This account of how the EU screwed up with vaccine procurement is amazing to me (NYT article):
But the biggest explanation, the one that has haunted the bloc for months, is as much philosophical as it was operational. European governments are often seen in the United States as free-spending, liberal bastions, but this time it was Washington that threw billions at drugmakers and cosseted their business.
Brussels, by comparison, took a conservative, budget-conscious approach that left the open market largely untouched. And it has paid for it.
In short, the answer today is the same as it was in December, said Dr. Slaoui. The bloc shopped for vaccines like a customer. The United States basically went into business with the drugmakers, spending much more heavily to accelerate vaccine development, testing and production.
The weakest political argument, by far, is “we can’t afford it”. The reality is that we can almost always afford it, and if we can’t, it’s because we’re spending way too much on the war budget. And, my God, if there’s one thing that any rich country or group of countries should be able to afford, it’s a no-holds-barred effort to contract for COVID vaccine.
One of my recent binge watches has been the series “Ambulance”, which is one of hundreds of reality shows about paramedics. This one is a bit different because it has access to the call centers. The series originated in the UK but there’s a spin off in Australia.
The difference between the UK and Australian shows is simply the amount of time spent on a shortage of ambulances in the UK. The one time in three seasons where the Australians had a shortage of ambulances was during a bunch of MDMA overdoses after a music festival in Brisbane. In contrast, there were hardly any nights or weekends that the UK dispatchers weren’t re-routing, begging for crews to hurry up, and generally rationing scarce resources. The Australian dispatch centers were bright and modern, the crews were younger and seem healthier, and overall there was a sense of pride missing from the UK crews. (That’s not to say that the UK crews weren’t dedicated or good, just that their jobs seemed more frustrating and less rewarding than the Australians’.)
Of course, Australia is a “rich” country and the UK is not as “rich”, but the UK is certainly rich enough to have just launched a new aircraft carrier that they want to send into the Pacific Ocean, because they are still carrying around the delusion that they’re a world power. For the same reason, they’re going to be increasing their nuclear warhead stockpile. They “can afford” ships and bombs, but they just “can’t afford” more ambulances. So it is with the politics of what we can afford.
raven
boo
trollhattan
“Austerity” kept them mired in the Great Recession a good long while, longer than it might have been. Lessons learned? Magic 8-ball says “doubtful.”
Benw
@raven: that’s cray cray
raven
@Benw: They deserved every bit of it, great “D”
Ken
Regarding the aircraft carrier, and cribbed from Chris Grey’s “Brexit and Beyond” blog, the UK’s latest foreign policy positioning calls for a renewed global role. Grey sees it as part of “Johnson’s predilection for boosterish phrase-making”, and possibly an attempt to distract the UK public from the effects of Brexit on trade and everything else.
ThresherK
I typically click the link, scroll past the blockquote from whatever source, and then read the author’s reaction blurb first. If it catches my interest, I continue.
Often I can guess who’s written it by what it contains there. It’s a credit to Cole and the cohort that I think any of the FPers can have written that snippet.
Chetan Murthy
Not so fast, FTFNYT:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-09/pfizer-vaccine-s-funding-came-from-berlin-not-washington
What’s true, is that the EU is letting everything happen “on the open market”. But they ponied up for R&D (including, IIRC, the vaccine trials).
Eolirin
I think no small part of this is also that Biden and his administration are just really good at getting things done.
We would be talking about the EU vaccination efforts in glowing terms if we had a reelected Trump heading up our roll out. And their approach maybe would have worked better without the US grabbing for supply.
charluckles
I can’t read the article, but aren’t the problems in the EU more about distribution and less about development and testing?
smith
“we can’t afford it” = “you don’t deserve it”
Yutsano
I’ve been watching a news channel called TLDR News where I also get to watch the machinations in Parliament. Britain being “poor” is total bullshit. The Conservatives are throwing around pounds like water. It’s just that spending money on things like the NHS and health aren’t their priority. In fact, I bet expansion of private insurance gets on the docket there soon.
PJ
OT: From choad Jason Miller, so take it for what that’s worth, supposedly ***** will be launching his own social media platform in a few months: https://deadline.com/2021/03/donald-trump-will-start-his-own-social-media-service-top-aide-says-1234718828/
The article notes the obstacles the platform will face, including no business in the US wanting to host it or accept payments, but I’m sure a patron in Russia or Saudi Arabia would be glad to help out. If it happens, I bet it will be almost as successful as Parler, but it should funnel more dollars from idiots into *****’s pockets, which is the main thing.
opiejeanne
Somewhat OT, but related to being able to afford ambulance service in the US.
We lived in Anaheim from 2002-2010, and a RWNJ was always bellyaching on a baseball blog about his taxes and how pensions for public employees was theft of his money. One day he took over a thread about the recent Angels baseball game, griping about how they called an ambulance when his wife had a fainting spell, and the bill was $1200, screaming that it was a public service and it wasn’t fair that they already took so much of his money in taxes, etc.
I asked if he lived in Anaheim, and when he confirmed it I pointed out that every year the city contacts everyone and asks if they want to add $6 to their property tax bill for ambulance service, which is a great investment. Of course he hadn’t because, well you know, etc.
He thought he would hang onto that $6 and be fine, why give more of his money to the tax man.
Ruckus
Britain may be somewhat of a world power but their idea of what sort and how much of a power may be their problem. Of course they didn’t recognize that the world has changed a lot in the last 25 yrs, which sounds vaguely familiar on this side of the pond. And maybe on all sides of all the ponds. The world is getting crowded, it is getting less of very wealthy and very poor and more equal across the board. So much of the world depends on other parts of the world anymore that it’s not really possible for one to be -the world power- any longer, no matter what that country thinks. 75 years ago, at the end of WWII there was pretty much one industrial power left standing and that was us. But a lot of that has changed rather dramatically over the last 25 or more yrs. It’s the countries that have kept or tried to keep the same level of power that in reality they haven’t. We’ve lost a lot of our, what I call “common manufacturing” to countries that were rather poor. And those countries have gained rather a lot because of that, China being the most notable example in this regard. Britain seems to be just existing, rolling along on their historical position, in a world that has changed far more than they have. Brexit being the most obvious indicator of trying to remain something they haven’t been for decades. The EU has lost what with Brexit? Nothing, really.
There are a lot more examples but take an unbiased look around the world and compare it today with 25, 50 and 75 yrs ago and what has changed is rather obvious, the entire planet has changed, in some ways, as a planet, far better, and in some ways as a collection of countries far worse, because many of those countries that viewed themselves as the kingpin of the world, weren’t then and still aren’t and one that was, no longer is. We as a country need to grow up and be the country that we have supposed to have been our entire existence and the world needs to recognize that 9 billion people have to get along or a hell of a lot of them will die. And all for nothing.
gene108
As the 2008 financial crisis unfolded, the USA blew money on TARP and the ARRA, while EU nations took austerity measures.
Honestly, if we can get to affordable universal coverage, we will be a lot more forward than many European countries idolized by certain liberals as to what the ideal government should be.
opiejeanne
@charluckles: I read a short article that compared Israel’s approach to buying the vaccines with the Eu’s approach. If I understood it correctly, the vaccine costs between $18-$20, so the Israeli government bought them at the list price. The EU bargained for a lower price and got them for $16-$18. Saved $2-$3 per vaccine, but are at the back of the line as a result.
Pete Downunder
With respect to ambulance services, here Downunder they are operated by each state. In Queensland we often have the problem that there is not enough public hospital capacity to deal with arriving ambulances so they end up getting ramped – waiting with their patients for the ER to be able to treat them. This course makes them unavailable for new calls. More money is needed for our Public Health Service
Cameron
@PJ: I can see the Saudis doing it; at this point, I think the Russians have better things to do with their money. And Senator McConnell….would you bring us up to date with that aluminum plant the Russians were going to build in your state…..?
Cheryl Rofer
“We can’t afford it” is nonsense. I don’t have one at my fingertips, but every estimate I have seen is that the pandemic is costing the US (for example) trillions, and a thorough vaccine program costs billions.
dmsilev
@opiejeanne: It wasn’t just the willingness to pay list price. Israel also agreed to feed a lot of medical data back to Pfizer as part of the purchase contract. Call it a big ‘Phase IV’ trial if you will.
Baud
Just like only Nixon could go to China, only the GOP could discredit deficit hysteria, which they did with their tax cuts for rich people.
Chetan Murthy
Another: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/21/eu-export-ban-would-delay-uk-covid-vaccine-drive-by-two-months
The EU has exported 34m doses (~10m to the UK), and administered 56m. I don’t know how many AZ doses the UK has exported to the EU, but from what I read, it was a lot fewer than what were contractually agreed. My understanding is that the EU went forward on the assumption that AZ would be able to deliver doses, hence didn’t invest in the other vaccines. This, again, is an example of neoliberalism in action: bargain on the market, assume your counterparties will not fail (b/c if they do, you can take them to court), etc. The Biden Admin, by contrast, the minute they got control, started over-buying vaccines (and said explicitly that that was what they were doing) so that in case there were shortfalls, they could be handled, and if not, they could just speed up vaccinations, and eventually send doses overseas.
dmsilev
@Cheryl Rofer: 4 or 5 trillion, I think, just in the various Federal relief bills alone. Now add in all of the costs not covered by those programs and, yeah. If the vaccines had required literal gold-plated needles, it still would have been worth the cost.
Mary G
Britain reelected their shit for brains leader and stuffed Parliament with “conservatives.” Elections have consequences.
John S.
@Baud: Those tax cuts will pay themselves! Honest!
germy
@Mary G:
Imagine if the former guy had weaseled his way into a second term here? We’d be waiting until 2023 to be vaccinated.
Yutsano
@John S.: If they aren’t…well, that’s just evidence you’re not clapping loud enough!
debbie
@germy:
Depending on where you live (ie, blue state), you’d wait until forever. “You have to be nice to me.”
trollhattan
@Ken:
First read it as “boorish phrase-making” and it works even better. GB has painted themselves into a very tight corner.
Jay
@John S.:
I am sure that this time, with all the bored Billionaires and Trillionaires spending their money on NFT’s and Cryptocurrency, because they have more stuff, ( Mansions, Estates, Castles, Islands, Yachts, Cars, etc) than they can possibly use in several lifetimes,
That this time, it will trickle down.//
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@charluckles: There’s also an issue with manufacturing, at least for the AstraZeneca. I think that they were supposed to have at least three facilities up and running and cranking out that vaccine, but there are regulatory roadblocks and other problems that mean they’ve only got one facility producing the stuff.
Which might explain why so many of you Stateside jackals are in line to get your shots while I’m stuck waiting until probably midsummer.
Dan K
There is a lot of noise here. The biggest issue behind EU:s vaccine supply issues is that Astrazeneca’s ‘dedicated’ supply chain for EU has been botched by Astrazeneca (the details are a bit unclear but a manufacturing site in Belgium has proven incapable to deliver according to plans). Astrazeneca has for reasons only known to them created different ‘dedicated’ supply chains for EU and UK, respectively. As Astrazeneca is under contract by EU, EU understandably is a bit miffed why Astrazeneca seems to operate as two different companies, rather than to smooth supplies between their customer base. Expect litigation on this point (also expect Astrazeneca to pay a reputation price for this). So EU is taking quite a lot of heat for mismanagement by Astrazeneca. Also, EU financed a couple of bets on vaccines that didn’t work (there will be more stories coming out on this, for sure). Finally, among USA, UK and EU, EU is the only actor that has allowed for export of vaccine (to the tune of 34 million doses). EU is contemplating changing that, which would allegedly set UK’s vaccination plans back around two months. Also, as you probably already know, one reason Astrazeneca can’t fulfil their contract to EU is because USA blocks the export of some 30 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine (which is not approved by FDA).
Omnes Omnibus
Affording it (whatever it is) is, and has always been, a choice. It is often one that says a lot about a country’s voters and decision makers.
ETA: Guns or butter is often a choice that doesn’t need to be made. Not in a rich country. And whatever people want to say, the US is one of the richest countries that has ever existed.
Jay
Betsy
Damn straight, mistermix. I love it when you lay a case out like that.
Ruckus
@germy:
No, many of us wouldn’t be.
A country where the main political concept is “You can’t make me!” is never going to get to the level of compliance necessary for masking to work, and that same country, whose main concept of wealth is “Fuck You I got Mine!” is never going to get enough people to be able to survive without being out and working in some way, so any disease that spreads by breathing is only going to be beaten either rapidly or by enough people dying off that spacing becomes enough by attrition.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@debbie: I’d blocked that particular malevolent statement from my mind. Cripes. We dodged a bullet
Cameron
@Jay: I have absolutely no doubt that…..something…will trickle down.
germy
The Pale Scot
@Ken:
HMN has 6 frigates (with Aegis type radar) and 12 frigates, so they’re going to have to send most of the fleet if they’re going to operate off China or in the Persian Gulf all by themselves. The carriers are for tagging along with their friend Harvey (USN), who is much bigger than they are . Also for impressing The Argentinians and staying ready if Micronesia decides to move on the Pitcairn Islands to gain Lebensraum
Access to USN facilities is really fucking up the UK’s defense concepts. Without global support bases they’d be planning something more like Norway.
Martin
I will say it’s MUCH easier to buy vaccine from your own industries, produced by your own workers, boosting your own GDP. What’s more, doing so bolsters their manufacturing capacity so that they can sell to other countries, further stimulating your own economy. For the US, buying vaccine is stimulus. For Canada it’s not.
This is undoubtedly one of the better arguments for protecting domestic manufacturing. But just as I think health care should be socialized but not consumer electronics, I don’t subscribe to the ‘domestic manufacturing is the most important thing’ theory – but some manufacturing is.
The Pale Scot
@Yutsano:
Tax money is to only be given to personal friends of a Tory minister or spad.
James E Powell
@Eolirin:
You wouldn’t not it from watching the cable or Sunday shows. It’s not just that there is a CRISIS AT THE BORDER!!! – It’s that Joe Biden personally caused the crisis by failing to follow the ways of the great leader who preceded him.
I want every member of the Beltway press/media to be cleaning the latrines in the FEMA camps we set up to house the immigrants seeking entry into the US at our southern border.
J R in WV
@Cameron:
And Senator McConnell would say “That plant was killed off by the democrat President, who put illegal sanctions onto the investors, causing them to withdraw their funding. Typical democrat interference with private industry helping people!”
Steve in the ATL
@raven: so much for the Calcutta! Whom do we root for now?
Pittsburgh Mike
@dmsilev: If you assume the $5T is only 2/3rds of the real cost, then the cost per person of this pandemic in the US is $22,700.
Pfizer, the most expensive vaccine, is $20/dose, or $40/person.
So, no need to economize by plating the gold. You could throw in 2 pounds of solid gold and still come out ahead :-)
WhatsMyNym
@Ken: @The Pale Scot:
The French have announced the building of a new, bigger, aircraft carrier to replace their existing one.
germy
@James E Powell:
TriassicSands
What we can’t afford: Any more years of Republican control of any branch of the federal government. Of course, we’re stuck with the Supreme Court for the foreseeable future. All Republican control of the White House and Congress will mean will be huge increases of the national debt in order to make really rich people even richer.
debbie
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
For the moment, at least. ?
Baud
@Martin:
That doesn’t bode well for my Baud!Phone proposal.
mrmoshpotato
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Ugh. I’d forgotten about that line from Oval office brat. Just pathetic.
germy
Martin
@Ruckus: Yeah, as I said a year ago – countries like China and Singapore will have an easy time of this. Say what you will about their form of government, they have a populace that will be compliant when asked (for differing values of ‘ask’). The US was always going to be a problem since we have strong concepts of individual rights, but not communal rights.
Martin
@Baud: I have even worse news for you…
raven
@Steve in the ATL: I still have Texas Tech. I’m trying to sort through this and the best I can do is that it is a hell of a lot better than getting beat on the last play of a game on OT with several really bad calls. They just beat our asses.
JDM
“Would you spend $100 to get $1000?”
“Of course.”
“Would you spend $100 on vaccines to get $1000 in economic gains?”
“No way.”
Our betters. And they bet stupidly.
WaterGirl
@WhatsMyNyn: Your comment was in moderation. Is that supposed to be an “n” or an “m” at the end of your screen name?
japa21
@raven: Loyola is also a very good team, better than a 9 seed. They had an answer every time the Illini tried to make a comeback. And it is hard to beat a team that shoots over 50%.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
What’s a Nyn?
raven
@japa21: I was surprised to see Kofi had 21 but they really smothered Ayo.
mrmoshpotato
@germy:
Math’s a bit off – January 2025 would be the inauguration of an actual President then. Four more years of the Kremlin’s orange shitstain yelling “Hoax!” while seizing all the PPE (still) (and vaccine if they exist) for himself.
Betsy
I am done. I’m done letting out a vein for these assholes. I’m done taking care of Republican-created problems. I just wanna live in a world where other people are playing their part. I’m sick of watching right-wing iDJTs and centrist mealy-minded ignorami screw everything up for the rest of us who are trying to just stay real, earn an honest living, and be responsible, with a modicum of concern for others and the planet we share. Where can I go? I’m done here. Where should I go?
germy
@Betsy:
We outnumber the assholes. They’re just louder.
Sloane Ranger
We’re doing very well here in the UK with vaccine rollout. Over 50% of adults have now had their 1st shot. As for the NHS, whatever the Tories may have been planning I suspect it’s now on hold. The NHS was already a national religion here and the pandemic has deepened our belief. Only an idiot would challenge it in the foreseeable future.
The US and UK are doing better than the EU because we got in fast and didn’t haggle about the price, even before we knew if the vaccine would actually work. Or, in other words, unlike the EU, we took a gamble which paid off.
James E Powell
@Betsy:
I don’t know, but if you do find a place, can you tell us?
Omnes Omnibus
@germy: I find it weird that people are giving up as we are winning. And we are winning.
mrmoshpotato
Speaking of affording things – 20 seconds.
WhatsMyNym
@WaterGirl: Definitely an “m
ETA: I need to get a wider phone again, to go with my big fingers.
Omnes Omnibus
@Sloane Ranger: Last time I checked Boris was an idiot. Sorry.
Martin
One of my tactics at work has been identifying whose ledger the costs fall on and whose ledger the benefits accrue to. 99% of the time, that explains why the obvious efficiency and cost savings aren’t happening – because the folks paying for it aren’t benefitting. You have to find a way to align those. The US is terrible at aligning those.
rp
@opiejeanne: was that Matt Walsh? I think he ran an Angels blog. Back then he was a standard libertarian, but he’s turned into a trump true believer (shocking, I know).
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: Define ‘we’. The folks on this board think ‘we’ is Americans, or even humanity. The folks giving up believe ‘we’ is the GOP – and they are not winning here.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: Read the comment to which I was responding and context should clear it up.
J R in WV
Regarding the British sending their only (somewhat) operational aircraft carrier to the Pacific… this is the most lame strategic move since, well, ever. They have no colonies, Australia and New Zealand have their own navies, they have no forward bases in the area, and if anything goes wrong with the Queen Elizabeth in the Pacific theater, they have no way to repair it in order for it to return to the British Isles.
Typical Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson nonsense if you ask me, which no one ever has or will. But there’s my $0.02 on this geopolitical swamp Boris is jumping into with both feet.
mrmoshpotato
@J R in WV:
Maybe they just want to give the Panama canal’s operations crew a good hearty laugh in these shitty times.
Martin
@J R in WV: Look, the UK is a first world power and they will burn as many voter-approved bridges as necessary to prove it.
Chetan Murthy
I think one of the lessons here for EU citizens, is that the EU doesn’t work except in good times. That is to say, the EU is a trading bloc, masquerading as a nation-in-waiting. It simply lacks the ability to do what nations can do, and likewise the accountability that a democratic government would have to its citizens. The premise of the EU was that businesses could engage in division-of-labor across the entire bloc, thereby deriving economics-of-scale and -of-specialization, that would benefit the entire bloc. That’s what the Single Market was about, and it worked. And so, the EU set up trading rules which privileged contracts and trade, over the national interests of their individual nations.
But when the pandemic came, even though BioNTech had developed a vaccine with German (and undoubtedly other EU) funding ($448m in Sept for R&D, trials), they partnered with an *American* company for manufacturing. And that *American* company was allowed to place manufacturing for the components of the vaccine wherever it wanted. And the bureaucrats in Brussels bargained for a low price, instead of keeping first in mind the interests of their citizens.
Brexiters talk about a “democracy deficit” in the EU. And for once, they’re right. I’ve had a long conversation with a French friend of mine, and he assures me that French people don’t think of the EU as a government which should be accountable to them; rather, they think of it as a distant bureaucracy that makes rules: rules which “their government” (the French government) must follow. This is an unsustainable state of affairs: that bureaucracy, ,like all bureaucracies, will make rules while cognizant of the interests of money and commerce. But it seems clear that the interest of the citizenry is far down the list, and this will eventually lead to bad outcomes.
My French friend told me that many French people really angry that France did not develop its own vaccine (the Sanofi candidate failed trials). But what he misses, is that *the EU* developed a very successful vaccine (the BioNTech vaccine) and *still* didn’t benefit from it. This was a failure of public policy, both in allowing the sole manfacturing partner to be an American company, and in allowing doses to be exported before the EU’s own needs were met.
Ascribing these failures merely to “the EU didn’t want to pay top dollar” is already buying into neoliberal framing: FDR would never have allowed Esso to continue shipping oil to Japan, and GM would not have been allowed to continue manufacturing cars when tanks were needed. Government’s paramount obligations to its citizens are to protect them in time of war, pandemic, natural disaster. The EU, as a government, has failed. But it *is* a government, in the sense that it sets trading rules and levies taxes for redistribution. What it lacks, is a mechanism for democratic accountability.
Geez, I hope this is a serious wake-up call.
rikyrah
@germy:
We would be Brazil ???
brantl
@gene108: If we had any decent regulation, that would be true.
WhatsMyNym
@J R in WV: Since it will be going via the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean to Japan in the fall, the Pacific does not really play into it. Japan made the request and a US destroyer will accompany.
Steve in the ATL
@germy: I ate dinner at a Texas Roadhouse somewhere between Chattanooga and Nashville a couple of years ago. When the check came, it had the common tip suggestions at the bottom–“15%=$xx, 18%=$yy” etc.–and the math was wrong. The suggested amounts were all higher than they were supposed to be.
I, being Not A Moron, can calculate a 20% tip in my head, without any guidance, and I also check all the math I am given, as my day job consists of negotiating contracts in the hundreds of millions of dollars against parties I don’t trust (and, to be fair, with my own team members whose math skills I don’t trust!).
Surely this was intentional. It’s all computer generated, and no computer outside of maybe North Korea or Alabama miscalculates simple percentages.
Anyhoo, RIP Mr. Track Star.
Baud
@rikyrah:
At least our butts would be awesome.
James E Powell
@Omnes Omnibus:
There is a lot of anxiety out there. Jill Lawrence wrote about it in USAToday. The press/media are still taking their orders from the Republicans.
Maybe we need more triumphant marches or something.
Today on twitter there was the weekly Chuck Todd is a dickweed stuff. You remember when George H.W. Bush went on with Dan Rather and instead of doing the interview he just tore him a new asshole? I feel like Dick Durbin or someone of his stature should do that to Chuck Todd. It might make everyone feel better.
Brian
@Ken:
Geminid
@WhatsMyNyn: The current French aircraft carrier is the only non U.S. carrier with nuclear propulsion, as well as a steam catapult system. They are sending it to the Arabian Sea for a joint operation with a Japanese destroyer, a Belgian frigate, and the U.S. amphibious assault ship Makin Island. The French carrier can carry 800 commandos and thirty six aircraft; the U.S. ship carries 1600 Marines and six vertical takeoff fighters, plus helicopters.
The French are fairly assertive with their army and navy. They have troops fighting insurgencies in their former sub-Saharan colonies like Chad, and their navy does a lot of exercises in the eastern Mediteranean along with Greece and Israel, apparently focused on Turkey.
Another Scott
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: But, but Bill Gates told us all in April that his foundation was going to spend billions on building factories to crank out vaccine as soon as candidates were ready. And they can do it because of their “deep expertise” in infectious disease and governments are slow. But it is kinda funny that by September he was talking only talking about an agreement with 16 companies to cooperate on production.
:-/
Seriously, this is a huge complicated problem and lots of people are being left behind for unfair reasons. While the US is doing well in vaccination, it’s very uneven. I work in DC and cannot even get on the list to make an appointment in my home county probably for another month or more the way things are going. North Carolina apparently is taking anyone willing to sign up – a mid-30s colleague drove down there to get a shot because he was tired of waiting.
Hang in there. Good luck!
Cheers,
Scott.
Gravenstone
@PJ: When I saw that headline elsewhere, immediate thought was that someone else is assembling the platform, and TFG has just agreed to lend his name and likeness to it in return for unfettered access.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: Congrats on your nomination.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@Geminid:
I was surprised when France named their aircraft carrier after Pepe Le Pew. Did not see that come.
Dan B
@James E Powell: The Sunday shows were especially horrible. They endorsed going back to “deterrence”. They endorsed leaving asylum seekers to die in their home countries. They accused them of wanting to come here to make money off of our fantastic economy, and, “We have to open the schools!!!”
Martha Radditz should spend weeks maskless in a Covid ICU because that’s what she wants for teachers and school employees.
dmsilev
@Gravenstone: And by ‘lend’ his name, surely you mean ‘rent out his name, in exchange for as much money as possible’.
mrmoshpotato
@James E Powell:
I would watch Chuckles The Toddler to see my senior Senator do that!
Brachiator
@Martin:
I thought that some of the vaccines were developed in Europe. I also have read that some companies have contracts with Indian companies to produce the vaccine.
And since it is a global pandemic, how does any domestic manufacturing monopoly matter in the long run?
Robert Sneddon
@Geminid: The singular French nuclear-powered carrier Charles de Gaulle is two-thirds the size of the British QE carriers, about the same size as an America-class LHD. It spends several years at a time in refit and getting its reactors refuelled at which time the French Navy has no operational carrier to provide air cover to its fleet in blue water.
The Royal Navy now has two carriers, one of which is operational at the moment (the Queen Elizabeth) while the second (Prince of Wales) is working up towards operational status. When the QE goes into refit in a few years time the PoW will be still operational and able to provide blue-water air cover for the fleet.
The two QE-class carriers cost less than a single American supercarrier and require about the same number of crew to operate both of them as does the smaller French nuclear carrier. This is a major factor in today’s world where staffing a military especially with technical speciality roles is a major headache.
Robert Sneddon
@Brachiator: The UK recently took delivery of ten million doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine from the Serum Institute of India and these are being distributed and injected at the moment. Yesterday Britain carried out about 840,000 vaccinations, a new record based in large part on that delivery.
Betsy
@Omnes Omnibus: are we referring to someone in particular? And I take you know what they are doing enough to call it giving up?
Geminid
The 741 billion dollar defense budget was passed or trump’s veto with bipartisan super majorities. The defense spending increase was matched by an increase in domestic spending, due to an agreement between the two parties to abandon the budget austerity of the later Obama years.
The issue of defense spending is one of the fault lines within the Democrstic caucuses, though. The issue was not too divisive this time. Senators including Sanders and Warren put up an amendment to cut 10% from the defense budget, but were not especially critical when it was defeated.
This year’s jump in domestic spending will make it easier to sell a modest increase in defense spending next time around, but intraparty tension over defense spending may well grow in coming years. Already, Representative Corie Bush (MO) on one side of the party is calling for cuts, while on the other side Elaine Luria (VA) is warning against cutbacks in Navy aircraft carriers. Luria’s VA 2nd District is home to the Huntington-Ingalls shipyard, which turns out a carrier every three years at a price of 12+ billion dollars, not including the cost of 75 aircraft, munitions, and 5,000+ sailors. Virginia Democratic Senators Kaine and Warner will likely take Luria’s position as well.
The Pale Scot
@Robert Sneddon:
The shortcomings of the QEs is that without catapults they cannot launch E-2 radar planes or proper refueling tanker support. They have helicopters with AD pods, from what I know they’re intended for low altitude intruder coverage. Spending all that money but skimping on catapults puts a limitation on strike range and AirCap endurance. Those slingshots are very useful
Fair Economist
@Chetan Murthy: I do think “not paying top dollar” is a significant part of Europe’s trouble. The US has, OTTOMH, major contracts with 4 different suppliers (Pfizer, Moderna, J&J, and AstraZenica). Part of the point is that if one or even two suppliers have big problems we’ll still have a lot of vaccine. If all deliver, we’ll have a huge oversupply (= badly overpaid).
But the cost-benefit is all in favor of the US’s approach. Based on trillions of damage over a year, the cost of COVID to the US is on the order of ten billion dollars per day. Europe’s action saved them a few hundred million in cheaper vaccine and maybe a few billion in less excess, but that is more than made up if the process delays the response by just a few hours – and it looks like the delay will be on the order of months.
This is one of the rare cases where the smart approach is to let the pharma companies have their extortionate profits.
Robert Sneddon
@The Pale Scot:
The QEs don’t have steam-generating plant to power conventional catapults since they use diesels and gas turbines to provide electric power to the main drive motors. The EMALS option was a possibility but the Yanks are still trying to debug this launch system themselves more than a decade after the QE design was finalised and the various shipyards in the UK started bending and welding steel plates to build them.
Carrying and operating tankers would cut seriously into storage space on a QE-sized carrier although it would be nice to have. The RN did experiment at one time tankering STOVL Harriers from helicopters but I don’t think it was really workable in the end.
As for carrying radar aircraft the F-35B itself is a radar sensor platform that outperforms pretty much anything built to do the job back in the 1990s and it’s stealthy too which helps in contested air. For everything else you’ve got radar satellites overhead 24/7.
Geminid
@The Pale Scot: In addition to smashing through the $10 billion cost barrier, the new Gerald Ford class aircraft carriers break ground with an electromagnetic launch system that reduces stress on aircraft compared to steam catapults. When he visited the Ford, trump declared his support for steam catapults, but the Navy was able to shine him off on this issue, probably saving a rash of nervous breakdowns among naval architects.
An interesting aspect of the Ford class is that it’s electrical generation capability is twice it’s current needs (not to make a pun). This could be to accomodate future laser energy weapons, which may or may not enable the carriers to survive attacks by hypersonic missiles. The Zumwalt class destroyers are similarly over-powered electrically.
And I was incorrect when I described a crew of 5,000. The Ford class carriers are intended to carry a crew of 4,400, which over time may save the price of the cost overruns.
Robert Sneddon
@Geminid: I think that 4,400 crew number includes an embarked Marine detachment as well as the complete air wing. The Ford-class CVNs are supposed to be more automated[1] and require less actual crew to sail than their predecessor class of CVNs but they will still have something like 1400 nuclear-rated engineering and operations staff on board as well as a thousand regular crew whereas the “conventionally” powered QE-class carriers have a total ship’s crew of 700 (the air wing and Marine detachment can raise this to 1600 souls on board depending). Given that the Royal Navy’s entire complement including other ships, subs, Naval air operations, shore establishments etc. runs to about 33,000 we simply couldn’t afford the crew for a single nuclear carrier never mind the two carriers minimum needed to keep one operational at all times.
[1] Stories abound that the automation of, for example, weapons handling on the keelplate Ford CVN is not meeting expectations.
WaterGirl
@Baud:
I think that was a typo, which is why the comment went into moderation. Just checking to see if that was the case.
WaterGirl
@WhatsMyNym: That was my guess. I went back and corrected it in your previous post.
Geminid
@Robert Sneddon: Yes, the Ford’s weapons handling did not meet expectations, especially since some of the elevators would not work. Two years and a couple hundred million bucks later they are thought to be up to snuff, and the Ford may actually deploy this year, four years after it was launched.
The question looming over these ships and the aircraft they carry is, will they be obsolete in 20 years? Technological advances may make the F-35 series the last generation of manned combat aircraft. And by 2040, it is possible that surface warships may be dinosaurs, and only submersibles will be able to survive in a world of relatively cheap hypersonic and ballistic missiles. But in addition to aircraft carriers, the Huntington-Ingalls shipyard also builds submarines, so it will survive, if only because Congresswoman Elaine Luria (VA-2) will probably be Chairman of the House Armed Services Commitee by then.
Michael Cain
It’s my understanding that the EU’s current mRNA vaccine production supply chain runs through the US (there are some exotic precursors). Also that if they interfere with deliveries of the finished vaccine to the US per contracts, they fear the US will respond by shutting down delivery of precursors. This situation changes around the end of April, I think.
JIT global supply chains are good when there are no unusual situations. Recall that a good part of the initial shortage of PPE in the US could be attributed to China closing the export door no matter that it violated contracts. I’m in the minority among liberals, but have fairly strong feelings that we ought to have shorter supply chains, and for critical components, that chain should be confined to the US. Vaccines are not the only thing. US car companies are in trouble because they can’t import enough ICs. The US military is going to have to make similar decisions about whether they go to Congress and ask them to prop up Intel, the only domestic company with a 10 nm production capability.
Cereal
The EU doesn’t really have the excuse of spending too much on the war budget. Certainly not the EU itself, and not really the member states either, certainly compared to the US. This penny-pinching was just dumb and a huge missed opportunity for the EU to convince more people towards further union.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Cereal: Yeah, “austerity” was a watchword in a lot of the EU especially in dealing with the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis. I distinctly recall, well before “Brexit”, the term “Grexit” being thrown around, not in terms of voluntary withdrawal but meaning forced ejection of Greece from the EU due to its economic crisis. The insistence on propping up the banks at the expense of workers also hit hard, and German insistence on austerity measures led to an acid comment on Athens streets about Angela Merkel: “she’s lucky that the title ‘most-reviled German chancellor’ was sewn up back in the mid-20th century”.