@Gerard: they don’t have a decent reputation anymore. They’re one step away from rogue state status

@Gerard: the UK demanding that a healthy 35 year old should get a jab ahead of a 75 year old Italian because they have a contract is not a good look, neither is the EU starving them of scheduled second doses. The obvious compromise for the next 3 months is that the UK keep their own AZ while AZ try and make up EU shortfalls using EU factories. The EU licence Pfizer to ship enough vaccines to the UK to meet it’s second dose commitments.
It would also help if EU countries push out Pfizer second jab as all current reviews show no ill effects and a possible increase in efficacy.

@Marc Power: EU exports : 45,000,000
USA exports : 4,000,000
UK exports : 0

@Paul Furey: the UK has shown its true colours over the past 4 plus years.

@Marc Power: Like the EU

@How is it only Wednesday?: they are in trouble with 26 million first doses and only 2 million second dose…with a supply problem looming. And so many here fell for their “brilliant vaccination strategy” . Those people are more interested in slating our own.

@Peter Cavey: the EU will do nothing ever only pi$$ down on its own citizens! Con der leyn out of her depth!

@Liam O Connor: blah blah blah what did the Romans ever do for us etc.

@Pseud O’Nym: one thing of many they did was make the citizens of this country carry the debt of French and German bondholders, bla bla

@How is it only Wednesday?:
Absolute lies… one of the key components for the Pfizer Biontech vaccine is made in the UK and exported ALL for EU use.
Von der Leyen and Macron trashed the rep’ of the AZ vaccine in the EU exaggerating the Blood clot story and now 1/3 rd of Germans and half the French say they will not have the AZ jab. The EU procurement was dire and now they blame us , they are no better than Bojo and there are plenty of Remain voters here in the UK sickened by the EU stance of late. I had a look over the wereend in Le Monde, Figaro , Did Welt and La Stampa to gsuge the mood music (read the comments) many Europeans are appalled at Von der Leyen , Macron and Merkel so your pathetic Brit bashing wont wash. Go educate yourself you narrow minded hate filled bore.

@Heidi Cain: oh Wow Heidi.. slam dunk. People here perennially blame everything on the Brits anything but look at ourselves. Take the lack of direct response to your comment to the bank, it’s a good as gold.

@Cez Miname: people here perennially blame ourselves for everything

@Heidi Cain: where are the EU blaming the UK, the UK refuses to share vaccines produced in the UK, is this true? Now explain to me what this mythical component is that he UK makes? All of the the high priority people in the UK are close to being vaccinated. 1/3 of those vaccines have been produced in Europe, now explain to me without whataboutery, why the EU high priorities should not now be prioritized over under 50′s in the UK?

@Paul Furey: Correct they took a giant leap and hoped for the best. That seems to be their strategy with everything now

@Liam O Connor: truth hurts people here who feel being ruled by bureaucrats in Brussels is somehow empowering..

@Liam O Connor: I have never seen such utter BS from a single source, fact check much?

@Ray Finn: I think you are a little t h ic k Ray I was talking aboout people like Furey onTHIS thread blaming Britain and look up Croda in Yorkshire you d e m e n t e d T O O L….they make and export a vital lipid for Pfizer jab..Go educate yourself

@Patricia O’Reilly: Produced by Anglo Swedish firm
Run by a Frenchman
The biggest share in its vaccine came from the USA.
The bulk of the production is happening in India.
The multinational Oxford vaccine team is joint led by a scientist from Dublin.

@John McG: oh wow can you show me a copy of the contract so I see for myself you seem to have studied it or are you like me relying on what we are fed by the media and spin doctors

@: The EU published the contract, here’s a link https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_21_302
or just google it .

@: Show you the contract? It’s basic common sense. What John McG said is probably right. Contracts don’t work on a first come first serve basis… It’s whatever has been agreed to in the covenant of the contract. So educate yourself on contract law before accusing people of being uninformed…

@: So why dont they test it in Court?…Why because the EU would lose… They fouled up the contracts with their ( i n e p t) lawyers…they put all their eggs in one basket in terms of procurement, banking on the next to u s e l e s s s Sanofi vax

@John McG: The problem with the EU contract is they didn’t use UK contract law. There is a reason so much contract law is conducted in the UK because there’s no ambiguity, if it’s in the contract it is a part of the contract. UK built factories from the ground up in the expectation of what was coming down the line, the EU didn’t & now it’s whinging. There is only one winner in a vaccine war & thats the one that holds all the cards or ingredients needed to manufacture it & as one of the main ingredients comes from either Canada or the UK that winner won’t be the EU. The Soviet Union collapsed because it wanted to centralise everything the EU should check the history books it wont have to go back too far!

@: suggest you read more.

@D. Memery: I assume your 2% is based on confirmed cases. The actual number of cases in Ireland is likely to be many multiples of confirmed cases

@D. Memery: sure – see link below. I think you are referring to ‘case fatality rate ‘ (deaths as % of confirmed cases). The number of actual cases is far higher (as many as 10x). The actual infection to death rate is referred to as ‘infection fatality rate’, or IFR. The below article refers to the most recent study by the WHO (it also contains a link to the actual study), which found and IFR of between 0.5% and 1%. Even if it is higher (let’s say 1.5%) the UK vaccination program will have ready reduced the IFR to below 0.1%, which is the flu IFR:

@D. Memery: https://amp-ft-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/amp.ft.com/content/879f2a2b-e366-47ac-b67a-8d1326d40b5e?amp_js_v=a6&amp_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQHKAFQArABIA%3D%3D#aoh=16164109315886&amp_ct=1616410945924&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcontent%2F879f2a2b-e366-47ac-b67a-8d1326d40b5e

@Jason Shortt: the FT article may be behind a pay wall. Here is a link to the latest WHO stidy: – https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/estimating-mortality-from-covid-19

@Jason Shortt: 26 million first doses and only 2 million second doses and a supply problem looming. They could have had 14 million on their second dose. They have screwed up.

@Jason Shortt: for anyone who does not want to read the study, here is the relevant extrwct: “estimates of IFR converging at approximately 0.5 – 1% [10-12].”

@Mickety Dee: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/?fbclid=IwAR01IQk5w3Z5385KyQcYfsiXyuZYlWNTnyQVDN45M7_LHpkpB7Tngr1nsdU
All your info there.

@Paul Furey: let’s say the IFR is 1.2% (its lower than that but 1.2% should be uncontroversial) and the UK has vaccinated 80% of the vulnerable (it’s much higher than that) and the first dose of the vaccine if 70% effective (again, its higher than that, but I’m suggesting these figures as a ‘worst case’ scenario) simple maths would indicate a new IFR of 0.072%, which is about 25% less deadly than even the most pessimistic calculations of the flu death rate.

@Jason Shortt: correction, current UK desth rate likely to be 25% less than most optimistic estimates of flu death rate (flu estimated to kill 0.1% to 0.2% of those infected.

@Jason Shortt: you are 100 percent right..if he reneges on unlocking I will be happy to go on a rally. Sick to the back teeth of this draconian lockdown

@D. Memery: Rubbish, 3% of 67 million (UK population) is a tad over 2 Million lol

@Paul Furey: & yet they still delivered 870,000 vaccinations yesterday & 760,000 the day before. I don’t believe they are running short of anything that is just wishful thinking from the Brit haters on here & in the EU

@Paul Furey: can almost hear you “Whoop!” at the end of that comment. Can’t see you’re coming from any good place.

@Dec: dont let the facts get in the way of your h a t e fuelled r a n t . The UK export a key component of the Pfizer Biontech vax and it ONLY goes to the EU

@Dec: AstraZeneca are manufacturing vaccine all over the world, the US, EU, Australia, India, UK etc It doesn’t matter what factory they use or where that factory is located, the UK 12 months ago had no capacity to manufacture vaccine whatsoever it only has a tiny manufacturing capacity but they are building more & more what are we doing to help ourselves?

@Heidi Cain: If true, the only explanation why your government is not banning the export of that “key component” is that they can’t make the vaccine from it. How many British made doses of vaccine have you exported so far? Hate fuelled rant indeed!

@Valthebear: why don’t you enlighten me instead of just being patronising

@Eoin Jackson: well actually Europe was saved by Russia in WWII because they engaged up to 80% of German military resources and manpower. Can you imagine what might have happened if Germany employed all 100% of its manpower and resources on the UK and not just 20%?

@Eoin Jackson: Russia had more to do with winning WWII than US.

@Goran Josifov and @el_duderino: apologies should have given Russia a deserved shout out too, you are both correct, i was focusing on the war this side of Europe but you are spot on in what you say. Either way back to my original point anyway, the UK had very very little to do with it. However if you listen to the brits you’d swear churchill beat hitler in a one on one fist fight to the death with no help from anyone. The UK lost that war and got bailed out but like to engage in full blown propaganda to gloss over the fact.

@Eoin Jackson: full of c r a p. The Brits defeated Rommel in North Africa which was one turning point of the war. My own great Uncle a fine man from Roscommon was fighting with the “Desert Rats” 2 years before the o i l y Dev’ opened a book of condolence for the Fuherer. Many Brits and fine Irish plus Commonwealth citizens lost their lives fighting for freedom in Europe. If the RAF had not won the B of Britain there is no way the US could have used our islands as a launch pad for the allied invasion of Europe. And Churchill a man of many faults but it was HE who persuaded FDR to step in and abandon their years of isolationism. Your hatred , contempt and sheer i g n orance in that statement belittled the efforts of many heroic Irish men who served in WW2

@Goran Josifov: You might find the Germans were bombed to oblivion from the Air while they were fighting Russia which is why Russia gave medals out to the RAF to show their gratitude.

@Heidi Cain: It is well documented the US declared war on Germany and Italy after they first declared war on the US days after the Pearl Harbour attack. Churchill did not convince FDR to join.

@Eoin Jackson: I’m a proud yank and even I don’t believe that but exactly proves my point about an ungrateful and resentful Europe. Thank for that!

@Heidi Cain: Pointless trying to educate a bigot,

@El_Duderino: yep, the ruskies certainly deserve a good deal of note for their Great War effort but let’s be honest, they just substituted one oppressive tyrannical murderous regime with another. Don’t we remember the Cold War? Stalin or Churchill… difficult choice? Should we be speaking German, Russian or English?

@Heidi Cain: Forgive them Heidi, they’re suffering from a a century of anti British indoctrination. Like the yanks, the Brits are largely bothers and cousins to the Irish by but from what I find here they prefer strangers continentals to family. Go figure.

@Cez Miname: sorry the Irish attitude might be resentful to the British… maybe we should thank them for the 800 years of oppression of our people and the occupation of our lands (some of which are still occupied and caused a massive issue with brexit) or maybe we should thank them for the famine they drastically exacerbated in this country. How truly ungrateful we are. To suggest the Irish are ungrateful to the British only highlights your ignorance to be honest. Maybe i should thank them for shooting my ancestors in the back while picking vegetables on their farm. So many reasons to be thankful, don’t know where to start…

@Cez Miname: oh also would like to add i had relatives who fought with Britain during WW2. To suggest me saying they would have lost the war on the western front if it were not for American intervention is not disrespectful to them and their memory, it is simply fact.

@Cez Miname: to suggest ireland should be grateful to the British is like saying Americans should be grateful to Osama Bin for giving them a reason to enter the middle east…

@Cez Miname: The UK saved nobody, the allies were from all across the world.

@Cez Miname: Its not indoctrination at all. It is called history. if how they treated us and still try to a lot of the time is not very brotherly

@Eoin Jackson: 800 years of British oppression were the Normans British? Was William of orange British? To be honest a lot of the Monarchs were not British and the majority were not English either.

@Gary Kearney: You need help…lol The British treated you so badly that nearly a third of people in GB have Irish ancestry..lol 10% of people in England have Grandparents born in Ireland thats more than Ireland, the majority are still alive and most of them are living in Ireland.

You talk about a group of people that the vast majority of them were peasant and had nothing to do with what happened to people in Ireland, what to people in Ireland actually happened to them as well because they were persecuted for being Catholics, they were murdered by the same tyrants, they never had no choice about happened because like the Irish they were not allowed a vote, it was 1918 when all men over 21 and women over 30 were allowed to vote then 1928 when all women over 21 were allowed it was not until 1969 when everyone over 18 was allowed to vote. It was the late 1200s when the first workhouse opened and 1948 when the last 1 closed for hundreds of years 6 to 12% of the population lived in them, do you honesty blame these people for what happened in Ireland?

It was the nobility, the elites and even the clergy in every European country that persecuted people but not the vast majority of people who were peasants who never persecuted anyone.

@On the right side: do you ever wonder why nearly a third of people have Irish ancestry? Did you ever wonder why the irish had to travel to Britain for work and to prospect of feeding their families?! It was due to the absolute state the British let this country in. Also funny you should bring up the irish in the UK. It was not that long ago there would be a regular sign hanging outside nearly ever hospitality building in england, it read “No blacks, No irish”. Yeah we were teated wonderfully by the British. Skipped over the famine part too i see. No comment on that. You sure you don’t want to talk about the forced export of the remaining food in the country and the enforced slave labour of the Irish people on the famine roads? Or who would you like to abdicate that responsibility too?

@Eoin Jackson: This is about the EU and vaccines and you have to make it about World War 2 . AnIDIOT of the highest order

@Darren Anthony Corr: the UK government haven’t complained about anything it’s the EU that have threatened to block exports. The UK government have actually been very restrained.