Different type of vaccine being developed at Scottish factory of a French company - an “inactivated whole virus” - UK task force secured 60m dose preorder in July for €470m with options for 130m more 2022-25, invested in factory. EU finalised first order of 30m this month.

Basically the Government through @katebingham acted like a venture capital fund, funding many vaccine candidates, expensively, across different types of tech, with companies from different countries (at time of some scepticism that a working vaccine could be produced so quickly)
Though despite the fact French Valneva had been funded for its vaccines in general in 2018 by EU’s investment bank, UK funding guaranteed its production in UK (speculative VC style investment) - similarly UK signed deal with Pfizer for German developed/ funded Biontech vaccine
UK approach explicitly focussed on speed (and boosting poor UK vaccine supply chain), at expense of cost. cost of individual batches, and cost of investing in spread of vaccines, not all would eventually be needed/ used...

EU focussed on lower price, & helping smaller EU nations
approach with Astra Zeneca went further - UK Govt via Matt Hancock involved in matchmaking AZ with Oxford University, funded early clinical trials that eg enabled private jets to ferry samples etc - 100m doses and pricing at cost were part of that deal struck at April wave 1 peak
Important thing is AZ was not a vaccine specialist - alliance was encouraged by Govt, ie other possible ones being considered by Ox were effectively blocked by Hancock because of national interest

Not sure EU approach clocks intimate involvement/ risk taken by UK Govt here...
good news for everyone, is that UK should, in theory, have access to too much vaccine over course of this year, and could therefore be in a position to help. Already tens of millions of Oxford vaccine is being mass manufactured in India and shipped to other developing countries..
appropriate analogy here with EU would have been it at an early stage funding and developing Biontech in Germany (it did).

But then at point Biontech did a deal with Pfizer, either have blocked that or insisted on first use in the EU, and paid handsomely, over odds for pleasure
Government playing EU-AZ spat very straight - even AZ supply chain stretches into EU.

And we don’t know which is the best performing vaccine, and that matters as we expect this will become an annual event...

UK, may yet be reliant on EU vaccines in future...
Things to discuss:

Paying over odds for quicker vaccines, & for some vaccines which will never be used can still be vg value for money vs lockdown cost.

Did UK turn necessity of coping with poor vaccine supply chain to advantage?

Were EU listening overly to its big Pharma cos?

More from Finance

If you want to become financially independent and don't know where to start, here is a thread that will help you get started

/THREAD/

1. Review your expenses and make a budget

It will help you see where you overspend, make a plan to save, pay down debt and start


2. Set your investing and retirement goals

How much do you need to support yourself in retirement and when do you want to


3. The earlier you start investing, the better.

Here's why and how time and compounding can become your


4. Invest in an index fund

It's easy, safe, cheap, and the best choice for a beginner in investing, with not much time for
Here are all the threads posted by @AdityaTodmal and @niki_poojary in January: 🧵

• 8 powerful ways to use Twitter
• Power of Stocks
• 14 Trading Strategies
• Basics of Derivatives (3 parts)
• Technical Analysis for all sectors
• Tweets of the week
• Books on Futures

All the Top 10 tweets threads I have ever posted to date:


Basics of Derivatives Part 1:


8 powerful ways to use Twitter:


Basics of Derivatives Part 2:
Inflation is coming, inflation is coming!

Last month I wrote about the distinction between long-term secular inflation and shorter-term cyclical inflation

It has been clear for several months that we are in the middle of a cyclical rise in


The full thread can be reviewed here:


Today's PPI report should have been expected to surprise to the upside as the leading indicators of inflation have been screaming to the upside for months!

Here is the ISM prices paid index, cumulated into a growth rate

3/


Industrial commodity prices have also seen a major acceleration for months.

4/


So today's PPI report was in line with the leads, suggesting that we have a cyclical upturn in inflation that is * primarily concentrated in the manufacturing sector *

This is a key point.

5/

You May Also Like