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.