Technically, the Pfizer vaccine is a collaboration between Pfizer, and BioNTech, a German company. I believe much of the development was done by BioNTech, with Pfizer doing much of the production and distribution.

So while it isn't solely an EU effort, they were crucial in it's development.

This is a good point, and Pfizer's vaccine isn't the only example. Janssen, the JnJ subsidiary, is headquartered in Belgium. All of these companies have researchers who hail from and work in other countries...

None of the major vaccines would have been possible without international cooperation for sequencing, development, and testing....and the virus doesn't check your passport before it enters your cells.

Ultimately issues like competing contractual obligations can get ugly, fast. But aggressive vaccine nationalism can impede the kind of international collaboration that is necessary to produce enough product to inoculate everyone who wants a shot.

> Ultimately issues like competing contractual obligations can get ugly, fast. But aggressive vaccine nationalism can impede the kind of international collaboration that is necessary to produce enough product to inoculate everyone who wants a shot.

Normally vaccine exports are no problem for the EU, originally there wasn't even the mechanism that is now used to block that one shipment.

Given all the circumstances (various vaccine exports still going on, Australia having a pretty calm Covid situation right now and starting production of their own AZ vaccine this month) I wonder if that shipment was deliberately chosen as a statement to get AZ to stop playing games while minimizing the impact it has on global efforts. (or maybe I'm giving bureaucrats too much credit)

Of course a heads-up notice to Australia would have been nice if that was the case.

BioNTech would have produced nothing without Pfizer.

Without BioNTech, Pfizer would have partnered with a different company (Moderna, Novavax, the list goes on..) and produced a vaccine.

I don't mean to understate the value of what BioNTech's research set Pfizer (and the world) up for, but without Pfizer there would be no BioNTech vaccine.

> BioNTech would have produced nothing without Pfizer.

This is just factually incorrect. BioNTech had the capability to produce a vaccine on their own, but not at the scale they needed to. Nor would they have been able to handle distribution. Previously they were only producing various mRNA medication at a much smaller scale.

Pfizer was in a better position to run a large-scale study and create new supply chains at the scale that was needed.

The relationship between BioNTech and Pfizer is not unlike the one between an artist and a music label.

I guess Pfizer just made the best offer.

Without them, BioNTech might have partnered with some other pharma corp: Merck (the German company, not the US wartime spinoff) is headquartered 30 km from BioNTech, Sanofi has facilities 20km away and there are a few more around the block that have significant experience in both navigating regulatory frameworks and ramping up production.

In such a scenario, maybe they wouldn't provide 60% of EU shipments now (the numbers I have at hands), but "produced nothing" seems to lowball it.

Lots of vaccine shipments by other manufactures are leaving the EU every week. There are specific grievances with the way AZ has been handling its contracts with the EU that resulted in this action.

You know how they refer to the Pfizer vaccine as the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine because the later actually developed it?

Well, your mind is going to be totally blown when you find out where they're based.

The trend in pharma has been to HQ in the USA for tax reasons and access to capital, but a lot of the research still happens in the EU

I have many friends who work in biotech and tech, most of the research is done in USA. Only minor research is done in EU. Same with tech.

I agree that EU is not the top dog anymore but I'm having trouble reasoning your logic.

AZ is UK-Swedish, Biontech/Pfiser is German-US but all this shows that EU is falling behind?

Wouldn't that count 2 for EU, 1 for UK 1 for USA? Is this some accounting trick where it ends up 1 US, 1 UK and 0 for EU?

Europe missed on the computers and internet but I don't see how EUs involvement in inventing the first two vaccines show that Europe is pathetic when the other partners are superior.

Actually, I think the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was also developed in EU(Netherlans?). Would that count as +1 or -1 for the old world?

yes yes, but at the end of the day, which countries are getting most of the vaccines ? Suffice to say EU falls behind Chile. All due respect to Chile.

Israel UAE UK (lucky them, they BREXIT just in time) USA

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

I think their point is the EU was the weak dog at the negotiating table.

One of the challenges the EU often has when negotiating is dealing with the need for consensus among their 27 member states, and trying to reflect so many diverse political desires in negotiations.

While the result is a "civil service" style European Commission, the end result is generally some kind of compromise or "average". It's hard for the EU to conduct a negotiation over vaccines when there's national interests lobbying for bulk buying of French candidate vaccines vs. German-made vaccines etc.

This makes it far harder for them to negotiate anything, unless they can all pre-arrange their own position. As soon as their desires diverge, the negotiation gets much harder for them, as they have to try and negotiate a compromise position that keeps everyone equally unhappy.

Janssen vaccine (subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson) was developed in Leiden, Netherlands.

EU's procurement boondoggle aside - they are actually strong in drugs and a lot of HC development.

This is a bureaucratic/political problem, maybe an operations problem, not so much an R&D problem.

“Let’s create a centralized bureaucracy to create innovation.”

Yeah, that’s worked many times in history.

Switzerland is an example of this and probably the reason they have not joined the EU. Just look at the quality of life, median salary, indices after indices, Switzerland comes ahead of EU in every measure.

They were already ahead before the EU though. Switzerland came out of WW2 stronger than all the other war torn countries, and could be argued even profited greatly from it.

A big part of their initial resitance to the EU would have been the banking regulations.

Median salary is a useless metric to compare here because cost of living there is incredibly high.

Switzerland and USA were not destroyed in World War II.

Compare that to Poland with almost 20% population dead and 50 years of Soviet imposed communism.

More Americans died from COVID-19 than due to WWII and WWI combined.

The only big power handling the whole situation well is China.