U.K., not the EU"
| calpaterson wrote:
| The EU's approach to resolving this dispute makes absolutely no
| sense.
|
| Regardless of the fact that, this contract does not, to my
| reading (IANAL), support their position that they have a claim
| over the UK-produced vaccines: pursuing a legal resolution seems
| silly because getting a judgement in your favour will take weeks
| or months. That is far too long for the timelines the EU wants.
|
| Then, even if such a judgment is forthcoming - you still aren't
| that much closer to getting more doses because as any solicitor
| will tell you, possession is nine tenths of the law and the doses
| are in the UK. There is no realistic chance of any export
| occurring without the approval of the UK government. The UK has a
| very serious outbreak of coronavirus too.
|
| Instead of getting on their high horse and starting an enormous
| public row why don't the EU: a) recognise that this is one of
| many vaccines and that perhaps, while important, is not
| singularly important to the effort b) make an arrangement with
| the UK government to have some kind of expedited access to
| vaccines? The UK will soon have a surplus of vaccines (and in
| fact has extra stock already by some accounts - people are being
| given unused doses). There is an existing trade issue that is
| causing problems for the UK that I am sure that the UK would like
| to get sorted...
|
| This kind of over-legalistic attitude is how the EU got into this
| hole in the first place. Waiting for a single purchase agreement
| was a mistake because the vaccines have (mostly) turned out to be
| extremely cheap and the fact that many companies are working on
| vaccines likely means that none will be able to charge over the
| odds.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> Regardless of the fact that, this contract does not, to my
| reading (IANAL), support their position that they have a claim
| over the UK-produced vaccines: (...)
|
| See my other comment here. IANAL either, but it seems this was
| part of the agreement. From the pdf above:
|
| _5.4 Manufacturing sites
|
| AstraZeneca shall use its Best Reasonable Efforts to
| manufacture the Vaccine at manufacturing sites located within
| the EU (which, for the purpose of this Section 5.4 only shall
| include the United Kingdom) (...)_
|
| AstraZeneca agreed to use the UK sites to produce vaccines for
| the EU.
| calpaterson wrote:
| It's a big step from agreeing to use UK sites as part of
| "Best Reasonable Efforts" to the EU having the right to
| recieve certain manufacture from UK sites.
|
| Anyway, as I said: it's totally irrelevant as no amount of
| litigating the contents of their contract will get them what
| they want. They want doses that are inside the borders of a
| third country. That third country also has designs on those
| doses the EU is not in their good books.
|
| It requires a political solution, not a legal one - but try
| telling the commission that, apparently.
| alibarber wrote:
| I think your proposal is what will end up happening.
|
| Johnson has refused to commit to blocking exports of the
| vaccine. He's a long way from my preffered politician, but
| people who describe him as a British Trump are wrong. He is no
| idiot (1). He knows he's been handed a politically interesting
| situation and is also aware of what state the UK is in with
| regard to vaccine supply (one of the best in the world at this
| time) and what benefits some careful political manoeuvering
| will be able to bring in this time.
|
| Allow me some hyperbole, but the optics of 'Generous UK offers
| salve to unfortunate vaccine-poverty stricken EU' - whilst
| sickening would make for some lovely press in the right-wing
| tabloids and might even go a little way towards his desired
| 'comming together' of a divided nation.
|
| (1) Yes - Brexit was indeed idiotic but I truly believe he
| never actually wanted it, and it just got him his longed-for
| premiership by unfortunate accidental means.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| He fumbled and stumbled into premiership- but now he's going
| to be capable of "some careful political manoeuvering". The
| man who made his career as a journalist by badmouthing the
| EU? I find this very unlikely.
| alibarber wrote:
| Yes, I guess it's a bit of a push, and maybe I'm grasping
| at straws here. But the man is insincere in everything he
| does, and I'd include his badmouthing the EU in that.
|
| He'll do what he thinks is best for his vote share, and my,
| admittedly amateur, reading of this situation is that he
| might well make a trade off in that direction. Although the
| latest news from Northern Ireland might be rocking the boat
| a bit too much. We'll just have to see I guess - but these
| days I'll expect anything.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Who knows, you may be right. That would actually be the
| best outcome, regardless of the Comission losing face and
| Boris getting bragging rights.
| peteretep wrote:
| > He fumbled and stumbled into premiership
|
| He took a razor-thin majority and turned it into a huge
| one. He's PM because he ruthlessly executed a plan to
| become it. He won almost every brinkmanship point with the
| EU that he took on over the last year.
|
| He's not who I want as PM, and I think his record is
| dismal, but if you think he "fumbled and stumbled" his way
| in then you've fallen for his con: he's bright and
| ruthless.
| sbuk wrote:
| He did so against the weakest opposition, overwhelmed
| with infighting and a lacklustre leader, seen in a
| generation, campaigning solely on the notion of "Getting
| Brexit Done (tm)" (barely) after 4 years of MPs arguing
| about it. Traditional Labour seats were lost based on
| Brexit fence-sitting. They will revert, especially as
| those constituents are slowly realising that getting
| Brexit done meant screwing them over. Johnson's Tories
| didn't so much win, it was essentially a one horse race.
| jariel wrote:
| I think the 'political optics' win for Johnson is going to
| more likely be: "We are the first major country to reach near
| full vaccination".
|
| Bibi in Israel is facing intense political ambiguity, and
| they are paying 3-4x (for the vaccines) what other countries
| are paying, and have apparently been doing some behind the
| scenes shenanigans for acquisition, I mean it's Isreal,
| that's what they do (no offence to those who might take it
| that way but they are the most realpolitik country on planet
| earth). They are _way_ ahead of anyone else and I suggest
| this is Bibi 's political salvation plan.
|
| Boris, similarly.
|
| It's a little bit conspiratorial, but wouldn't be surprised
| if there are some behind the scenes actions by UK gov. to
| make sure the UK is first.
|
| Also consider that the EU is frankly playing a losing hand
| and they look really bad from this.
|
| This is a major existential crisis and if China, US and UK
| end up with full vaccinations months ahead of the EU it's
| going to be very, very damaging.
|
| At minimum, the EU has to make a very big public stink about
| it to ensure people know/believe that the EU is doing what is
| possible, to mitigate the damage and possibly to be able to
| push the blame a little bit to others.
|
| Finally - there's nothing wrong with the UK offering the EU
| help, and that it would also end up being good PR. The
| problem with the claim is not that it's 'sickening' but
| rather it's frankly not a huge material PR win. It's a nice
| thing but it's only worth a news cycle or two.
|
| Having the UK immunized a few months ahead of the EU,
| irrespective of the underlying realities, is going to be
| something that will be remembered and analyzed for a decade.
|
| Frankly, in the end, I actually think it's far too risky for
| any EU/UK politicos to be playing underhanded games, the
| blowout would be devastating. I just think it's a matter of
| operational reality that the UK is doing well on this (note
| they are doing very poorly on infections), though I do feel
| EU has dropped the ball on securing vaccines from a wider
| base. Even Canada has put in options to purchase from a
| variety of sources.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> The UK will soon have a surplus of vaccines (and in fact has
| extra stock already by some accounts - people are being given
| unused doses)._
|
| Eh, that's just a sign that you have to administer an entire
| box of vaccines after opening the box.
|
| After all, some no-shows are inevitable and it's not like they
| can turn away the people at the end of the queue to avoid
| starting a new box given the people in the queue are there by
| invitation.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| I'm for the EU and of course hope the vaccine problems are solved
| ASAP, but i'm troubled by the way this has become a political,
| lawyeristic issue. On the one hand UK media is deseperate to
| somehow prove brexit worked, on the other hand EU is , once
| again, trying to solve problems magically by legal means. Are we
| forgetting we are in an urgent pandemic that threatens the world
| economy with collapse? This requires a warlike level of
| mobilization of engineers, not lawyers.
| martinald wrote:
| You sound like the "UK media" is one thing. The Guardian, FT,
| etc are staunchly pro EU and have been endlessly pointing out
| the problems.
| hef19898 wrote:
| It isnot, at least not yet, a legal issue. As you said, it is
| an engineering (manufacturing) and supply / logistics
| (distribution) issue. None of which are even remotely
| discussed, not politially, not in the media, no where. So I
| suspect we won't see any changes on these two fronts. At least
| no coordinated ones, the manufacturers will have quite
| motivated engineers working on manufactring ramp ups, I asume.
| codeulike wrote:
| _As you said, it is an engineering (manufacturing) and supply
| / logistics (distribution) issue. None of which are even
| remotely discussed, not politially, not in the media, no
| where._
|
| The Guardian, a few days ago:
|
| "Analysis: technical problem at Belgium plant failed to
| produce enough vaccine but EU demanding fulfilment of
| contract"
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/26/why-has-
| astraz...
| kazen44 wrote:
| I agree with your sentiment. Also, why not let other
| manufacturers produce vacciness aswell? Getting the vacinnes
| produced rapidly and in enough numbers seem to be the number
| one priority in this.
| stefano wrote:
| Sanofi will be producing the Pfizer-Biontech vaccine, but it
| takes a lot of time to set up a new production line. Last
| estimate I saw was saying July.
| thinkindie wrote:
| apparently this is going to happen with Sanofi producing
| Pfizer vaccine after they closed their own trials without a
| successful candidate.
| mrtksn wrote:
| 5.4.
|
| _manufacturing sites_. AstraZeneca shall use its Best Reasonable
| Efforts to manufacture the Vaccine at manufacturing sites located
| within EU(which, for the purpose of this Section 5.4 only shall
| include the United Kingodm) and may manufacture the Vaccine in
| non-EU facilities if appropriate, to accelerate supply of the
| Vaccine in Europe; provided, that AstraZeneca shall provide prior
| written notice of such non-EU manufacturing facilities to the
| Commission which shall include an explanation for such
| determination to use non-EU manufacturing facilities. If
| AstraZeneca is unable to deliver on its intention to manufacture
| the Initial Europe Doses and /or Optional Doses under this
| Agreement in the EU, the Commission or the Participating Member
| States may present to AstraZeneca, CMOs within the EU capable of
| manufacturing the Vaccine Doses, and AstraZeneca shall use its
| Best Reasonable Efforts to contract with such proposed CMOs to
| increase the available manufacturing capacity within the EU. The
| manufacturing site planning is set out in Schedule A.
|
| Probably needs a lawyer specialised in this stuff and the
| jurisdiction where the contract is signed, but it seems like this
| is the part that EU says the contract included the UK facilities.
|
| Anyway, whatever happens people of Europe wont forget this, even
| if it was purely EU's fault. You don't say you belong to a team,
| omit the vaccines of China and Russia and then be let to die off
| because the rest of the team says you should have signed better
| contract. Next time something important comes up, EU should think
| beyond the UK/USA.
| dstick wrote:
| It's mind boggling to me that "best reasonable effort" made it
| in there multiple times. That's so vague and up to
| interpretation, who can blame them that they sold the supplies
| for 3x as much to another country?
|
| Anything can be construed as "best reasonable effort" - or is
| this specific legalese I'm unaware off?
| airstrike wrote:
| IANAL but I think it qualifies as legalese you're unaware of.
|
| Also, just by definition, whatever the lawyers agreed on is
| likely appropriate in a legal context and a layman's
| criticism of the language is almost invariably because
| they're missing the knowledge. Imagine said lawyer reading
| your code and challenging you on your API design.
|
| Anyway, if challenged in court, AZ would have to demonstrate
| that they actually made genuine efforts before going down a
| different path.
|
| The addition of the word "reasonable" is because they need an
| out in case they feel they've spent a decent amount of
| efforts. Whether that amount was actually decent or not is
| for the judge to decide.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Isn't it obvious that the "best effort" is not fulfilled if
| you you manage to produce 6 hamburgers to UK and one to EU
| when you specifically said in the contract that your
| facilities in the EU and UK are to be used?
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| The official statement from AstraZeneca's CEO is that they
| have a fully operational production in the UK and are still
| resolving production issues in the EU sites.
|
| From his explanation the EU signed their contract with a 3
| month delay from the UK contract. Arguing that he is being
| accused of EU production issues on sites that have not had
| the 3 month lead time that the UK sites had to resolve any
| production issues.
|
| You can argue that the UK production output could
| potentially be distributed proportionally for worldwide
| demand but to me the real question is why isn't anyone in
| the media or in the European Commission asking questions on
| why did it take 3 months to draft such a bland generic
| urgent supply contract?
|
| I am sure the truth is probably somewhere in between but to
| me it seems the EC is playing the media game and trying to
| through AstraZeneca under a bus to cover for their own
| ineptitude in such a clutch time.
| mrtksn wrote:
| It's specifically stated in the contract that the UK
| facilities are covered. It's literally written in plain
| English, like you can read it from the document(the black
| markings on the white background). The continental
| facilities not getting online is irrelevant.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| We can agree that indeed this should be demanded.
|
| However, I ask again, why is no media outlet questioning
| our representatives about why they burned 3 months of
| people dying, to then come up with essentially the same
| terms as the unilateral contracts that the Dutch and the
| French were initially drafting?
|
| This isn't a contract to squeeze the best deal out of
| AZN, it is an emergency purchase, what was there to
| negotiate?
| mrtksn wrote:
| AFAIK this is not correct, they negotiated on stuff like
| liability. Not price.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| For 3 whole months though? This isn't a 20 year down the
| line trade agreement it's a medical emergency.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I don't think that it has anything to do with deliveries.
| They were not shipping vaccines when EU was negotiating
| the liability stuff. Instead, they put it on the contract
| that both UK and EU facilities are to be used and no
| other contracts to prevent EU's deliveries.
| PJDK wrote:
| Would "best reasonable efforts" generally include
| breaking of stronger worded contacts signed earlier? The
| UK contract was more along the lines of "you can partner
| with Oxford to get their IP and we'll help set up
| production lines on the condition we get first refusal of
| vaccines from those lines"
| kitd wrote:
| _why isn 't anyone in the media or in the European
| Commission asking questions on why did it take 3 months
| to draft such a bland generic urgent supply contract?_
|
| It's worse than that. The contract they finally signed
| was an almost carbon copy of one prepared by Germany,
| Netherlands and Italy 3 months earlier, before the EU
| stepped in to take over and "expedite" matters.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Source?
| kitd wrote:
| https://www.itv.com/news/2021-01-26/covid-vaccine-what-
| is-th...
| mrtksn wrote:
| That source needs sources.
| hef19898 wrote:
| And it is a bad contract at that.
| notahacker wrote:
| 'Best reasonable effort' is defined for both parties
| elsewhere in the contract, but it's still very open to
| interpretation
| hef19898 wrote:
| I only have ever seen "best reasonable effort" in the
| ontext of recovering from sitations where contractual
| obligations aren't met. my understanding, and how it was
| applied, is that these situation are impossible to predict,
| thus the rather ominous wording.
| jorvi wrote:
| Even if AstraZeneca gets away with it legally, they will be a
| leper to the EU and be crushed in whatever other medicine
| negotiations they end up having with the EU or its
| constituent national governments. Burning the goodwill that
| gets you access to a relatively rich 450 million consumers
| market is pretty boneheaded.
| danieldk wrote:
| I am not sure why this is downvoted. The EU is a very large
| market and if the EU feels like it is badly treated, they
| have a lot of options to make AstraZeneca's life miserable.
| Anything from stronger regulation of medicine pricing to
| relinquishing patents. In fact, the president of the EU,
| Charles Michel has already hinted at invoking Article 122
| of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union,
| which could force vaccine-makers to share their patents
| [1].
|
| I think first it remains to be seen if AstraZeneca did
| something problematic. But if that is the case, one can be
| sure there will be political repercussions. Though I think
| that they are now just using the threat of repercussions to
| force AstraZeneca to change their policies. If they do so,
| this will be the first big test for the new relation
| between the EU and Brittain and AstraZeneca will be in the
| middle of it.
|
| [1] https://www.politico.eu/article/charles-michel-says-eu-
| could...
| kazen44 wrote:
| > In fact, the president of the EU, Charles Michel has
| already hinted at invoking Article 122 of the Treaty on
| the Functioning of the European Union, which could force
| vaccine-makers to share their patents
|
| In my opinion they should, This is no time to play silly
| games regarding contract law. Vaccines should be produced
| as quickly as possible by as many capable facilities as
| possible.
|
| Let's also not forget that most of the developing world
| is dead last in receiving vaccines, and greatly
| increasing production could prevent the death of
| countless lives.
| pkaye wrote:
| But EU had months of negotiations to save a buck on a
| vaccine which if delayed causes far more economic damage on
| a daily basis.
| kitd wrote:
| Actually, it's specifically defined in one of the appendices.
| tomas wrote:
| There is a definition in the document:
|
| 1.9. "Best Reasonable Efforts" means
|
| (a) in the case of AstraZeneca, the activities and degree of
| effort that a company of similar size with a similarly-sized
| infrastructure and similar resources as AstraZeneca would
| undertake or use in the development and manufacture of a
| Vaccine at the relevant stage of development or
| commercialization having regard to the urgent need for a
| Vaccine to end a global pandemic which is resulting in
| serious public health issues, restrictions on personal
| freedoms and economic impact, across the world but taking
| into account efficacy and safety; and
|
| (b) in the case of the Commission and the Participating
| Member States, the activities and degree of effort that
| governments would undertake or use in supporting their
| contractor in the development of the Vaccine having regard to
| the urgent need for a Vaccine to end a global pandemic which
| is resulting in serious public health issues, restrictions on
| personal freedoms and economic impact, across the world.
| legulere wrote:
| How is one country paying 3x as much when AstraZeneca still
| has an obligation to produce more or less at cost? (https://w
| ww.ft.com/content/e359159b-105c-407e-b1be-0c7a1ddb6...)
| addicted wrote:
| The fundamental problem is that AstraZeneca has conflicting
| contracts with the UK and the EU.
|
| AstraZeneca, which apparently has no experience with maki
| vaccines, has messed up every part of their job. Starting
| with the trials (which is why the EU delayed the emergency
| authorization and the US hasn't given it yet) continuing with
| manufacturing, and apparently now it's becoming evident their
| legal department has screwed up as well.
| phonebucket wrote:
| I'm not a lawyer.
|
| But if reallocating UK doses to the EU, would Astra Zeneca then
| be in a predicament of not fulfilling their contract to the UK? I
| have no idea, but presumably this would depend on knowing the UK
| contract.
|
| So from my perspective, it's tough to know what Astra Zeneca
| ought to be doing without knowing all of their contractual
| obligations. That sounds tough.
|
| So I'm glad that I'm not a lawyer.
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| Yes, the UK contract has an explicit clause that says doses
| manufactured from the UK plants can only be exported once the
| UK order is fulfilled. The UK government demanded this as a
| condition of partnering with Oxford, and vetoed Oxford
| partnering with Merck because they wanted a UK HQed company.
|
| Whether AZ is breaching the contract with the EU seems to be
| debatable, but the EU are certainly expecting AZ to explicitly
| break their contract with the UK.
| temp667 wrote:
| So weird - and a good lesson for business. Generally the customer
| that gives you the most hassle on front end and is the cheapest
| will demand the most and hassle you the most for the entire
| period.
|
| This argument reminds me of someone who I once tried to work
| with, I said, I'll just charge you my costs instead of full rate
| (this is like a 3x difference in price). So many arguments around
| cost, so many demands on quick delivery. Meanwhile, the folks
| paying 3x kept on reasonably agreed program and took 1/10th the
| time.
|
| Anyone else have this experience?
|
| Rumor had it astra wasn't going to mark up a huge amount.
| itronitron wrote:
| A friend of mine who used to own a small Inn learned within a
| year to turn away customers who either asked too many questions
| before booking a room or that showed up complaining.
| temp667 wrote:
| Yeah - there are folks I think interested in having things
| done. They pay, you do it, they are happy.
|
| And then there are folks who have their own problems - they
| may be disorganized? Have internal conflicts? Have other
| financial issues. So they come in saying - hey give us a
| break on cost. you do. And then you are in for it, because
| they can't agree internally, complain about everything.
|
| This EU situation reminds me of that. Instead of saying how
| can we help increase production its endless blaming etc.
| Isn't the company an EU company? Why wouldn't they make wht
| they can?
| eznzt wrote:
| What is the excuse to have this contract censored? I understand
| what it's in the interest of security for example, but this...?
|
| Also, where are the people who laughed about Brexit now?
| Ninn wrote:
| Person who laughed and still laughs at Brexit here. The
| contract terms of the british contract has not been uncensored
| as far as I know?
| eznzt wrote:
| AZ is holding the vaccines for the UK and the EU is moaning
| about it: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55822602
| skrause wrote:
| In 13.1. (e) of the contract AstraZeneca warrants that:
|
| > _it is not under any obligation, contractual or
| otherwise, to any Person or third party in respect of the
| Initial Europe Doses or that conflicts with or is
| inconsistent in any material respect with the terms of this
| Agreement or that would impede the complete fulfillment of
| its obligations under this Agreement;_
| jiofih wrote:
| So you are celebrating the ability of one country to screw
| over others, ignoring contractual obligations and human
| decency? Good riddance, stay out of the EU for as long as
| you like...
| Ninn wrote:
| In addition to be in quiet explicit breach of contract and
| extremely unethical, attitude given the world situation,
| you still do realise that if EU had done the same and
| restricted exports of the BioNTech vaccine GB had been even
| more in the shitter.
|
| GB is by far one of the worst performers in the region in
| handling covid: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/l7
| meq9/covid_deaths...
|
| Now try to imagine a world where the development of the
| Oxford vaccine had failed. And EU based companies had had
| the success in their place, would you still be having a
| laugh, given that GB would be on the end of the unfulfilled
| contract?
| DangerousPie wrote:
| Commercially sensitive information? Doesn't seem too unusual to
| me.
|
| And I'm not sure what this has to do with Brexit.
| DC-3 wrote:
| I think they're alluding more generally to the idea that the
| EU's bureaucratic sluggishness caused its member states to
| not have a contract in place with AZ until three months after
| Britain, putting them proverbially to the 'back of the
| queue'.
| alibarber wrote:
| I think this is also where the size and 'buying power' of
| the EU actually works against it. The UK has bought
| something like 5 courses of vaccine for each of its
| population across numerous suppliers, expecting that a few
| of them will be damp squibs or arrive/be approved too late
| or not at all. I don't really know - but I don't think the
| EU is actually in a position to do the same given the size
| of the combined poplulation and the limited political
| appeal of wealthier countries to subsidise others for
| vaccines that won't be needed.
| jiofih wrote:
| The EU financed the development of this vaccine to the tune of
| 300M. The UK contributed 65M, the US 1.2B.
| alibarber wrote:
| Which per person works out as the least. Not that I'm saying
| this situation is justified by that, but I don't find it
| surprising that AZ are not prioritising the EU based purely
| on this.
| jiofih wrote:
| That's for development - the population doesn't really
| matter for the creation of the vaccine?
| maxerickson wrote:
| There's a confidentiality clause in the contract (page 26 of
| the link).
|
| Perhaps AstraZeneca asked for it and the member states didn't
| think it was worth fighting over?
| frombody wrote:
| EU is massive and has a lot of negotiating power.
|
| Allowing everyone else to see the contract would give other
| countries stronger leveraging positions against AstraZeneca.
| addicted wrote:
| I'm not sure what this has to do with Brexit.
|
| The exact same arrangement would have been possible and likely
| before Brexit as well.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| People who were pro-Brexit seem to think this one thing
| proves they were right. They seem to think other EU members
| will be angry with how the EU are treating the UK in this
| matter and will also want to leave. This point seems nuts
| since the EU is basically fighting for it's members vs a non-
| member, kind of shows why it's better to be with them than
| againist them. Considering this hasn't fully played out,
| their constant bragging on the matter seems foolish.
| Especially considering the EU clearly has more power. The UK
| is in an extremely vulnerable position overall and seem to be
| making their position unsafer by the day. The damage the UK
| goverment is doing to the EU relations will, I suspect, haunt
| the UK for decades. I suspect if this carries on for a year
| or so, the UK will end up in a trade war with their closet
| and largest trading partner during one of the largest
| recessions ever.
|
| I highly suspect this is going to cost AstraZeneca big.
| outoftheabyss wrote:
| Perhaps you can point to what in particular the UK has done
| wrong on this vaccine issue.
|
| With the EU introducing export controls against existing
| (and actually binding) vaccine contracts and now
| threatening war time-esque controls over production and
| intellectual property rights of private pharma companies,
| it is not AstraZeneca that this will cost big, actions like
| these are much much bigger than uk vs EU
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| > Perhaps you can point to what in particular the UK has
| done wrong on this vaccine issue.
|
| This is the thing. The EU is complaining about
| AstraZeneca and not the UK itself. AstraZeneca is being
| accused of transferring supplies from EU factories to UK
| ones and only providing those to the UK.
|
| > now threatening war time-esque controls over production
| and intellectual property rights of private pharma
| companies, it is not AstraZeneca that this will cost big,
|
| I think we think differently on this matter. You think
| Pharma won't want to deal with the EU if their IP isn't
| protected. It doesn't matter, another company will enter
| using their IP and make that money anyways. Their IP
| being protected is only in the interested of the company,
| if their IP is not protected they will lose out to
| generic companies. Doesn't matter where it's developed,
| someone get it and figure it out and produce it where the
| IPs are not protected. Drug companies have lots to lose.
| travem wrote:
| > They seem to think other EU members will be angry with
| how the EU are treating the UK in this matter and will also
| want to leave.
|
| UK pro-brexit reporting I have seen has been focusing not
| on other countries (such as Germany) being upset at the
| EU's treatment of the UK, but the fact that the EU
| prevented them from negotiating individually and securing
| vaccines earlier, and instead imposing additional
| bureaucracy that delayed the ordering of the vaccine by
| multiple months.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| I was talking about the actual people not the reporting.
| Yea, reporters are not that stupid.
| jiofih wrote:
| Especially considering that AZ is half swedish, and the
| vaccine was mostly funded by other countries, the UK only
| responded for 1/10 of it.
|
| Oxford uni and the production plant just happen to be on
| the other side of the fence right now, there is very little
| to claim it as a British triumph. They need something to
| hold onto I guess.
| lhnz wrote:
| If this tweet is correct [1] then the EU hasn't even paid
| the down payments yet so the contract isn't even
| enforceable.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/BarristersHorse/status/1355187738
| 3042539...
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| Correct at the time of writing that document UK was still
| bound by the single market rules (transition period) but EU27
| decided to not fight over vaccines, but coordinate and go for
| bigger central orders.
| scythe wrote:
| >Also, where are the people who laughed about Brexit now?
|
| Please don't throw grenades.
|
| https://www.flamewarriorsguide.com/warriorshtm/grenade.htm
| cardinalfang wrote:
| Too late, this affair has already been used as artillery by
| the pro-brexit press.
| Bombthecat wrote:
| Well, it doesnt help that astrazeneca joined the pro
| brexiters..
| netsharc wrote:
| Just because someone did something stupid, doesn't mean the
| previous actions of their opponent were clever...
| afavour wrote:
| > Also, where are the people who laughed about Brexit now?
|
| The idea that this one event makes up for the colossal mess of
| Brexit is... interesting.
| omginternets wrote:
| Am I unreasonable in thinking it scandalous that the EU's
| contract with AstraZeneca is censored? Shouldn't this kind of
| thing be public?
| jackweirdy wrote:
| If it makes you feel any better, their attempt at redaction was
| poor and the whole text is present in the bookmarks of the PDF:
|
| https://twitter.com/lijukic/status/1355164987212390402
| hef19898 wrote:
| I just started to read it, not finished yet, so I will update
| this post a needed. Also, I look at it from a purely supply chain
| / logistics erspective. I also asusme that the other contracts
| (Biontech/Pfizer, Moderna, Jihnsson&Johnsson,...) are similar.
|
| So far, I found this:
|
| - Paragraph 5.2: The delivery schedule in the main contract is
| quite short ( I assume based on quarters) and blacked out. I
| don't like that lack of transparence.
|
| - Paragraph 6.2: I read that paragraph concerning capacit
| limitations, that of any additional EU orders result in capacity
| shortfalls, AZ has to increase capacity. And in case AZ is not
| able to adhere to the schedule agreed in 5.2, AZ is not in breach
| of contract. If the Pfizer contract is the same, that would mean
| the EU really shot itself in the foot with the additional orders,
| that forced a temporary / partial shitdown of Pfizers Belgian
| plant.
|
| - 6.3: Regular reporting intevalls are not specified, neither is
| any appendix referenced. That could be an issue.
|
| - 8.1, Delivery: Coordination of deliveries is supposed to happen
| between the central AZ rep and the reps o the EU member states.
| Again no details, no mention of working groups, no detailed time
| tables, eg AZ has to inform "in good time" before doses will be
| available. I'd say very hard o implement once deliveries are
| supposed to start, and a clear indication that nobody thought of
| how the whole purchasing and delivery to member state hubs is
| supposed to work in real life.
|
| - 8.4 and 8.5: Now the contract specifies "in good time" to be 5
| working days. Distribution is up to member states. And in case
| the hub cannot take the delivery within these 5 days, any storage
| is on the member state. The period behind this is blacked out.
| The focus here is purely cost, again I'd say the cintract is
| falling short on the logistcs side of things.
|
| - 18.7, Force Majeur: Sure, pandemics are usually included as
| Force Majeur incidents. But really, for a COVID-19 vaccine as
| well? Come on. The means either the pandemic is delcared over
| (which it won't be), or AZ has a constant option to just declare
| Force Majeur if they run into issues. Why not explicitly exclude
| the ongoing pandemic from being a Force Majeur event?
|
| - Order Form (pages 35 through 38): This is honestly the first
| contract I saw in my whole life, that spends fou complete pages
| on cntractually specifying the purchase order. Honestly, I don't
| see reason why.
|
| - Delivery Schedule (page 40): Now we have a table with monthly
| quantities. All blacked out. Again, the contract references
| payment terms, but not a single word on what happens if AZ canno
| adhere to the schedule. Not good.
|
| I have to say, from a supply chain perspective, this contract is
| dangerously lacking. Based on my experience with government
| sourcing, they tend to include everything in the cntract they
| think about, I assume nobody spared a thought at how the
| deliveries wil bemanaged,how the schedule will look like, or what
| will happen if there are delays. That almost borders negligence.
|
| Again, asuming the contracts with the other suppliers are
| similar, I'm almost sure that there is no organization put in
| place on EU level, at the suppliers or member states to manage
| the actual deliveries. None. There is no word in that contract
| about thecoordination between local vaccination efforts and
| deliveries. I have the impression, that as with masks, the
| governments think that you sign a contract, place an order and
| then have the goods are delivered without issues. It didn't work
| out like that with masks, it won't with vaccines.
| Closi wrote:
| I'm in logistics too, although deliveries seemed pretty
| flexible from my perspective. 5 days is a huge window
| (retailers will fine you if you arrive outside their 2 hour
| window!).
|
| Delivery into any specified single NDC seems sensible.
|
| More specifics around delivery requirements and regulations
| will differ on a by-country basis regardless.
| yread wrote:
| Is there anything that goes right with this vaccine? First they
| mess up the trial giving it to only 18-55 year old, then the
| manufacturing of half doses instead of full, then the efficacy is
| not so great, then they manage to manufacture only 1/3 of the
| doses they promised, then it turns out efficacy in old people is
| basically nothing and now this. As Derek Lowe said: if there is
| one pharma company that comes out of pandemic looking worse it
| will be AZ.
| johnghanks wrote:
| > then it turns out efficacy in old people is basically nothing
|
| didn't this turn out to be false
| snet0 wrote:
| > giving it to only 18-55 year old
|
| This is simply untrue, the mixed-dose regimen was limited to
| those under 55, but 4% of the study population were over 70.
|
| > the efficacy is not so great
|
| While the efficacy numbers indeed look lower than the mRNA
| vaccines, I'm lead to believe that at least part of this is due
| to methodology. As far as I am aware, neither the Moderna or
| the Pfizer mRNA vaccines tested for asymptomatic cases, and
| presented their efficacy _against symptomatic cases only_.
|
| > it turns out efficacy in old people is basically nothing
|
| I believe this claim is totally untrue, also.
| yread wrote:
| Don't get me wrong I would still take if I got the chance
| (and I will according to the plan as I work in a hospital)
| but it was a sloppily done trial.
|
| > This is simply untrue, the mixed-dose regimen was limited
| to those under 55, but 4% of the study population were over
| 70.
|
| It was given only to 18-55 in the UK. 4% doesn't compare well
| to 20+% for all the other trials. Brilliant for a disease
| which kills people with median age of 82 years (in the UK).
| Why would you even design a protocol that looks only at young
| people?!
|
| They used a different protocol in Brazil and South Africa.
| Why did they use a different protocol in different places?
| Pfizer and other companies managed with one. Having different
| protocol is treated as different trials - so the trial in
| South Africa didn't have enough cases and wasn't even
| considered in the EMA authorization. EMA estimates 60%
| efficacy.
|
| https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/news/ema-recommends-
| covid-19-va...
|
| > methodology
|
| Ok so the efficacy looks worse but is not directly
| comparable. That doesn't really detract from my point that
| the trial(s) was not well designed, no? It just wasn't given
| to enough old people.
|
| EDIT: Also, the efficacy in preventing asymptomatic infection
| was only 27% (again with insanely wide confidence interval).
| So, they designed the trial to measure it, but it doesn't do
| really well at that.
|
| > I believe this claim is totally untrue, also.
|
| It could be true, could be untrue but it's not falsifiable
| from the data. The confidence interval for efficacy in 65+ is
| -140.5% (yes there is a minus) - 94.2%. We just don't know.
|
| https://twitter.com/olivernmoody/status/1354781400071860230
| ucha wrote:
| In 7.1., when they say the EU will provide funding at an amount
| equal to the "cost of goods", does it mean that AZ doesn't make
| profits on the vaccine they sell to the EU?
|
| There is also a mention of a cost of good estimate and how if the
| cost of good was off by more than 20%, the EU should pay the
| difference...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _does it mean that AZ doesn 't make profits on the vaccine
| they sell to the EU?_
|
| During the pandemic period, which is defined to expire on 1
| July 2021. A stupid contractual provision to include, since it
| creates monetary incentives to delay delivery.
|
| (Not saying that's why this is happening. But if I were
| negotiating something like this, I'd include a bonus for early
| deliveries. It keeps interests aligned, and gives the supplier
| ammunition with which to add redundancies.)
| DangerousPie wrote:
| Pretty sure that's a standard part of any agreement AZ made,
| since Oxford University only licensed the vaccine to them if
| they provided it at cost.
| kitd wrote:
| I believe the "no profit" clause comes from Oxford Uni who
| own the IP.
| trebligdivad wrote:
| Right, AZ is doing all of this at cost for everyone, not just
| the EU (until the end of the Pandemic); I feel sorry for AZ
| having to take this hastle when they're not making anything out
| of it.
| thow-01187 wrote:
| Don't they get their manufacturing facilities upgraded for
| free?
| cinntaile wrote:
| Apparently it was mistakenly uploaded uncensored before this was
| changed? Where can we find the uncensored version?
| DangerousPie wrote:
| This is the "uncensored" version. Parts in red were originally
| censored but have been revealed.
| DangerousPie wrote:
| Nothing particularly interesting or shocking about the parts that
| got un-censored. The important part seems to be 5.4, which was
| already readable before.
|
| To me that section seems so suggest that production facilities in
| the UK should/could indeed be used to supply the EU, which is
| what the EU seems to want and AZ/UK are denying. But I'm sure
| there are a lot of highly paid lawyers looking at this from all
| sides right now.
| cs02rm0 wrote:
| Certainly one Belgian lawyer has already stated that he thinks
| the EU Commission don't have a leg to stand on here. Not that I
| expect that to slow them down.
|
| https://twitter.com/JeremyC64/status/1355156181753475073?s=1...
|
| Awkwardly it seems Pfizer might shift to supplying the UK from
| the US and the UK seem content that they have no contractual
| need to share the AZ doses from the UK facility. So the EU
| don't seem to have any leverage on this issue.
|
| Some have tried to say this debate is EU vs AZ but this map
| suggests otherwise.
|
| https://thumbsnap.com/sc/JtrAXvhv.jpg
| DangerousPie wrote:
| Can we have a zoomed out version of that map please? I
| suspect it's been framed for maximum controversy.
|
| And I'd also like to hear from more reliable lawyers than "a
| guy on Twitter".
| smnrchrds wrote:
| Yeah. Canada is not exempted either. And we have no
| domestic production of COVID-19 vaccine. All our vaccines
| are coming from Europe.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| From what I gather from the media here in the UK one problem is
| that AstraZeneca's contract with the UK government is that they
| will not export vaccines produced in the UK until the British
| government's order is fulfilled.
|
| Pretty smart stipulation by the UK government but it may be
| putting AstraZeneca, which agreed to it, in an awkward
| position...
| Bombthecat wrote:
| So basically, two exclusive contracts? Lol..
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _two exclusive contracts?_
|
| The EU signed second and, to my knowledge, did not include
| similar language in their agreement. They are also paying
| less than the UK and US.
| makomk wrote:
| Including similar language in their agreement would
| probably have made the EU's already terrible case even
| worse anyway, since it would almost certainly have only
| covered AstraZeneca's non-UK European facilities, and the
| whole problem seems to be that those can't produce nearly
| enough vaccine to cover EU demand. Note that the current
| clause about the initial supply of doses only covers
| manufacturing them _within the EU_ ; the part about the
| EU including the UK explicitly does not apply to that
| clause. (Indeed, the only mention of UK manufacturing
| seems to be exempting it from a clause _banning_ the use
| of non-EU manufacturing sites.)
| DangerousPie wrote:
| According to AZ they are selling the vaccine at cost to
| all customers, so the price should have nothing to do
| with it. Unless they're lying I guess.
| hef19898 wrote:
| I think profits will come from page 5, paragraph a (the
| second a on that page):
|
| "(a) costs related to the operation of the facility
| incurred while using the facility to manufacture other
| products;"
|
| are included in the vaccine costs.
| rsynnott wrote:
| AstraZeneca's real problem seems to be that they, on the face
| of it, promised contradictory things to different customers.
| krona wrote:
| Except the wording in the EU contract is too vague and
| loose, and isn't a commitment beyond best reasonable
| efforts.
|
| Obviously the Commission (publically) disagrees and is
| using AstraZeneca as a scapegoat for its incompetence.
| DangerousPie wrote:
| Ah, that's an interesting aspect I didn't know about.
|
| But if that's true it seems very hypocritical of the UK to
| complain so much about the EU's plan to introduce vaccine
| export controls, since they are doing the exact same thing
| already...
| [deleted]
| notimetorelax wrote:
| Wouldn't be the first time a politician behaved
| hypocritically, would it?
| freeone3000 wrote:
| It's not hypocritical at all. Keeping vaccine in the
| borders of the UK gives more vaccine to the UK, and
| importing vaccine from Europe gives more to the UK.
| usrusr wrote:
| It seems like the gloves have come off wrt the idea of
| fair(ish) vaccine access across the board recently.
|
| I'm usually not much of an aficionado of free market
| radicalism, but I suspect that the vaccine ramp-up would go
| better, eventually better for everyone, if it had started
| with a honest commitment to the highest bidder mindset that
| we can't goodwill out of existence anyways. Only suspect,
| because who knows what failure modes the other path would
| hold, but I think that for example early arrangements for
| mandatory sublicensing (in case of research success) would
| have been much more likely to have found their way into
| research subsidy contracts if nation state representatives
| had been in a gloves-off situation from the beginning.
| alastor2020 wrote:
| It's different though surely? UK had an exclusivity
| agreement with a private company (AZ). EU had their own
| agreement. There is now a contractual dispute between EU
| and AZ. In retaliation, EU wants to use export controls to
| prevent another EU company (Pfizer) honouring its legal
| civil contract with the UK. This is trade war sort of
| stuff. EU should go to court with AZ to settle the dispute.
| The UK isn't a party here.
| makomk wrote:
| An exclusivity agreement for, as I understand it, a
| production line that the UK basically paid to set up in
| exchange for that exclusivity. Which seems like a pretty
| normal commercial arrangement.
| Scarblac wrote:
| No, the EU wants to stop exporting to the UK from
| Belgium, as they have already done,as long as they are
| behind on the agreed EU schedule.
| cs02rm0 wrote:
| There's a quite a difference between a contract signed by a
| company who could walk away without the money and imposed
| law that restricts trade!
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Of course. As I said in my other comment, there is a lot of
| politics involved, not least because of Brexit and, frankly
| because the EU did not do very well (they may be looking
| for a diversion...) here while the UK did.
| thow-01187 wrote:
| To be fair, despite the heavy criticisms, it's not clear
| whether the EU objectively made any major mistake. The
| countries ahead of them in the vaccination effort did so
| by writing a blank check to the pharma companies -
| definitely not an ideal outcome either.
|
| EU diversified their vaccine contracts, negotiated fair
| prices, generously funded the manufacturing rollout,
| avoided vaccine nationalism between member states,
| equitably distributed the vaccines amongst their members
| and the key point - holds the manufacturers liable for
| possible damages.
|
| All of those points are entirely reasonable. One could
| argue that EU should have paid more, but there are two
| counterarguments: Firstly, it doesn't really move a
| needle, as both US and UK have home-front-first clauses,
| leaving only Israel and Arab oil producers skipping the
| queue. Secondly, said countries could just amend their
| contracts, bid up the price, and everyone is back at
| square one.
|
| Date of contract signing doesn't really matter either - a
| credible commitment to massive orders has been there from
| the very beginning.
|
| European Medical Agency gets a lot of undeserved flak for
| being slow and bureaucratic. Pfizer was approved mere 10
| days later than in the US, Moderna got approved earlier
| than in the UK, and now AstraZeneca earlier than in the
| US. Allegedly, even those slippages were caused by the
| companies simply prioritizing their US/UK approvals.
|
| Partially, EU got unlucky - Sanofi vaccine flopped, AZ
| plant has technical problems, Curevac got delayed. In a
| world where Pfizer and AZ wouldn't underdeliver by an
| order of magnitude, EU plan would be praised and touted
| as a gold standard. Partially, EU was always fighting an
| uphill battle - the corporations that cleared the
| approvals simply care more about their image in the
| US/UK, don't like to face competent regulators, and
| really dislike being liable. Afaik, they face no
| liability in US and Israel.
|
| That being said, absent the EU policy, I'm quite
| confident that small countries like Latvia, Slovenia or
| Finland would end up with the short end of the stick.
| libertine wrote:
| How would EU be painted if they demanded all vacines
| produced in Europe to stay in Europe before all their
| orders are fulfilled?
|
| That would be "doing very well"?
|
| Because it seems that's what UK is doing with AZ, their
| production stays in the UK. And that's doing well?
|
| If so, then EU should most definitely lock out exports of
| vaccines.
| xioxox wrote:
| The vaccine basically would not exist without the UK
| government helping putting together the organisation to
| make this, before AZ even got involved, plus the academic
| research funding. This vaccine is sold at cost and is
| allowed to be manufactured elsewhere such as in India. It
| seems perfectly reasonable that the UK can fund a
| facility to guarantee supply after all the investment and
| effort.
| riedel wrote:
| The other part is the definition of Best Reasonable Effort . I
| wonder if the behaviour of Pfizer has an impact here.
| ldng wrote:
| Yes it does. They used it to announce that they deliver 20%
| bottle because they are not billing 6 doses per bottle while
| at the same time arguing publicly that they contains 5. They
| are then hiding behind that contract the talks about doses,
| not bottles and best effort not hard delivery. They all have
| the same contract and are following Pfizer example.
|
| BigPharma is screwing up UE big time and that is
| unacceptable.
|
| Source for downvoters :
| https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/290121/retards-de-
| va... (FR)
| hef19898 wrote:
| Oh, there is also a paragraph in the AZ contract, that
| frees AZ from breach of contract if additional orders from
| the EU result in capacity shortfalls. Not that dditional
| orders would have been necessary, but hey, the press called
| for it.
| noncoml wrote:
| If you listen to UK BBC news, they spend half of their airtime
| saying how the UK government placed the order months before the
| EU, and that the EU is in the wrong, since they haven't even
| approved the vaccine yet(as of the last time I listened to the
| BBC news), so they shouldn't complain and so on.
|
| I am surprised by the polarization and demonization of the EU
| they are promoting. Was not expecting that from BBC. And then
| they wonder why British people voted for Brexit.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| It's the same if you read the Guardian. It's clear that the
| apparent europhilia of some liberal media was nothing but a
| political play. They pretended to support Europe only because
| their rivals, the Tory-supporting media, were against it.
|
| Or pretended to be. None of those people believe anything at
| all.
| oliwarner wrote:
| They spend half their time talking to their government, who say
| that.
|
| The BBC can't win. When they editorialise to try to dig into a
| subject, it's left wing pandering, and when they just listen to
| official sources, they're right wing mouthpieces.
| simonswords82 wrote:
| True that - which is why it's so important to obtain news
| from multiple sources and then attempt to form your own view.
| salicideblock wrote:
| I am surprised why anyone is discussing who signed first, given
| that in the contract AstraZeneca warrants that:
|
| "it is not under any obligation, contractual or otherwise, to
| any Person or third party in respect of the Initial Europe
| Doses or that conflicts with or is inconsistent in any material
| respect with the terms of this Agreement or that would impede
| the complete fulfillment of its obligations under this
| Agreement;"
|
| This ended up not being true, which was not totally unexpected.
|
| AstraZeneca ends up in the bad position of choosing on which of
| their contracts their will fail, and they evidently chose to
| fail the EU's _in its near totality_ for the next few months.
|
| It pains me to see the cynicism in shielding behind "best
| effort" clauses (standard in any procurement under R&D) or in
| "who came first". It's a serious matter that warrants a cooler
| and more balanced solution that this.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _in respect of the Initial Europe Doses_
|
| There is text blacked out in the definition of Initial Europe
| Doses after "within the EU" that I'm curious about.
|
| Also, the clause reads "AstraZeneca has committed to use Best
| Reasonable Efforts...to build capacity to manufacture 300
| million Doses of the Vaccine...for distribution within the
| EU..." That's ambiguous with respect to distribution.
|
| AstraZeneca _are_ using Best Reasonable Efforts to build this
| manufacturing capacity. But they aren 't under Best
| Reasonable Efforts obligations to _use_ this capacity for the
| EU. (The definition of Best Reasonable Efforts overlooks
| distribution entirely.)
|
| It's a shitty situation. Pain has to be allocated. But based
| on contract, versus loose notions of fairness, AstraZeneca is
| under no obligation to export British-made doses to the EU.
| hef19898 wrote:
| AZis only obliged to deliver to hubs in each member state.
| That's it, nothing else. Hubs have to take the delivery
| within 5 days of being notofied of that delivery. That's
| about it regarding actual deliveries. Pretty thin,
| especially compared to the 4 pages covering the order form.
| throwawaymanbot wrote:
| well ok. Let them return all the money the EU gave them.
| And let them understand how AZ might have market access
| problems to the EU from now on.
| eyko wrote:
| I'm also curious about what dates were agreed. Looking at
| the document, here's what they state regarding
| manufacturing and supply (emphasis mine):
|
| "5. Manufacturing and Supply.
|
| 5.1. Initial Europe Doses. AstraZeneca shall use its Best
| Reasonable Efforts _to manufacture the Initial Europe Doses
| within the EU_ for distribution, and to deliver to the
| Distribution Hubs, following EU marketing authorisation, as
| set forth more fully in Section 7.1. approximately
| [censored] 2020 [censored] Q1 2021, and (iii) the remainder
| of the Initial Europe Doses by the end of [censored] "
|
| It looks like the EU expected to have the vaccine approved
| by the end of 2020 and delivered soon after that. Based on
| media reporting, it would appear that AZ notified the EU
| that it would not meet the first deadline, but did so with
| only a short notice (15 days according to some outlets?).
|
| Without getting into speculation, one date that isn't
| censored is that which specifies when the "Additional
| Doses" would stop being offered at the agreed price: 1 July
| 2021:
|
| "9.3.Additional Doses. AstraZeneca shall provide any agreed
| Additional Doses at Cost of Goods until 1 July 2021, unless
| AstraZeneca determines in good faith that the COVID-19
| Pandemic has not ceased as of 1 July 2021, in which case
| AstraZeneca shall [censored]"
|
| So, if the initial doses are delayed, then the optional
| doses are delayed after that, and then the additional doses
| are delayed after that, it would seem that the agreed
| prices would only apply for a small fraction of the
| additional doses that would've been expected, whatever
| seemed reasonable. It seems that any delays in the "Initial
| Doses" could have an effect on the rest of the contract
| agreement.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| I don't understand, where is BBC incorrect here? How would you
| like them to report on this?
|
| EU _was_ months late and they move much slower than other
| parties in the whole process and on top of that they signed
| agreements with "best effort" clauses instead of hard
| obligation of vaccine delivery. How is this UK's fault?
| DangerousPie wrote:
| Nobody is saying it's the UK's fault, but just because they
| signed the agreement a few months later doesn't mean that AZ
| isn't bound to that agreement. There is no "first come first
| serve" clause in there.
| adrianb wrote:
| Interesting. How are these contracts supposed to work? In
| general when I buy something and have to wait, I expect to
| get it before everyone who buys after me. Not sure how
| these contracts work.
| krona wrote:
| Which is _exactly_ why AZ split the UK /EU supply chain
| to try avoid such issues entirely (CEOs words.) The
| contract is vague and nonspecific about commiting UK
| factories to supply the EU.
|
| The whole thing is a parody of Brussels bureaucratism.
| mrtksn wrote:
| >The contract is vague and nonspecific about the UK
| factories supplying the EU.
|
| It's not, it's clearly stated that the contract covers
| the UK facilities.
|
| Check article 5.4
| krona wrote:
| My interpretation comes from 2 seperate lawyers. Why are
| they wrong?
| mrtksn wrote:
| I don't know your lawyers, can't tell. Are they internet
| lawyers, like on reddit or YouTube or something?
| krona wrote:
| Unless you're an expert in contract law then your
| interpretation of "Best Reasonable Efforts" for a pharma
| company during a global pandemic is less than worthless.
| As is my own.
| [deleted]
| DangerousPie wrote:
| I guess ideally AZ wouldn't enter multiple contracts that
| conflict with each other...
| Diggsey wrote:
| So you're suggesting AZ should never have agreed to
| supply the EU at all?
|
| The contract clearly says they're to make their "best
| reasonable effort" to satisfy this contract. Breaking
| previous contracts would be unreasonable.
|
| There are so many things the EU could do here that could
| help: - Provide more resource to AZ to get more
| facilities up and running. - Offer to sell some of that
| future ramped up production back to countries like the UK
| in exchange for getting some vaccines now. - Expedite the
| approval process of other vaccines. - Allow member states
| to negotiate indepently.
|
| What did they choose to do? Raid the EU vaccine
| production facilties, and threaten legal action against
| the very company trying to supply them the vaccine. Like
| yeah, that's really going to help people.
|
| The UK government directly paid for the research and
| development of the AZ vaccine, and paid for the
| manufacturing facilities in the UK to be built, when
| there was a lot of pressure to simply partner with US
| firms. Where was the EU when this was happening? Why
| didn't the EU take it upon themselves to do the same
| thing?
|
| The presumptiveness of the EU to dictate that AZ should
| redirect UK vaccines to the EU is astounding.
| libertine wrote:
| I don't understand why:
|
| - approval timing;
|
| - contract celebration date;
|
| Has anything to do with the fact that AZ is failing to
| comply with it's duties.
|
| AZ isn't waiting for EU approval to start producing stock
| to fulfill their initial order, that makes no sense - it
| takes WEEKS to build stock for the goal of the 80 million
| doses. The stock that will be delivered, 30% of what was
| expected, is being produced before this approval. So this
| "approval process" argument makes no sense.
|
| Regarding the contract celebration date, same applies -
| they were expected to deliver 80 million doses in a
| timeframe, which they agreed upon.
|
| Why don't we do this the other way around, why don't we
| all be transparent and see if they are also failing to
| supply the UK? Because if it's supply issues, then it
| should be a problem of both countries no?
|
| Or they were shifting stock made in Europe to fulfill UK
| orders?
|
| I really hope the EU gets to the bottom of this, because
| it stinks.
| Silhouette wrote:
| _The contract clearly says they 're to make their "best
| reasonable effort" to satisfy this contract. Breaking
| previous contracts would be unreasonable._
|
| To me reading the contract as a non-lawyer, the BRE
| conditions felt like game, set and match to AZ.
|
| For one thing, the definition of "best reasonable
| efforts" does seem to be ambiguous, but evidently it's
| intended to relate to what a business comparable to AZ
| would be expected to do. It seems unreasonable to expect
| that a large, multinational business manufacturing
| essential drugs during a public health crisis would
| knowingly and deliberately breach an existing contract to
| supply a fixed number of doses on a fixed schedule to
| another party, which is what AZ reportedly has with the
| UK.
|
| On top of that, there is the discrepancy between 5.1 and
| 5.4. The latter says the UK counts as "within the EU"
| while talking about manufacturing at sites located within
| the EU, but it also explicitly says the inclusion of the
| UK is only for that specific clause. Clause 5.1 is
| specifically about the initial doses and requires AZ to
| use its BREs to manufacture the initial doses within the
| EU with no such including-the-UK qualifier.
|
| So it appears that, contractually, AZ is actively
| required to make BRE to manufacture the initial doses for
| the EU _not_ in the UK, and in any case, unless there is
| something very strange hidden in the censored wording,
| the obligations relating to delivery are also covered by
| a BRE qualifier.
|
| Presumably this will all end up being decided in court,
| probably long after it really matters for anything other
| than financial compensation, but on a first reading by
| this layperson, it does look like AZ have the stronger
| case here.
| Neil44 wrote:
| The significance of the earlier commitment from the UK is
| that UK manufacturing of the vaccine is now 3 months more
| mature than the EU plant. It's not a legal significance but
| a practical and moral one.
| Scarblac wrote:
| The EU claims there are no best effort clauses, which is why
| they asked AZ to make this public. We'll find out.
|
| The rest of your comment makes OP's point: this is a contract
| dispute. Why is it relevant when the UK signed their
| contract, or that the EU hadn't approved the virus yet? Such
| comments only serve to make UK citizens angry at the EU.
| the-dude wrote:
| > the EU hadn't approved the virus
|
| We are working on that!
| mrtksn wrote:
| UK had two variants until EU approves one!
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _EU claims there are no best effort clauses, which is why
| they asked AZ to make this public. We 'll find out_
|
| Best Reasonable Efforts are defined on page 3 of this post.
|
| "The activities and degree of effort that a company of a
| similar size and with similarly-sized infrastructure and
| similar resources as AstraZeneca would undertake or use in
| the development and manufacture of a Vaccine..."
|
| Couple problems:
|
| - "Development and manufacture" doesn't include
| distribution.
|
| - AstraZeneca has practically zero track record in
| vaccines. "Similar resources" is a potential out.
| [deleted]
| noncoml wrote:
| I don't think I implied that UK is in fault, or that EU is in
| the right here.
|
| The problem, in my opinion, is with the way the report it,
| the time they spend on it and the demonization of the EU.
|
| Even if EU is 100% in the wrong, do they need to spend half
| their air-time covering a dispute between AstraZeneca and the
| EU, arguing how the EU is unreasonable and pretty much the
| monster that tries to steal the vaccines from the UK people?
|
| My disappointment is the with the division, polarization and
| demonization of the EU they are promoting.
|
| After listening to that rhetoric with my (British) wife for
| 10 minutes straight, I heard heard saying "yeah, fuck these
| EU assholes".
| mike-cardwell wrote:
| That's how you get eyeballs.
| adimitrov wrote:
| The BBC is publicly funded. The entire idea behind
| publicly funded news and broadcast is that they shouldn't
| care about eyeballs, singe they don't need and money.
| mike-cardwell wrote:
| The BBC is staffed by humans. Humans who want their
| programming to be popular and watched widely. If people
| stopped watching BBC news, you better believe they'd make
| changes to reverse that, whatever it takes. Their
| incentives are just different.
| barrkel wrote:
| The best effort relates to _setting up_ the manufacturing of
| the vaccine, not distributing it. See e.g.
| https://davidallengreen.com/2021/01/what-can-be-worked-
| out-a...
|
| There's no doubt the UK has been nimble and reasonably
| effective on the vaccine front (as we all know, the EU is a
| very mixed bag by construction); just as well since it has
| been dreadful on the mortality front. The UK commentariat is
| a little bit shocked, but it is to be expected - it's out of
| the club. There will be more consequences later.
|
| I, for one, am leaving the UK with my family.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Distribution is critical. AZ is only responsible for the
| deliveries to the national hubs. After that, it's up to the
| memeber staes. The contract is extremely thin on
| distribution, generally on supply chain and logistics.
| These two parts being the most critical aspects, after
| develpment and certification, makes this lack of details a
| real problem.
| alibarber wrote:
| But surely the EU hasn't exactly covered itself in glory here?
|
| They, factually, objectively, _were_ later in signing an
| agreement, and have taken longer to approve a vaccine in use
| elsewhere in the world. Why should they not share some blame
| from their citizens like any other politician should? The UK
| government deserves scorn for their handling of the pandemic in
| the UK. The EU should be criticised for this. It is not a
| football match. We do not need to 'support' one 'side' against
| the other.
| alibarber wrote:
| Instead of downvoting - please do tell me what is offensive,
| or how you feel this does not add to the discussion. Or at
| least do both.
| GizmoSwan wrote:
| There is/was issues with submitted vaccine data. Technically
| it wouldn't have been approved in normal times till they
| could get better proven data.
|
| Now it is all water under the bridge because countries are
| desperate to have enough vaccines.
|
| 6 months from now, all countries are going to pretend to be
| nice nice and when there will be oversupply and new variant
| of the COVID, they will be dumping the old vaccines on other
| countries.
| gutnor wrote:
| That was the same in the Touring Visa that for a while was "The
| EU refused" and it became just the opposite a few weeks later.
|
| But that's the story of Brexit and its 40 years of media
| support. Even the BBC has often been on the technically correct
| side happily reporting welcome change as "UK change" and
| blaming unwelcome on the EU, even if the UK voted for it.
| calpaterson wrote:
| Those are the simple facts and they are pretty operative:
|
| - The UK signed months before
|
| - The EU has been slow to vaccinate independent of that AZ
| dispute
|
| - The EMA did only approve this vaccine (which the UK is
| already using) a few hours ago
|
| This dispute has sadly been made into a hugely sensitive
| national dispute as a distraction from the poor performance of
| the EU's vaccination programme. Even if nothing had gone wrong
| with the AZ vaccine production, the EU still would have much
| poorer rollout than the UK. It's just a cover of jingoism.
| agd wrote:
| Not sure why you've been downvoted. It seems very clear that
| the commission is whipping up a political storm here to
| deflect from the fact it's done a bad job with vaccine
| procurement, which will cost thousands of European lives.
| calpaterson wrote:
| It takes a certain bravery to post any opinion that is
| critical of the EU on HN. Always a danger to your karma :)
| hef19898 wrote:
| I don't see procurement as the main issue. The EU ordered
| around 2.3 billion doses, for 450 million inhabitants.
| Quantity wise, that's more than enough.
|
| They did screw up distrbution so, royaly. And with
| distribution being the responsbility of the member states,
| well go figure. This contract has its defiencies, I really
| hate it that there are n consequences when delivery
| schedules aren't met. And how delivery schedules will be
| defined.
| agd wrote:
| It wasn't the total quantity that was the problem. It was
| the timing. It's no use having hundreds of millions of
| doses if they aren't available until Q4.
| hef19898 wrote:
| nd everybody is having issues with supply, regardless of
| when contracts were signed. AZ has issues, Moderna has
| issues, Pfizer has issues. Instead of playing a blame
| game, I would have argely preferred to see a coordinated
| effort of getting the ordered doses earlier, and have
| deliveries coordinated with vaccination campaines. We
| have neither, and at least in germany I doubt we have
| anything like a planned vaccination campaig. None of
| which can be blamed on the suppliers or the EU.
|
| And none of the urrent discussion are helpfull in solving
| any of these issues.
| GizmoSwan wrote:
| Every country is for itself when shit hits ceiling, that is my
| conclusion. Territorial dogma took over with PPP and
| respirators too.
|
| Now the Swiss and Brits are not part of EU and their own
| interest supersedes their alliance with EU obviously.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| Nitpicking but the phrase is "shit hits the fan" i.e. it
| would go everywhere
|
| Shit hitting the ceiling wouldn't be that dramatic in
| comparison :)
| GizmoSwan wrote:
| LOL yup...
| kcartlidge wrote:
| I'm British. I do however believe we should vaccinate the most
| at risk groups, then be more generous with the UK production
| facilities for the EU's more at risk groups whilst slowing down
| our efforts for our own less at risk ones (which includes me).
| It's the humane thing to do.
|
| That said, my sympathy for the EU (as an opponent of Brexit)
| has been diminished by their attempted bullying behaviour.
|
| They initially wanted the UK in on their EU procurement. Unlike
| the EU members of the grouping we were to be excluded from any
| say in the vaccines chosen, the quantities, the pricing, the
| manufacturing, and the distribution. No say on anything; take
| what you're given. They left us with no choice but to do our
| own deals.
|
| We did those deals faster and with less guarantees at that
| early stage, fronted virtually the whole cost of the
| AstraZeneca UK production, accepted liability rather than
| insisting (as per the EU) that the vaccine makers did, and paid
| much more, just to get a faster agreement (and we still had the
| same teething issues the EU are facing now; we weren't special
| in that regard). Despite all that risk, up front cost, higher
| prices, and accepted liability, the EU is now demanding that
| the instant they approve the vaccine they can dip into the
| supply that has cost the UK far more than most people realise
| we gave up in order to get that swift delivery.
|
| The EU stumbled by not realising the urgency last year, then
| stumbled again by badly insulting the UK with the EU
| procurement "offer" terms which forced us to negotiate
| separately.
|
| I have a great amount of sympathy for the EU people (I may not
| be in the EU any more, but I'm still European) but none of this
| is the doing of the UK - who are simply carrying on using the
| vaccines delivered - and the first 'shot' at actual vaccine
| nationalism has been fired not by the mad brexiteers but by the
| EU with their Northern Ireland border statements and not-
| export-control-really new 'monitoring' and 'agreement'
| position.
|
| I really expected coming into this year to find myself part of
| a massive UK villain state facing a more reasonable EU. I
| didn't foresee a desparate EU attacking a UK just going about
| it's own business.
| paganel wrote:
| > That said, my sympathy for the EU (as an opponent of
| Brexit) has been diminished by their attempted bullying
| behaviour.
|
| I'm a EU citizen and I'm with you on this one. Also, I now
| realise (meaning after Brexit has been actually put in place)
| that the officials in Bruxelles could have been more
| forthcoming towards us, the remaining EU citizens, about how
| UK's exit will effect us. All I was hearing were things like
| "those dastardly British, they'll pay for it!" while now one
| cannot receive a package from a relative or close friend in
| the UK without being flooded with customs forms to fill, to
| say nothing of the extra money one has to pay for the
| privilege.
| senko wrote:
| As a EU citizen, I agree with your assessment completely.
|
| The EU bungled this and it would not be fair if we were to
| bully our way out of it.
|
| It's sad to see this being a zero sum game, and no way you
| cut it people are going to suffer (already are) somewhere.
|
| I was expecting a bit more decency on our side. Shattered
| superiority complex after Brits mismanaged Brexit, maybe?
|
| Our lack of coordination and flailing in this regard is
| equally impressive.
| noncoml wrote:
| On the other hand I am a EU citizen married to UK citizen,
| living in the US, so my skin in the game is mainly emotional.
|
| I am not saying EU was/is always right, as they don't seem to
| be right in this case, but I was just hoping that BBC would
| be more subtle about it. I am totally fine with
| UK/AstraZeneca pushing back hard.
|
| Just don't see the need for BBC to turn it to a "us vs them"
| thing. I think I am still living in denial in regards to
| Brexit. I guess I will have to get used to it.
| pasabagi wrote:
| It's hard to overstate how tight the british establishment is,
| media included. It's a small country, and power is concentrated
| in a vanishingly small number of hands, many of whom are
| married, or went to school together, or are close friends.
|
| This is why when britain passed 100,000 coronavirus deaths,
| with the worst death rate in the world, nobody resigned, and
| nobody called for anybody to resign.
|
| The BBC is part of this kind of tight, teflon kernel that's at
| the heart of why the UK is such a dysfunctional country these
| days.
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| Very relevant "Yes, Minister";
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9tzoGFszog
| subsubzero wrote:
| > It's a small country, and power is concentrated in a
| vanishingly small number of hands
|
| This is very true, I chatted at length with my neighbor who
| lived his entire life in the UK(up to a few years ago) and
| was shocked how stratified the society is. Basically there is
| small group of people(who went to Eton, are lords or
| knighted, from famous families) that form a clique that runs
| everything in the country. No matter how much money you make
| or how successful you are, you can never join that circle.
|
| An example was told to me that even David Beckham (famous
| soccer star) is looked down upon by that segment and does not
| associate with them and could never join that part of
| society.
| mattmanser wrote:
| Err, same in America man. Bushes? Father and son were the
| president. Kennedys? Brothers were almost presidents, one
| was a President, the other governor. Clintons? Spouses were
| almost presidents! If that's not cliquey I don't know what
| is.
|
| Your mate is also massively over-egging how bad it is,
| there is still an Eton clique (the present/last government
| being a good example), but we've had a range of recent
| prime minister's educated normally, outside of the Eton
| clique. Brown, Blair, even Thatcher just went to a Grammar
| school (generally a better school you have to pass exams to
| qualify for, which is semi-meritocratic, though gamed by
| the rich)
|
| Our election system is even worse than America's though so
| we keep getting conservative governments who win 40-45% of
| the popular vote but somehow get landslide majorities.
|
| Also, what do you mean by "small", it's got 70 million
| inhabitants. At worst a country with a population of a size
| of France and Germany might be called "medium".
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > who win 40-45% of the popular vote but somehow get
| landslide majorities
|
| In a system with four major parties, 43% _is_ an
| absolutely huge popular landslide. How can you describe
| it as anything else? Ten percentage points above their
| nearest rival? How much more of a majority do you think
| it could possibly be?
| lou1306 wrote:
| But at least the US has a pretty sognificant percentage
| of people that reach the upper echelon of society from
| basically nothing (Obama, RBG, Biden). And the dinasties
| you mention are what, 50 years old? In the UK it seems
| that the ruling circle has been at the wheel literally
| for centuries.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The people who really control things in the US aren't
| politicians. That is way beneath the scions of multi-
| generational wealth. Even T* isn't in their club.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| If anybody thinks they are really in control of things
| they are highly arrogant and out of touch at best or an
| outright delusional at worst. Especially when it comes to
| the US. Where even the overly rigid minutae obsessed
| military take pride in being considered unpredictable
| madmen who don't even pay attention to their own
| doctrines consistently and are at home in chaos. The
| people of the US aren't even consistently individualistic
| and would make herding cats look easy - you can get them
| to follow you with a tin of tuna.
|
| There isn't "the" Man. Why would there be when even
| positions of petty power are contested for so tightly and
| dirtily and there are so many striving to rise?
| Consequences are not a strong deterrent - if they were
| the world would look very different.
|
| Wealthy individuals may have power but nobody has control
| over the a process of contention across all layers with
| nominal goals served imperfectly with cargo-culting and
| skewed priorities.
|
| All of this and there is nothing inherently special about
| the people - human nature and control oppose each other.
| triceratops wrote:
| > we keep getting conservative governments who win 40-45%
| of the popular vote but somehow get landslide majorities.
|
| Can you explain more about this? Is the UK heavily
| gerrymandered?
|
| EDIT: It's an honest question. I don't know anything
| about UK politics, other than that it's a parliamentary
| constitutional monarchy.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Is the UK heavily gerrymandered?
|
| No it isn't gerrymandered. And if it is very slightly
| accidentally gerrymandered in some places, that works
| _against_ the Conservatives - Labour MPs often have
| smaller constituencies.
|
| So no that's not relevant or part of what is being talked
| about here.
|
| The reality is that 43% popular vote for a single party
| in a system with four major parties, 10 percentage points
| more than their nearest rival, _is_ nothing but an
| enormous popular vote landslide. The Conservatives are
| popular amongst broad sections of society, incomes,
| ethnicities, regions. All other parties serve limited
| niches so are fundamentally constrained.
|
| Why don't they form a coalition? Well I'm not sure they
| really have deeply shared values to do that.
| subsubzero wrote:
| I think the point I am getting at is there is a group of
| people that largely descends from the British aristocracy
| that is extremely cliquish and has a large majority of
| its members in positions of power.
|
| My neighbors wife knew Eddie Redmayne and his brother(I
| think both went to Eton) and although she said they were
| nice, they were in a totally different world and only
| really associated with people who also went to Eton/had
| large trustfunds. In England you would never see people
| like Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, Steve Jobs etc who came from
| middle class families move to the highest strata of
| society and be accepted by those in that highest strata.
|
| I am by no means bashing England, I think the country is
| awesome and have family that lives there, I am just not
| keen on the stratified nature of its society.
| hcho wrote:
| And yet British have James Dyson, Richard Branson and so
| on...
|
| Old money vs new miney strife is an age old thing and I
| can assure you none of the tech barons is rubbing
| shoulders with former barons let alone American gentry.
| pasabagi wrote:
| I said small country in the original post, because while
| I imagine the US has similar levels of dynastic cliquey
| stuff going on, it's a colossal nation, so it doesn't
| hurt so much.
|
| In the UK, I think Eton is more a symptom than a cause.
| The problem is, London is a world-class city that
| concentrates the entire political and financial
| establishment. It's also a city with very obvious
| parallel worlds, where if you move in certain circles,
| you meet the same people, so while it is a massive city,
| it sometimes feels quite small.
|
| To me, the worst part is not that both Johnson and
| Cameron went to the same school, the same university, or
| even the same exclusive dining club - the bad bit is that
| because any given person with political, social or
| economic power in the UK is so closely connected with any
| other, there's a real incentive not to rock the boat. You
| get an enormous amount of cohesion, because if you go
| around making enemies, you're ultimately making things
| awkward for a lot of your friends and acquaintances.
|
| On top of that, the fact most people in this world have
| similar backgrounds makes a lot of them 'on the same
| page' by default.
| krona wrote:
| David Beckham is looked down upon by 50% of society
| (conservative estimate.) The clique of which you speak
| doesn't seem very exclusive at all.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| As a (Swiss) American, I can't see the flaw in that logic. The
| UK signed first, is paying more and included a provision
| preventing the export of British-manufactured doses. The EU
| didn't. The EU also added a provision mandating AstraZeneca
| make no profit prior to 1 July 2021 (the end of the Pandemic
| Period), a counter-incentive to ramping up production.
|
| It's not fair. But neither is the UK and EU getting wildly more
| doses per capita than Africa, South America or Oceania.
| double-a wrote:
| I don't understand why there's a comparison with the UK
| vaccination program at play here. Your comment is precisely
| the type of incendiary fallacy that OP is accusing the BBC
| if.
|
| EU is claiming that AZ is breaching the contract it had with
| them. Whether they are in the right or not, what does the
| UK's relationship with AZ have to do with it?
| hef19898 wrote:
| INAL, but I'd say nothing. The contract includes the UK as
| part of the EU as far as manufacturing is concerned
| (paragraph 5.4). But kicking AZ already now with breach of
| contract is a bit wild. As is pushing false numbers
| regaridng efficiency of the vaccine for eople above 60 (or
| 65), as happened in Germany. Not quite a good way to
| motivate AZ to deliver, it rather makes it a legal question
| from the getgo. Which is, well, not good.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _I don 't understand why there's a comparison with the UK
| vaccination program at play here_
|
| Because the EU wants AstraZeneca to export doses made in
| Britain to the EU.
| odiroot wrote:
| In order to fulfil the provisions of the contract the
| company willingly signed, and not out of spite for
| Britain, as far as I'm aware.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _In order to fulfil the provisions of the contract the
| company willingly signed, and not out of spite for
| Britain_
|
| Correct. Just pointing out why Britain is relevant.
| double-a wrote:
| And has AstraZeneca claimed that this would cause them to
| fail on their commitments to the UK? Or are we presuming
| that because it benefits some other agenda?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _has AstraZeneca claimed that this would cause them to
| fail on their commitments to the UK?_
|
| I believe the UK has made the claim that they have
| exclusive contractual right to domestically-made vaccines
| until a certain point. Not sure if AstraZeneca
| corroborated.
| eyko wrote:
| > Not sure if AstraZeneca corroborated.
|
| Apparently so
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/26/head-of-
| astraz...
| kitd wrote:
| Tbf, I believe the "no profit" clause comes from Oxford
| university, the IP owner.
| radiator wrote:
| Why on Earth is it not fair that the UK and EU get more doses
| _of their own vaccines_ per capita than Africa, South America
| or Oceania?
|
| Why would they be obliged to export even one dose of
| something they produced, before they have provided for every
| single one of their citizens?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Why on Earth is it not fair that the UK and EU get more
| doses of their own vaccines per capita than Africa, South
| America or Oceania?_
|
| My point is fairness is in the eye of the beholder. What
| we're left with are contracts. And contractually,
| AstraZeneca seems to be in the right. The EU negotiated, at
| first glance (and to this non-expert), a poor agreement.
| Isinlor wrote:
| Under international trade agreements we (EU) can also
| stop exports of the vaccines as did UK in the contracts.
|
| Whatever the means, as long as they are legal, we can and
| should force equal burden of delays.
|
| I guess EU didn't play it the best way from political
| perspective, since we are now labeled as bad.
|
| Still, I'm personally impressed that EU is actually able
| to do something of consequence in somewhat short time
| frame.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _(EU) can also stop exports of the vaccines as did UK
| in the contracts_
|
| It's different--one is an executive action, the other
| contractual duty--but yes. Moreover, it doesn't solve the
| problem. The EU wants doses made in the UK. The EU doses
| have already been exported to the UK.
|
| This whole thing looks incompetent on the EU's part, from
| the outside. First, the delays in signing. Second, the
| sloppiness of the contract. And third, the incompetence
| of the post-problem situation. The EU has something
| Britain wants--a trade deal. Strike a deal with the UK to
| get their vaccines. Instead, we have a song and dance,
| empty threats and name calling.
| Silhouette wrote:
| _The EU has something Britain wants--a trade deal. Strike
| a deal with the UK to get their vaccines. Instead, we
| have a song and dance, empty threats and name calling._
|
| It's hard to imagine any such deal being countenanced by
| the UK government. It's clearly in the stronger position
| here, and after its response to the virus situation has
| had so many problems in most areas, the handling of the
| vaccine has so far been a rare but very welcome
| exception. It seems implausible the government would give
| up such a huge PR win and instead do something that would
| surely be represented as risking their citizens' lives or
| worse, even in the already extremely unlikely event that
| the EU offered a much better deal than the one just
| concluded after years of negotiations.
|
| As long as government ministers can confidently confirm
| that they believe the UK/AZ agreement is solid and enough
| doses will be available to meet the schedule the
| government has stated, they can try to maintain a
| dignified silence on the EU/AZ situation and let it be
| seen as a dispute over a contract to which the UK is not
| a party. They have little to gain by getting involved and
| much to lose.
| adimitrov wrote:
| Because we're humans and not profit-seeking self serving
| automatons. Or at least I aspire to not be one
|
| If there is suffering, and if we can, we ease the
| suffering. The US and EU have bought way more vaccine doses
| than they need.
|
| It even makes sense from a utilitarian perspective, as we
| live in a global market economy.
|
| Since when did people become so nationalistic again? We're
| humans, first and foremost.
| kcartlidge wrote:
| Agree entirely.
|
| However this is not about how many vaccines have been
| _bought_ , but how many are being _delivered_ via current
| production. The US, EU, UK, etc have indeed bought more
| than they needed, but they won 't (by definition) be
| using more than they needed - the extra purchases were
| due to spreading the production and vaccine approval risk
| to ensure that _enough_ were available.
|
| You could reasonably argue they shouldn't be vaccinating
| whole populations, by which I mean including low-risk
| elements, whilst poorer countries cannot vaccinate even
| high-risk ones. That's a different question though.
| hef19898 wrote:
| The EU purchased around 5 doses per inhabitant, including
| children (from all suppliers). With the explicit goal to
| share these doses with other states. I like that idea a
| lot.
|
| That being said, none of the short term measures curently
| being discussed, will help getting any doses earlier. And
| the total amount ordered is more than enough.
| eyko wrote:
| I'd reckon because a private company is getting paid to
| manufacture and sell the vaccines, at "Cost of Goods"
| initially, then at a profit after an agreed period, in
| exchange for funding and, eventually more profits. These
| are pre-orders for a vaccine, and the contract has a
| section on how it will be funded. AstraZeneca is under no
| obligation to not do business with anyone else (provided
| they can meet their contractual obligations).
|
| If the both the UK and the EU wanted a million doses each
| and AZ has the capacity to manufacture 5 million, then
| nothing stops them from entering into other agreements with
| countries in Africa, South America, or Oceania.
|
| They probably overestimated their capacity and are now
| pushing back on deadlines. I don't have much to criticise
| AZ for on that since we've all been there, but you can't
| tell a paying customer that you have other customers that
| paid you first, when you signed a contract agreeing to
| meeting certain deadlines. It simply does not matter. Did
| AstraZeneca lie in their negotiations regarding their
| capacity? Let's also remember that this was likely brought
| up when discussing the funding for manufacturing sites in
| Europe and the UK.
| oli5679 wrote:
| The capacity to manufacture it in UK was developed by a UK
| government grant that was issued in May and a UK government
| order that was issued soon after. It is being produced at cost
| by AstraZeneca. The UK acted quickly, realising that each week
| of lockdown costs a similar amount to their entire vaccine
| expenditure. They got scientific advice and backed a range of
| different technologies.
|
| Meanwhile the EU acted bureaucratically and treated this like a
| procurement exercise, squabbling about spending and placing
| orders in December. It is now scapegoating andsuing a company
| that is producing the vaccine at cost.
|
| GSK has every inventive to scale up capacity and produce as
| many doses as possible, and has no profit motive to divert
| doses. It is simply abiding by its agreement with the UK to use
| UK funded capacity to supply the country first, whilst making
| best efforts to iron out kinks for European orders.
|
| https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-coronavirus-vaccine-s...
| NiceWayToDoIT wrote:
| > "Uncensored"
|
| So what are those black out parts?
|
| Maybe just partly "uncensored"
| arendtio wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25960718
| zoobab wrote:
| See https://twitter.com/VrlPlt/status/1355219237745405954
| beefield wrote:
| EU:You've... you've got a nice IP protection here, AstraZeneca
|
| AstraZeneca: Yes.
|
| EU: We wouldn't want anything to happen to it.
|
| AstraZeneca: What?
|
| Germany: No, what EU means is it would be a shame if...
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| There's a lot of controversy and arguments on this at the moment,
| a lot of it is political with a good dose of Brexit added in.
|
| So to stir towards more positive aspects:
|
| AstraZeneca, which are between a rock and a hard place here, has
| agreed to supply the EU at cost. I don't know if it's their
| global policy, I hope it is, but they should be commended for
| that. That's _not_ what all suppliers of Covid vaccines do.
|
| More generally regarding the Covid vaccines: I find quite
| extraordinary that less than 12 months after Covid-19 was first
| analysed we have _several_ vaccines available and we also have
| the capacity to produce hundreds of millions of doses. Science +
| technology + capitalism is a hugely potent combination (ok, sorry
| that last sentence may seem political but this is what drove the
| development of these large scale production technologies).
|
| Edit:
|
| It looks like I may need to clarify my mentioning capitalism. I
| was referring to production capability.
|
| _Private_ companies (not only in biotech, in every industry)
| have developed extremely effective and efficient ways to produce
| huge quantities of whatever they produce because driving down
| costs and increasing efficiency and quantities is how you
| increase profit. This is why we can now produce so many doses of
| Covid vaccines quickly and at relatively low cost.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| > AstraZeneca, which are between a rock and a hard place here,
| has agreed to supply the EU at cost
|
| For the sake of completeness AstraZeneca have agreed to supply
| _all_ markets at cost, not just EU.
|
| This was part of their contractual obligation with Oxford
| University.
|
| The vaccine was developed with Oxford Uni funding, AstraZeneca
| signed an agreement to mass manufacture under the condition
| that it would be sold worldwide without a profit margin.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Thanks for giving details and to make clear that this is
| their global policy. They should indeed be commended for
| that.
| addicted wrote:
| Oxford University should be commended for that.
|
| We would all have been better off of Oxford had partnered
| with someone with more experience that hadn't already
| messed up: 1) The scientific trials 2) Manufacturing the
| vaccine 3) The legal agreements they signed with various
| governments.
|
| Moderna, for example, has also fallen behind on their
| supplies but they signed sensible contracts (and followed
| sensible policies) and don't have governments hounding them
| for more supplies.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| > _Oxford University should be commended for that._
|
| If you go that way it depends on the terms of the deal
| and how much AstraZeneca is paying them. But yes, good on
| them for making that demand.
|
| AstraZeneca, a private commercial company, has agreed to
| produce a vaccine at cost in huge volumes and they should
| be commended for it in any case. As I said, not all Covid
| vaccines are produced at cost, some of them are even sold
| at, I suspect, eye watering margins.
| soperj wrote:
| Thanks for this, makes it much clearer. I do wonder though if
| there will be any Hollywood creative accounting there with
| the "no profit margin".
| [deleted]
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > Science + technology + capitalism is a hugely potent
| combination
|
| Wait till you see what science + technology - capitalism can
| achieve!
|
| But more seriously, we're also seeing the problems of
| capitalism here. Apart from the problems with its price,
| especially for the third world, I also think it's important to
| realize that the main motivation for vaccine skepticism is
| capitalism and the bad incentives it creates for companies.
| People understand that it's in any of these companies' best
| interest to lie about effectiveness and safety of these
| vaccines, and that they have more than enough money to hide any
| potential wrong doing for a long time.
|
| I am NOT an anti-vaxxer. I take flu shots every year, and I
| will get this vaccine as well as soon as I am offered the
| chance (I'm neither at risk nor working in a crucial industry).
| But the pharmaceutical industry deserves its reputation to some
| extent, and it is mostly capitalism's fault that we have these
| huge behemoths that can act with impunity.
| tomcam wrote:
| A sincere question here. There may be many positive answers
| that I don't know about. Which non-capitalist ventures have
| done as good a job as capitalist ones at creating drugs?
| itronitron wrote:
| besides religion?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The best examples would be many vaccines - the polio
| vaccine, the flu vaccine, the BCG vaccine for TB, the
| rabies vaccine , the measles vaccine (not the modern MMR -
| which was created at Merck - but the older measles-only
| vaccine) and others. Paracetamol/acetaminophen is a very
| common drug that was also developed in a University
| setting.
|
| The Pasteur Institute in France is a major source of non-
| corporate medical research, at least historically. There
| are similar institutes in many countries which produce both
| research and actually manufacture drugs to be used in
| public health campaigns directly.
| tomcam wrote:
| With respect, those are all half a century ago. Corporate
| pharmaceutical companies are treating out hundreds of new
| solutions a year. Again, I feel that system is fairly
| corrupt and mismanaged. I'm not trying to defend it. But
| practically speaking it seems to be doing an immensely
| better job these days than government sectors.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Yes, but that is by design - the state has retreated or
| stagnated in this space, preferring to let companies
| drive research and reap profits. We can't then be
| surprised that the companies are out-competing the state.
|
| Not to mention that one example I forgot about is exactly
| the Oxford/AZ vaccine - the vaccine itself was developed
| by a (private, true) university, not a pharmaceutical
| company.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| There's no capitalism going on here. I have parents over 70
| in the EU, I would gladly pay $5000 per person to get them
| vaccinated with an mRNA vaccine (Pfeiser or Moderna), but
| people under 60 are being vaccinated in Israel right now for
| free.
|
| Vaccination right now is completely political, governments
| took over control instead of just regulating safety and
| efficiency of the vaccines.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| There is no market for the vaccine at the consumer level,
| but the vaccine is still bought and sold in a capitalist
| market, with states as buyers. Governments that could
| afford this have done what they can for their populations,
| that's great, but many countries were unable to access the
| initial doses and are not allowed to manufacture the
| vaccine themselves.
|
| The situation has improved since the beginning of the year,
| and some companies are better than others at supporting
| public health.
| maxerickson wrote:
| How do you make a vaccine that doesn't have a price?
|
| It's going to require resources no matter what, and the $5 to
| $10 that the AstraZeneca and J&J vaccines are estimated at is
| a pretty good value.
|
| (for instance, the US could buy vaccine for the entire globe
| and not worry about the cost)
| tsimionescu wrote:
| You create the formula and make it public so that it can be
| produced easily. Then, many manufacturers, ranging from
| generic drug manufacturers to public health institutes can
| produce the drug at cost, even in third world countries.
| maxerickson wrote:
| It's a complex product (the AstraZeneca vaccine is a
| virus that stimulates the body to produce a protein that
| is present on SARS-CoV2). Maybe sharing the IP more
| widely would have been the better thing to do, but it
| wouldn't have resulted in it being 'produced easily'.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| True, 'produced easily' was an overstatement. Still, I
| doubt AZ is the only company with the know-how and
| equipment required to produce such a vaccine (and it's
| also likely that some of the know-how is itself a
| protected secret or patent of AZ, which just throws the
| ball further down the line).
| tomatocracy wrote:
| As I understand it, their policy is to supply developed markets
| at cost until the pandemic is over (whatever that means) and
| developing markets at cost in perpetuity.
| hef19898 wrote:
| The pandemic could e over on July 1st 2021, according to the
| contract. No idea how that is actually defined, I would hve
| expected some stipulations around the WHo delaring it or
| something.
|
| Fun fact, epidemics are included as force majeur events. And
| the Force Majeur paragraph is a carbon copy from the last
| fulfillment contract I read.
| ajvarparadise_ wrote:
| Sorry for asking, is there a tldr: ?
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