Current Affairs EU In or Out

In or Out

  • In

    Votes: 688 67.9%

  • Out

    Votes: 325 32.1%
  • Total voters
    1,013
Status
Not open for further replies.
Neiler said:
You are entitled to your opinion mate, i dont share it, nor the white knitieng that goes on about AZ as a company. The Oxford team are a great bunch i can tell you, but AZ, poor company.

Look, its a well known thing in circles. That Merek one of the biggest drug/vaccine manufacturing company's in the world struck a deal with Oxford on the right aultiristic reasons similar to the mindset of Oxford team, that deal was vetoed by the British government to ensure prepherential treatment and control of a domestic supply chain, Oxford were then funneled in to AZ as the Uk Governments preferred partner. The whole process is murky and self interested, the job of work was always certainly always to big for AZ and many peoples health and lives were impacted as a result.

What started out as an aulteristic concept, has morphed now into self interest, vaccine battles, duplicitous contract arrangements and subsequent health impact around the world.

The Oxford vaccine is a great vaccine, but AZ are a poor company and partner and are only involved due to political self interests.
Click to expand...
You can think what you want.

The simple truth is that only one vaccine and one manufacturer in the world is producing a vaccine at cost. Not just to ourselves but to the rest of the world too (if they want). Every other manufacturer is cashing in on this and countries like the USA and organisations like the EU are stopping exports for self serving reasons.

It's all there in black and white. No white knighting required.

As regards the highlighted part of your post, it didn't take much investigation to put a bit more meat on the bones. Firstly, John Bell, the Regius chair of medicine at Oxford University, was tasked with finding a manufacturing partner for the Oxford vaccine. The senior scientist at Merck just happened to be an old friend and colleague of his, and a deal was proposed in which Oxford University would receive 1% royalties. This "altruistic" agreement, as you put it, was actually far from the non-profit making deal that Oxford ultimately put together with AZ, and it was actually the scientists involved in the development of the vaccine that feared it would go against the Oxford mantra, which was to provide a vaccine which could be rolled out worldwide at little cost. They believed Merck would not deliver this and that Bell had been trying to turn a profit for the University. It was actually the scientists that referred this to the government, who had funded the vaccine research. The government were concerned at the contract going to a US company and feared that the Trump administration would stop the export of vaccines to the UK. At that stage it was one of only a couple of vaccines that had started advanced human testing, and wanted to maintain more control over where the vaccine was produced. Given what's now happened with the less inward thinking Biden administration, I believe it showed a lot of foresight, which is not something you normally associate with UK government departments.

Anyway, the upshot was that Bell was asked to find other suitors for the vaccine. They approached Investment Bankers in this regard who, armed with Oxfords list of requirements, set up the meeting with AZ. They agreed a proper "altruistic" agreement that confirmed at cost worldwide provision of the vaccine during the pandemic, and continuing at cost vaccines to poorer countries thereafter. Richer countries would have to pay full price post pandemic, from which Oxford would receive 6% royalties.

Nothing in there that sounds dodgy to me mate. If anything it's the Merck deal that was the dodgy one. My source for that was the Wall Street Journal by the way. Is that another one of your right wing media outlets that you don't take any notice of?
 
Bruce Wayne said:
The problem is that Johnson and his mob have wrapped everything about the project in the Union flag so it's tantamount to treason to say they've messed up in anyway, and a diplomatic incident if any other government expresses reservations about them. As @Neiler says, the vaccine development done by the Oxford team has been fantastic, but AZs job in the partnership has been to help with trials, get it licensed, and manufacture it at scale. You could make a reasonable argument for all three aspects having encountered major issues.

People have been critical because the trials didn't have suitable participants, whether Americans for the Americans or the elderly for the Europeans. That rests with AZ. They hadn't submitted an application to the EMA until the new year, and to America until January. That was after both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Again, that's down to AZ.

Lastly, despite receiving several hundred million Euros to build a manufacturing capability in Europe, they've clearly failed to do so adequately. We can't say that's down to their altruism with the vaccine because the capacity building has pretty much been bankrolled by the EU in Europe and by the UK government here. It's their job to use their expertise in drug manufacturing to do so smoothly, and it's been anything but.

I quite agree with you btw about it being shameful that Pfizer and Moderna aren't working with COVAX to ensure the whole world gets vaccinated, and it is wrong for them to be profiting from what is a global crisis. No doubts about that from me. We can be critical of them for that while also being critical of AZ for failing in other aspects, surely?
Click to expand...

I do not share your criticism of AZ, and no it’s not because it’s a British/Swedish company. I think they have done amazingly well to get the whole thing up and running in the U.K. and elsewhere in such a short space of time. Many others still haven‘t even reached the point of manufacture yet. I think the political, and they are political, attacks upon it as a company and on the vaccine have been nothing short of scandalous. I’m just amazed that the AZ CEO has been able to bite his tongue through all this and not offer to rip up the EU contract and return their money.....
 
Neiler said:
You are entitled to your opinion mate, i dont share it, nor the white knitieng that goes on about AZ as a company. The Oxford team are a great bunch i can tell you, but AZ, poor company.

Look, its a well known thing in circles. That Merek one of the biggest drug/vaccine manufacturing company's in the world struck a deal with Oxford on the right aultiristic reasons similar to the mindset of Oxford team, that deal was vetoed by the British government to ensure prepherential treatment and control of a domestic supply chain, Oxford were then funneled in to AZ as the Uk Governments preferred partner. The whole process is murky and self interested, the job of work was always certainly always to big for AZ and many peoples health and lives were impacted as a result.

What started out as an aulteristic concept, has morphed now into self interest, vaccine battles, duplicitous contract arrangements and subsequent health impact around the world.

The Oxford vaccine is a great vaccine, but AZ are a poor company and partner and are only involved due to political self interests.
Click to expand...
So you’re slagging off a company whose scientists are working their arses off trying to save the world? Well done.
 
Bruce Wayne said:
The problem is that Johnson and his mob have wrapped everything about the project in the Union flag so it's tantamount to treason to say they've messed up in anyway, and a diplomatic incident if any other government expresses reservations about them. As @Neiler says, the vaccine development done by the Oxford team has been fantastic, but AZs job in the partnership has been to help with trials, get it licensed, and manufacture it at scale. You could make a reasonable argument for all three aspects having encountered major issues.

People have been critical because the trials didn't have suitable participants, whether Americans for the Americans or the elderly for the Europeans. That rests with AZ. They hadn't submitted an application to the EMA until the new year, and to America until January. That was after both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Again, that's down to AZ.

Lastly, despite receiving several hundred million Euros to build a manufacturing capability in Europe, they've clearly failed to do so adequately. We can't say that's down to their altruism with the vaccine because the capacity building has pretty much been bankrolled by the EU in Europe and by the UK government here. It's their job to use their expertise in drug manufacturing to do so smoothly, and it's been anything but.

I quite agree with you btw about it being shameful that Pfizer and Moderna aren't working with COVAX to ensure the whole world gets vaccinated, and it is wrong for them to be profiting from what is a global crisis. No doubts about that from me. We can be critical of them for that while also being critical of AZ for failing in other aspects, surely?
Click to expand...
I'm not saying that they haven't had issues. It's clear that they have and I've said as much in previous posts in the covid thread. But it's the "only affecting the EU" mantra being driven by some on here, and that the UK government is somehow instrumental in this that I don't get. These agreements were made last spring. the UK were supposed to get 30m by September last year. It's 6 months later and we still haven't had that many. I don't know what the reason is, whether it's production, packaging, lack of raw material. Plus, maybe some of these partners who are not fully operational have decided to turn less of their production over to a non profit making enterprise. Who knows?

But my main point was that, irrespective of that shortfalls, the company is just not getting any credit whatsoever for the fact they are doing this at cost. In fact it's the opposite, they are getting slaughtered whilst all of their competitors are profiteering from it and nobody is saying a word.
 
peteblue said:
I do not share your criticism of AZ, and no it’s not because it’s a British/Swedish company. I think they have done amazingly well to get the whole thing up and running in the U.K. and elsewhere in such a short space of time. Many others still haven‘t even reached the point of manufacture yet. I think the political, and they are political, attacks upon it as a company and on the vaccine have been nothing short of scandalous. I’m just amazed that the AZ CEO has been able to bite his tongue through all this and not offer to rip up the EU contract and return their money.....
Click to expand...

As I said above, Johnson et al have so politicized their entire effort that it's impossible to say anything negative towards what AZ have achieved to date without being viewed as unpatriotic or some other nonsense. I don't doubt whatsoever that the work done by the Oxford team in developing the vaccine has been first-rate, but when a company promises 100 million doses in Q1 and then revise that downwards by 60% I'm not sure how that can be viewed as anything but a massive balls up. They were the ones who promised that figure. No one put a gun to their head, and they would have known the challenges involved in doing so.

Cool_Blue said:
So you’re slagging off a company whose scientists are working their arses off trying to save the world? Well done.
Click to expand...

I've no doubt whatsoever that the UK government has been working their arses off throughout the pandemic as well. Are they also above reproach?

Barnfred 55 said:
I'm not saying that they haven't had issues. It's clear that they have and I've said as much in previous posts in the covid thread. But it's the "only affecting the EU" mantra being driven by some on here, and that the UK government is somehow instrumental in this that I don't get. These agreements were made last spring. the UK were supposed to get 30m by September last year. It's 6 months later and we still haven't had that many. I don't know what the reason is, whether it's production, packaging, lack of raw material. Plus, maybe some of these partners who are not fully operational have decided to turn less of their production over to a non profit making enterprise. Who knows?

But my main point was that, irrespective of that shortfalls, the company is just not getting any credit whatsoever for the fact they are doing this at cost. In fact it's the opposite, they are getting slaughtered whilst all of their competitors are profiteering from it and nobody is saying a word.
Click to expand...

That they're doing this at cost is great, and hopefully when the J&J vaccine comes on board we can start redressing the awful situation that is seeing the developed world hoarding vaccines for themselves while the developing world are left to rot. It's appalling and a stain on all concerned. Sadly, there seems to be a prevailing spirit of "I'm alright Jack" and sod everyone else, which is not good to see.
 
roydo said:
Blimey. Have to hope that was a short term reaction to Month #1.
Click to expand...

It was January, the French were playing silly buggers at the border, companies were still trying to get paperwork sorted, everyone had already stocked up expecting it, all the restaurants were closed with Covid....let’s see the next set of numbers.....
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Welcome

Join the Everton conversation today.
Fewer ads, full access, completely free.

→ Log in 🔑 Register
🛒 Visit Shop

Support Grand Old Team by checking out our latest Everton gear!
Back
Top