[If I might suggest, I think Haywain's note about the vaccine and all the replies should be moved to the vaccine thread rather than this one.]
I am really surprised to be saying this, but the following link is to a reasonable and interesting Daily Mail article though it couldn't quite stop itself falling back to a very tabloid remainer comment at the end which should be ignored.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9401147/Macron-delivers-humiliating-vaccine-mea-culpa-amid-EU-summit.html
The EU's approach of central vaccine procurement was the right approach. It's the one that made sense for *all* countries of the EU - either because they needed the support or because they needed to show their commitment to the EU.
The train wreck as not because of their strategy, it was because of their attitude and implementation and that, so far, seems to have escaped criticism.
They took the standard, bureaucratic, safe and standard approach to procurement. And make no mistake, that is exactly what the UK has done on every other contract they've ever signed - just not this one. We're all aware of NHS, Infrastructure and Financing contractual nightmares that the our various Governments have brought us over the years.
I think they were all so scared about what was happening that the nice safe world of Government procurement was like a comfort blanket and they shut out the pressure secure they were doing a good thing.
They got two things wrong;
- They didn't realise that it was the apocalypse
- They thought they had more time because whoever heard of a vaccine in 7 months? They didn't realise that logistics and manufacturing would be on thr critical path. They thought development and field testing would be the hold up.
They would still have been ok except that many other places, the UK a leading one, did realise it was the apocalypse and pulled out every stopper, bulldozed every obstacle and broke every rule in a headlong charge to the goal.
t was not that the EU was particularly wrong, it was that the UK and the Pharmas were spectacularly right.
Everything since then has been panicking headless chickens trying to cover up and dodge responsibility for the situation that the EU finds itself in. They're politicians, what did we expect them to do.
Had AZ vaccine failed and Sanofi succeeded it could so easily have been the other way around.
One has to be careful of stones when one so nearly was living in a glass house.
The UK needs to stop rubbing it in and start to be the bigger person. If we think that we're that big/good, then let's prove it.
Let's genuinely sit down with the EU and work out what can be done to help.
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