My point is fairness is in the eye of the beholder. What we're left with are contracts. And contractually, AstraZeneca seems to be in the right. The EU negotiated, at first glance (and to this non-expert), a poor agreement.

Whatever the means, as long as they are legal, we can and should force equal burden of delays.

I guess EU didn't play it the best way from political perspective, since we are now labeled as bad.

Still, I'm personally impressed that EU is actually able to do something of consequence in somewhat short time frame.

It's different--one is an executive action, the other contractual duty--but yes. Moreover, it doesn't solve the problem. The EU wants doses made in the UK. The EU doses have already been exported to the UK.

This whole thing looks incompetent on the EU's part, from the outside. First, the delays in signing. Second, the sloppiness of the contract. And third, the incompetence of the post-problem situation. The EU has something Britain wants--a trade deal. Strike a deal with the UK to get their vaccines. Instead, we have a song and dance, empty threats and name calling.

It's hard to imagine any such deal being countenanced by the UK government. It's clearly in the stronger position here, and after its response to the virus situation has had so many problems in most areas, the handling of the vaccine has so far been a rare but very welcome exception. It seems implausible the government would give up such a huge PR win and instead do something that would surely be represented as risking their citizens' lives or worse, even in the already extremely unlikely event that the EU offered a much better deal than the one just concluded after years of negotiations.

As long as government ministers can confidently confirm that they believe the UK/AZ agreement is solid and enough doses will be available to meet the schedule the government has stated, they can try to maintain a dignified silence on the EU/AZ situation and let it be seen as a dispute over a contract to which the UK is not a party. They have little to gain by getting involved and much to lose.

If the both the UK and the EU wanted a million doses each and AZ has the capacity to manufacture 5 million, then nothing stops them from entering into other agreements with countries in Africa, South America, or Oceania.

They probably overestimated their capacity and are now pushing back on deadlines. I don't have much to criticise AZ for on that since we've all been there, but you can't tell a paying customer that you have other customers that paid you first, when you signed a contract agreeing to meeting certain deadlines. It simply does not matter. Did AstraZeneca lie in their negotiations regarding their capacity? Let's also remember that this was likely brought up when discussing the funding for manufacturing sites in Europe and the UK.

If there is suffering, and if we can, we ease the suffering. The US and EU have bought way more vaccine doses than they need.

It even makes sense from a utilitarian perspective, as we live in a global market economy.

Since when did people become so nationalistic again? We're humans, first and foremost.

However this is not about how many vaccines have been bought, but how many are being delivered via current production. The US, EU, UK, etc have indeed bought more than they needed, but they won't (by definition) be using more than they needed - the extra purchases were due to spreading the production and vaccine approval risk to ensure that enough were available.

You could reasonably argue they shouldn't be vaccinating whole populations, by which I mean including low-risk elements, whilst poorer countries cannot vaccinate even high-risk ones. That's a different question though.

That being said, none of the short term measures curently being discussed, will help getting any doses earlier. And the total amount ordered is more than enough.