No. No. No.
Not only is there no guarantee that it would have been delivered by governments, there is a major counterexample affecting hundreds of millions of people: the European Union.
The EU tasked a specific body, the European Commission, to negotiate vaccine purchases for the entire bloc at once. The commission approached vaccine negotiations like a trade deal, because they usually negotiate trade deals, and ended up extracting terms that would have been good for a trade deal. They refused to go easy on the manufacturers, and thus "saved" themselves many billions — billions that they would have been much better off sacrificing (to make the negotiations faster, instead of taking months) or outright spending (to speed up production).
https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/02/03/how-europe-dodge...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-europe-tripped-in-covid-19-...
https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-coronavirus-vaccine-s...
Now they are tripping over themselves in an attempt to salvage the mess they made, issuing ill-considered threats to seize production that has been pledged abroad, rather than trying to speed things up.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/02/01/vaccine-...
So yes, clearly the EU has made mistakes (fully agree with the 1st part of your post), but they had good intentions and it is not as bad as you make it sound.
No. The UK government publishes a list of medicines blocked for export[1] and the vaccine isn’t on the list. The EU is solely to blame for being at the back of the queue and are the only state I know of to threaten blocking exports.
[1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
If you buy up all a local farmer’s apples for your cider business that is not protectionism. If you arrange for him to effectively become your sole supplier during your busy period that is not protectionism. It’s free trade, that well known opposite.
Hard enough to defend the EU’s protectionism and disorganisation when it’s just food, didn’t think I’d see anyone lining up to do it over vaccines.
Back on topic: recently read on CNN that the UK contract's exactly the same as the EU one (best effort) and it was signed later than the EU one even if it was negotiated earlier.
If we combine that with the fact that the UK is not exporting any vaccine and the EU is, including to the UK, it seems to me that the EU was right to be upset with AZ and put pressure on them.
The UK is being selfish and trying to make the EU look like the bad guy.
> it seems to me that
You've busted that flush.
This is what OP claimed and there is only one argument that can be made against that: a list of countries where the UK or the US is exporting vaccines. By now it should be clear to anyone reading this far that you can't provide that.
No, this is what the OP claimed:
> It is the US + UK that are blocking all exports
As to this:
> there is only one argument that can be made against that
Again - no, there are other arguments against that, the best being that black and white thinking is a terrible way to analyse reality, the second best being that a list was provided above of medicines blocked for export by the UK and no SARS-COV-2 vaccines are on it.
If the logic evades you further it may help to ask a question: which vaccines are you exporting and is it because you are blocking exports?
That should make it clear that there are more possible reasons for exports not to happen than their being intentionally blocked.
This is the measure that will be used to judge the UK. Whether the vaccine is on some list may be an aggravating factor, but it's otherwise immaterial.
How convenient. Considering you claimed one thing that was false and are now claiming another thing that is also false but would help make your original claim true because you say so, I think I'll stick with the "narrow" form of interpretation that humans have managed so well with up till now.
> This is the measure that will be used to judge the UK.
Only by those with such strong prejudices that it requires a reimagining of the English language and of logic to help protect them from having to re-examine their notions.
> Whether the vaccine is on some list may be an aggravating factor, but it's otherwise immaterial.
Unless you have evidence of the vaccine being blocked then it is material indeed, however inconvenient that is for you. Feel free to supply actual evidence of the vaccine being blocked that goes beyond "because I say so" and doesn't require pushing words beyond their actual meaning.
Have you noticed the lack of logical necessity in your argument yet?
I'm glad that you now acknowledge that "there is only one argument" is not so, that is definitely progress.
Those people are still dead.
It's one thing to be upfront from the start about how you're going to independently produce vaccine for yourself first, ensuring nobody plans on receiving your production.
It's another entirely to promise to export and then later threaten to hold back.
It's not even that, it's being up front about paying all the local manufacturers to make vaccines for you first.
Perhaps you were referring to something else?
Because from your second sentence it read like an awfully short list if nobody's expecting on receiving vaccine.
But would it really have changed things if they didn't?
There wouldn't magically have been more factory capacity and it's not like the UK/US would allow for a substantial part of their capacity to be exported.
Then there was also the unfortunate failure of the Sanofi vaccin and the late arrival of the Jannsen vaccin which was just really bad luck for the EU.
What makes you so sure of that? What's the manufacturing bottleneck that an extra $100B up front couldn't parallelize?
I just have trouble believing that without some evidence?
But if you think that producers are intentionally holding back, and don't understand mRNA vaccine differences from adenovirus vaccines that have been used forever, this might help:
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/02/02/my...
So I can see how that can't go much faster.
For regular tech vaccines, you're probably right.
Its a big claim to say another $100B wouldn't have scaled it faster. I'm sure they still have bottlenecks, and financial risks they weren't willing to take.
$100B is a lot of resources - but a justified amount given the economic costs, which is the point.
This is a similar sort of process. There's extremely specialized knowledge held by only a tiny number of people, and though there is a plan to vastly expand production, it's never been done before.
The bottleneck is not money, the bottleneck is people. People who have undoubtedly been working themselves to the bone to get this done as quickly as possible.
This is a mechanical problem. It involves setting up assembly lines. These lines consist of expensive medical equipment, highly skilled installation experts, and skilled operators.
$100 billion could definitely buy or lease more equipment, get it installed, get it inspected, and pay more operators to operate the equipment. It could pay for for scientists and technicians working in related med-tech fields. It could pay their current employers to lend them from their current jobs, guaranteeing their positions upon return. The money could likewise supply any needed training, and if necessary, it could pay them extra money and extra vacation to compensate for the disruption in their lives from working third-shift, so that the machines run overnight.
Money to the tune of billions and hiring lots of the best people is specifically what makes it so people don't have to "[work] themselves to the bone".
Yes, 100% yes.
Adding substantial resources can hugely speed up a project.
I will requisition the very best engineers, the best support staff, remove all financial bottlenecks, dedicate shadowing teams to work in isolation in parallel on the critical sections, etc.
> A classic of the software engineering industry, The Mythical Man Month, is all about this process.
First off, if i recall correctly, and it's probably been 20 years since I read it, that mostly applies to late projects that have already gone off the rails.
The broader point isn't true anyway. We're way better at writing software than we used to be.
I've personally been on quite a few software projects where they became more strategic or promising than they initially seemed, and we threw more engineers at them to speed them up, and they sped up excellently.
Now granted any money in the world won't have the plant replicated by tomorrow, but enough money will have it replicated much faster. And the process could have been started months ago. Pretty much any vendor will do things faster if you pay them more money and I'm sure this is true for Pfizer's various vendors here. You can order some machine part produced in 3 months or in 3 days (with the latter being like x20 the price, but who cares now).
What would you say the effect of the government offering half as much would be? 1/10th? At one point does economics matter? I think once you admit money matters on the downside, you have a hard time proving that the point it zeros out of effect as it increases exactly matches the arbitrary point it was actually set at.
There's already massive incentive to ship first, since there are competing vaccines. If an additional $10B-$100B could result in additional production of mRNA vaccine, it would have been delivered by governments if not by investors.
This is simply a new tech with new techniques. Throwing extra money at a problem when there isn't a chance of increasing production capacity only causes inflation of prices, and rentierism. There is no benefit.