Politics Coronavirus

[Raven]

Pascal dodged the question about the contracts.

To be fair, the contracts are now open for anyone to see, seeing as they were released in their entirety in error. He doesn't really need to answer anything. The EU have done fucked up (sic). They need to bring back Juncker, at least he had alcoholism to blame.

 

[Yoni]

There is no fancy report I can find quickly but there are the weekly statistics here.

244 people have died in Sweden between the ages of 50-59 - Swedish CV Statistics updated today
10,136, 203 is the current population - Sweden Population (2021) - Worldometer
2.4 per 100k in that age group

The breakdown of deaths in the UK is also very different

93% of deaths in the uk are over 60
11221 people over 60 in Sweden have died from cv19 out of a total 11591 97% in Sweden.

Of course density has a lot to do with it however 1 in 3 live in the 9 largest cities so to make it a little more fair ill take the population and cut it by a third... 244/3379000*100000)=7,2 per 100k in that age group. If all of those people had died in Stockholm City 244/976000=25 still way below the mortality rate of that age group in the UK..

It is the health profile of that group.... not good not good all

 

[Scouse]

So the over 50s in the UK have the same mortality rate as those in Sweden even though we might have more diabetic, chronic issues in our population and therefore the increased density of the population increases their risk? Ok thanks Professor.

You're introducing co-morbidities there @Deebs - which are catered for in the groupings.

Over 50's + white. Same death rate in Sweden as the UK. Period*

Add in other factors and you're no longer comparing apples with apples.

You're welcome, padawan



*not catering for Sweden probably having a better healthcare system. But you get the drift.

 

[Embattle]

View: https://mobile.twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1355192363522658309

In essence to stop vaccines sneaking out the Irish back door to NI.

 

[Deebs]

You're introducing co-morbidities there @Deebs - which are catered for in the groupings.

Over 50's + white. Same death rate in Sweden as the UK. Period*

Add in other factors and you're no longer comparing apples with apples.

You're welcome, padawan



*not catering for Sweden probably having a better healthcare system. But you get the drift.

Did you read my previous message about deaths in the 50s? 3 times higher than those in the 40s. Fuck you very much.

 

[Raven]

Can you unban @Job please? I feel he would have a lot to offer the conversation

 

[Deebs]

Can you unban @Job please? I feel he would have a lot to offer the conversation

He is not banned, he is using the nickname of @Scouse.

 

[Deebs]

There is no fancy report I can find quickly but there are the weekly statistics here.

244 people have died in Sweden between the ages of 50-59 - Swedish CV Statistics updated today
10,136, 203 is the current population - Sweden Population (2021) - Worldometer
2.4 per 100k in that age group

The breakdown of deaths in the UK is also very different

93% of deaths in the uk are over 60
11221 people over 60 in Sweden have died from cv19 out of a total 11591 97% in Sweden.

Of course density has a lot to do with it however 1 in 3 live in the 9 largest cities so to make it a little more fair ill take the population and cut it by a third... 244/3379000*100000)=7,2 per 100k in that age group. If all of those people had died in Stockholm City 244/976000=25 still way below the mortality rate of that age group in the UK..

It is the health profile of that group.... not good not good all

So that proves the JCVI point that in the UK group 9 is a high risk group no?

 

[Yoni]

looking at the statistics you provided in the UK yes it is ... the 60-69 group in Sweden do not have that level.... 6,6%.... the biggest group 80-89 is 48,4 .... just above the UK mortality rate for 50-59 oO

 

[Deebs]

looking at the statistics you provided in the UK yes it is ... the 60-69 group in Sweden do not have that level.... 6,6%.... the biggest group 80-89 is 48,4 .... just above the UK mortality rate for 50-59 oO

View attachment 43724

So I stand by my comments to @Scouse that group 9 in the UK need to be vaccinated before we help other countries and divert the vaccines for group 10 and below.

 

[Scouse]

Did you read my previous message about deaths in the 50s? 3 times higher than those in the 40s. Fuck you very much.

No. I'm still 'at work'.

How does it stack up against people in their 60's and 70's?

 

[Deebs]

No. I'm still 'at work'.

How does it stack up against people in their 60's and 70's?

Visit the site ffs. Take off your EU glasses and read the evidence. Even @Yoni has seen it for what it is. If not go protest against HS2 or some other treehugger thing.

 

[Deebs]

View: https://mobile.twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1355192363522658309

In essence to stop vaccines sneaking out the Irish back door to NI.

Isn't that a hard border?

 

[Moriath]

You can just quote Bodhi..



I don't see how this is a commitment to move out of the EU, it just seems another pharmabro is helping out.

Hadn’t read @Bodhi’s post

View: https://twitter.com/KvanOosterom/status/1355181588951277575

 

[Raven]

Isn't that a hard border?

Didn't take the EU long

 

[Embattle]

Small news article on it - Brexit: EU introduces controls on vaccines to NI - nothing much more in it other than it seems the word 'societal' has become rather popular.

 

[Deebs]

View: https://twitter.com/EuroGuido/status/1355215166892343297

 

[Embattle]

Shifty lot us Brits, we might get the Irish to send us there vaccines because you know why wouldn't they.

 

[Raven]

View: https://twitter.com/EuroGuido/status/1355215166892343297

It must be getting proper confusing for diehard EU fans, just a month into Brexit and the EU are already balls deep into back tracking on promises, who would have thunk it?! Anyone would think the protectionist, anti globalist, incompetence is rising to the top under pressure?! All the result of slow moving, unelected*, power hungry morons!

*Yeah sure, a few people vote for Euro MPs, but it's as much use as voting for local town councillors.

 

[Bodhi]

Hey Google, what does cognitive dissonance look like?


View: https://twitter.com/Peston/status/1355217362925088768?s=19

 

[Deebs]

Hey Google, what does cognitive dissonance look like?


View: https://twitter.com/Peston/status/1355217362925088768?s=19

And all initiated from the EU. They will not be seen in a good light after this.

 

[Hawkwind]

View: https://twitter.com/MattGarrahan/status/1354775315059380226

All this because they claim there is not enough data. AZ has been battling misinformation from Berlin all week.

Very good article from Torygraph today:

EU threatens war-time occupation of vaccine makers as AstraZeneca crisis spirals
Invoking powers that would allow the European Council to seize intellectual property and data from pharmaceutical companies would be madness

AMBROSE EVANS-PRITCHARD29 January 2021 • 3:20pm

The EU sledgehammer is coming down. The European Council is preparing to invoke emergency powers of Article 122 against AstraZeneca and Big Pharma within days.

This nuclear option paves the way for the seizure of intellectual property and data, and arguably direct control over the production process – tantamount to war-time occupation of private companies. This is Europe First pushed to another level. It takes the EU into the territory of 1930s methods and an authoritarian command economy.

Charles Michel, President of the European Council, is being badgered by member states to take action before the escalating vaccine crisis mutates into a political crisis as well and starts to topple governments. He is offering them the most extreme option available in the Lisbon Treaty.

Article 122 allows the EU to take emergency steps “if severe difficulties arise in the supply of certain products”, or “if a Member State is in difficulties or is seriously threatened with severe difficulties caused by natural disasters or exceptional occurrences beyond its control”.

Mr Michel raised the idea in a letter to four prime ministers on Wednesday night. He is now canvassing all 27 leaders. The clear intention is to hold AstraZeneca’s feet to the fire.

“We can do this very quickly,” said one EU official. “We have to be prepared. That does not mean we will necessarily use it.”

The process requires a proposal from the Commission, followed by a qualified majority vote in the Council. Article 122 could be activated within days.

Germany has become the hardest of hard-liners, departing ever further from its traditional role as a good global citizen and defender of markets. The dirigiste economy minister, Peter Altmaier, says he favours seizing control of the production process and ordering companies to manufacture vaccines at multiple sites, with a gun to their head. Germany has moved a long way from the Wirtschaftswunder of Ludwig Erhard.

Lost in this squalid saga is the relevant fact that AstraZeneca is not making money out of the vaccine. It is producing it at cost as a service to the world. It has produced a miracle in 10 months as its exhausted staff are working gruelling hours to lift output as fast as they can. Their reward is a police raid at the behest of the European Commission.

Britain is vaccinating rapidly today because the Government began preparing the ground last February, three months before it ordered the AstraZeneca vaccine. It bathed the pharma companies with love. It fast-tracked clinical trials. It waived normal liabilities rules. It did not haggle over prices.

The EU spent one-seventh as much per capita launching the process. It failed to suppress its bureaucratic and legalistic urges. It treated Big Pharma as a foe. It tried to win tactical victories.

It drifted through 2020 and failed to adapt to the nature of the emergency. The empty vaccination centres in France, Spain, Portugal, and Germany are the result of a planning failure that dates back 11 months.

Brussels is again losing sight of the core imperative, this time playing a legal ‘gotcha’ game to distract attention. Its release of AstraZeneca’s contract does show that the company should supply doses, if necessary, from manufacturing sites in the UK, but the wording is loose and generic. It does not substantiate the “crystal clear” claims of Ursula von der Leyen.

On the contrary, the text confirms AstraZeneca’s claim that the company is bound only to make "Best Reasonable Efforts" to meet targets. The Commission’s redacted version blanked out details on the delivery schedule. As a publicity stunt, it is a damp squib. Commercial Pharma barristers will eat the Commission’s lunch if this ever gets to a genuine court.

Such biblical exegesis is in any case a parody of Brussels bureaucratism. To reduce this drama to a legal technicality is to compound the error that led to today’s impasse. The EU’s lawyers have been the problem all along.

The Commission itself is aware of the dangers ahead. It is almost the ‘moderate’ in the EU system at this juncture, trying to restrain near-hysterical politicians and to limit action (for now) to an ‘export authorisation mechanism’.

It still hopes to defuse a diplomatic crisis with the UK, the US, Canada, and the World Health Organization. It wants to head off lasting damage to Europe’s reputation as a safe venue for free markets and commercial contract law. “Producing a vaccine is an extremely complicated endeavour that involves very sophisticated tools,” said Eric Mamer, the Commission chief spokesman.

The corporate backlash is building. The International Chamber of Commerce in Brussels warned that export bans could lead to retaliation and “very rapidly erode existing supply chains.”

Belgium is in the cross-fire. It lent its police to the AstraZeneca raid, but in doing so it has endangered its reputation as a biotech and pharma hub. Belgian premier Alexander de Croo has been gently reminding fellow leaders that mass-producing a coronavirus vaccine in an emergency is not as easy as “making bread”.

It is hard to see what can be achieved by resorting to Article 122. Muscling in on vaccine plants or seizing intellectual property will not conjure extra doses within a meaningful time-frame. It is more likely to set off a downward spiral.

Nor is it clear what can be achieved by ordering AstraZeneca to divert doses from its UK plants. If the company complied, it would be in breach of an even more explicit contract with the British Government. And Britain calls the shots.

Brussels can shut off shipments of the Pfizer-BioNTech jab to the UK (by now just a fifth of the daily vaccines). But that would be injudicious. Europa may later need Valneva and Novavax doses manufactured in this country.

The EU’s demarche is a misreading of British public emotion, not for the first time. This nation might well respond with altruism to a request for shared doses, if asked in a spirit of fraternal solidarity. It reacts very badly to threats.

Downing Street does not want a fight. It wishes to be reasonable. The European Council would be well advised to dial down its rhetoric and seek a cordial way out of a disaster of its own making. It would be courting fate to push this dispute into the geo-political realm.


The article is pretty spot on from what I have been told regards the facts of the contract etc. if the EU do envoke Article 122 it will end most biotech in the EU zone, why would any company risk their IP becoming EU property.

 

[Raven]

ofc they will, because fervent pro EU folk are completely blind to the EUs obvious failings.

And like I said to you in PM (I don't mind sharing my thoughts) in theory the EU is a good thing and should be a good thing, which is why I voted remain, but it is so many glaring failings and faults that unless it fixes itself, it is doomed. This crisis is bringing those faults very much to the surface. Slow moving, dithering protectionist nonsense. We, the UK, specifically tried to change it and got shot down, so we left, essentially. They don't want to change, because power suits the EU leadership, true democracy is alien to them.

Let them get on with it, it is what they obviously want, if they didn't want it then they could always vote for change

 

[Deebs]

All this because they claim there is not enough data. AZ has been battling misinformation from Berlin all week.

Very good article from Torygraph today:

EU threatens war-time occupation of vaccine makers as AstraZeneca crisis spirals
Invoking powers that would allow the European Council to seize intellectual property and data from pharmaceutical companies would be madness

AMBROSE EVANS-PRITCHARD29 January 2021 • 3:20pm

The EU sledgehammer is coming down. The European Council is preparing to invoke emergency powers of Article 122 against AstraZeneca and Big Pharma within days.

This nuclear option paves the way for the seizure of intellectual property and data, and arguably direct control over the production process – tantamount to war-time occupation of private companies. This is Europe First pushed to another level. It takes the EU into the territory of 1930s methods and an authoritarian command economy.

Charles Michel, President of the European Council, is being badgered by member states to take action before the escalating vaccine crisis mutates into a political crisis as well and starts to topple governments. He is offering them the most extreme option available in the Lisbon Treaty.

Article 122 allows the EU to take emergency steps “if severe difficulties arise in the supply of certain products”, or “if a Member State is in difficulties or is seriously threatened with severe difficulties caused by natural disasters or exceptional occurrences beyond its control”.

Mr Michel raised the idea in a letter to four prime ministers on Wednesday night. He is now canvassing all 27 leaders. The clear intention is to hold AstraZeneca’s feet to the fire.

“We can do this very quickly,” said one EU official. “We have to be prepared. That does not mean we will necessarily use it.”

The process requires a proposal from the Commission, followed by a qualified majority vote in the Council. Article 122 could be activated within days.

Germany has become the hardest of hard-liners, departing ever further from its traditional role as a good global citizen and defender of markets. The dirigiste economy minister, Peter Altmaier, says he favours seizing control of the production process and ordering companies to manufacture vaccines at multiple sites, with a gun to their head. Germany has moved a long way from the Wirtschaftswunder of Ludwig Erhard.

Lost in this squalid saga is the relevant fact that AstraZeneca is not making money out of the vaccine. It is producing it at cost as a service to the world. It has produced a miracle in 10 months as its exhausted staff are working gruelling hours to lift output as fast as they can. Their reward is a police raid at the behest of the European Commission.

Britain is vaccinating rapidly today because the Government began preparing the ground last February, three months before it ordered the AstraZeneca vaccine. It bathed the pharma companies with love. It fast-tracked clinical trials. It waived normal liabilities rules. It did not haggle over prices.

The EU spent one-seventh as much per capita launching the process. It failed to suppress its bureaucratic and legalistic urges. It treated Big Pharma as a foe. It tried to win tactical victories.

It drifted through 2020 and failed to adapt to the nature of the emergency. The empty vaccination centres in France, Spain, Portugal, and Germany are the result of a planning failure that dates back 11 months.

Brussels is again losing sight of the core imperative, this time playing a legal ‘gotcha’ game to distract attention. Its release of AstraZeneca’s contract does show that the company should supply doses, if necessary, from manufacturing sites in the UK, but the wording is loose and generic. It does not substantiate the “crystal clear” claims of Ursula von der Leyen.

On the contrary, the text confirms AstraZeneca’s claim that the company is bound only to make "Best Reasonable Efforts" to meet targets. The Commission’s redacted version blanked out details on the delivery schedule. As a publicity stunt, it is a damp squib. Commercial Pharma barristers will eat the Commission’s lunch if this ever gets to a genuine court.

Such biblical exegesis is in any case a parody of Brussels bureaucratism. To reduce this drama to a legal technicality is to compound the error that led to today’s impasse. The EU’s lawyers have been the problem all along.

The Commission itself is aware of the dangers ahead. It is almost the ‘moderate’ in the EU system at this juncture, trying to restrain near-hysterical politicians and to limit action (for now) to an ‘export authorisation mechanism’.

It still hopes to defuse a diplomatic crisis with the UK, the US, Canada, and the World Health Organization. It wants to head off lasting damage to Europe’s reputation as a safe venue for free markets and commercial contract law. “Producing a vaccine is an extremely complicated endeavour that involves very sophisticated tools,” said Eric Mamer, the Commission chief spokesman.

The corporate backlash is building. The International Chamber of Commerce in Brussels warned that export bans could lead to retaliation and “very rapidly erode existing supply chains.”

Belgium is in the cross-fire. It lent its police to the AstraZeneca raid, but in doing so it has endangered its reputation as a biotech and pharma hub. Belgian premier Alexander de Croo has been gently reminding fellow leaders that mass-producing a coronavirus vaccine in an emergency is not as easy as “making bread”.

It is hard to see what can be achieved by resorting to Article 122. Muscling in on vaccine plants or seizing intellectual property will not conjure extra doses within a meaningful time-frame. It is more likely to set off a downward spiral.

Nor is it clear what can be achieved by ordering AstraZeneca to divert doses from its UK plants. If the company complied, it would be in breach of an even more explicit contract with the British Government. And Britain calls the shots.

Brussels can shut off shipments of the Pfizer-BioNTech jab to the UK (by now just a fifth of the daily vaccines). But that would be injudicious. Europa may later need Valneva and Novavax doses manufactured in this country.

The EU’s demarche is a misreading of British public emotion, not for the first time. This nation might well respond with altruism to a request for shared doses, if asked in a spirit of fraternal solidarity. It reacts very badly to threats.

Downing Street does not want a fight. It wishes to be reasonable. The European Council would be well advised to dial down its rhetoric and seek a cordial way out of a disaster of its own making. It would be courting fate to push this dispute into the geo-political realm.


The article is pretty spot on from what I have been told regards the facts of the contract etc. if the EU do envoke Article 122 it will end most biotech in the EU zone, why would any company risk their IP becoming EU property.

Long reply, let me summarize

1. EC fucked up
2. EC trying to shift blame
3. Goto 1 ( love my spectrum days)

 

[Raven]

You forgot 4. End

 

[Deebs]

You forgot 4. End

Never was end in BASIC when doing a goto loop.

 

[Deebs]

Professor @Scouse working hard overnight to undermine the JVCI. 3 times more vulnerable than the next group the under 50s ( group 9).

Fuck it, I am going to hug one of the trees in my garden to show solidarity,

 

[Embattle]

Professor @Scouse working hard overnight to undermine the JVCI. 3 times more vulnerable than the next group the under 50s ( group 9).

Fuck it, I am going to hug one of the trees in my garden to show solidarity,

Try not to get excited, you might get stuck.

 

[Deebs]

Try not to get excited, you might get stuck.

Try not to get excited, you might get stuck.

I just burnt all trees down.

No doubt @Scouse will come up with a scientific response, peer reviewed and signed off, think he needs to remember that his sheep are not people or scientists.

 

[Embattle]

Can the EU win a case against AstraZeneca? I'm not convinced

The contract between AstraZeneca and the EU has now been published. It confirms my view, expressed on Coffee House, that the EU does not – despite its claims – have any form of ‘strong case’ or way to jump a queue to speed up its vaccine rollout. Both contracts (the one, published previously...

www.spectator.co.uk