Re:Europe's Vaccine Disaster
by roenxi on Friday January 29, 2021 @08:53PM
(#25965226)
A "Commission President Ursula von der Leyen sends negotiators to get highest vaccine price worldwide!" headline would be even worse for the negotiators political career than "[She seeks] to Duck Responsibility". They aren't going to negotiate higher prices on a vaccine in a global emergency.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Why not? Israel did just that, they offered double the US price for their doses + full access to the medical data.
They vaccinated half their population whilst the EU is stuck making a surprised Pikachu face.
True, but do note Israel’s population is 1/50 of Europe, so the logistics of accommodating it (on the producer side) are relatively easy.
Yes, but the GDP of the EU is $19 trillion, the GDP of Israel is $350 billion, that’s 1/50th of the population and 1/54th of the GDP.
While I’m aware that things don’t scale the same, and that currently the supply chain has its own hard restrictions on production you can’t argue that paying more won’t allow you to ramp up production faster, this is also what the UK did.
The EU could’ve allocated much more funding and ordered much more doses of both approved vaccines and vaccine candidates they haven’t they’ve put most of the eggs in the AZ basket and then tried to haggle on the price of the cheapest vaccine sold at cost.
Most definitely agree. I was only referring to the fact that for Israel it was sufficient to throw more money at the problem to get enough doses; For the entire EU, it is required, but not sufficient condition.