[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

Indeed. But the EU's approach to this opportunity has been entirely belligerent and hostile. And in public at that. That kind of behaviour needs to be rebuffed, imo.

Had the EU come to the UK and quietly asked if we could help them out, then I would have expected a an accommodation with 'our European friends".

However, Macron and Merkel publicly trashed AZ vaccine to the extent that there is major public resistance to that vaccine.

The above said, I'm sure that the UK government will offer something to the EU, which they don't deserve.

In relation to the above, an interesting article appeared in yesterday's Torygraph, written by Charles Moore. The thrust of the article is:

1. We have enough AZ vaccine to meet our 2nd dose needs;

2. We are vulnerable to EU action on 2nd dose Pfizer needs;

3. The UK should bail the EU out as there will be returns for us.

The European Union wants to grab supplies of the AstraZeneca vaccine, including those from the Halix factory in Leyden, Holland. This is particularly rich, since Halix’s production success owes much to a team sent over at Christmas by Kate Bingham’s Vaccine Task Force. The company was lagging behind the production of the same vaccine in Oxford. It needed our help to achieve the necessary scale by installing 1,000-litre bio-reactors.

Britain was able to step in because it was about five months ahead of EU plans for vaccine deployment. Its assistance was good both for this country and for the EU. This is part of the context in which the EU, so desperate to avoid blame for its own sloth and maladministration, now threatens to break contracts and deprive Britain of vaccines coming out of Halix and other continental suppliers.

Almost everyone here agrees that the EU’s behaviour is disgraceful, and that Britain is within its rights. Even inside the EU, public opinion is dismayed. How best, though, to react?

I would tentatively suggest that this country is in a position to be super-nice. We are way ahead of Europe, and we already have enough AstraZeneca vaccine to administer the second doses we need. In the slightly longer term, everything seems to be on track for our plentiful supply of Novovax (60 million doses) and Valdema. So long as Europe sticks by its promise to deliver the second doses of Pfizer-BioNTech our vulnerable need, we should consider helping.

Obviously, it is our absolute duty to vaccinate all vulnerable British residents first; but if that duty is discharged, is it essential that we rush forward at the same pace to vaccinate everyone else? We already have enough to cover “priority groupings” 1 to 9. The drive to get every 25-year-old vaccinated by the summer is good propaganda but will have little impact on death and infection rates if our vulnerable are already safe.

There is a moral case for helping the EU. Britain has the capacity to help rescue millions of elderly on the Continent and thus prevent thousands of deaths by offering some of its own vaccines.

There is an economic case, too. Even when we become well protected here – a day which is not far off – we shall not be able to recover economic normality if our neighbours continue to be locked down. We could free Europe from that curse. If it can be done, it will be the best lead we have given to Europe since 1945.