The core issue has nothing to do with Bitcoin: The environmental impact of "X" has to be priced into the product cost. That is a legal question at its core. I know that is easier said than done, but it is the only long term solution. CO2 certificates are one way to do it, and it already helps.
*X= Air Travel, Bitcoin, Cement... whatever creates large amount of CO2
And while we are at it: Overfishing is another huge tragedy of the commons that needs more attention.
True, but the author is highlighting bitcoin as being a massive net contributor to CO2 emissions on a significant growth trend. It gets reported as "Bitcoin now uses more energy than $country" every once in a while now:
Fully agree. Interesting enough, global CO2 certificates would not affect Bitcoin at all (unlike air travel and cement). In the case of Bitcoin they would simply mean that the price per hash rate goes up for everyone, and therefore the difficulty is reduced.
So... if Bitcoin can push politics to make better, more air(!)-tight rules for CO2 certificates faster, then it would be clearly have a net benefit for the world.
The side effect of this amazing BioNTech/Pfizer success: Meanwhile AstraZeneca is clearly only the second choice. At least locally here in my town (EU) people line up for Biontech, but the vaccination centers that offer AstraZeneca report up to 50% no shows.
Why is that? I'm in the biotech field and I hardly get any sense of one being better than the other? Is such knowledge spread via social media? (Which I avoid)
The 2nd key reason is that no other vaccine is backed up by so much real world data as BT because of Israel. That is the very topic of this thread. That is why I thought it is self-explanatory.
I wonder when sputnik V will be legalized.
In France you don't get to choose the vaccine (most of the time?) you know which one you'll receive but not in advance.
It's important to keep in mind that COVID is a danger for the entire planet at least until every nation on the planet is vaccinated.
As long as this virus can spread in unvaccinated populations, mutations are bound to happen and sooner or later they will be knockout mutations, circumventing current vaccine effects.
So no one on this planet is truly safe from future lockdown/pandemic status until we are all vaccinated. And even that is debatable.
Please note that the EU is the _only_ Western country that is currently exporting vaccines to the world. It is the US + UK that are blocking all exports. Even Canada gets its vaccines from the EU, since the US is not sending them any.
So yes, clearly the EU has made mistakes (fully agree with the 1st part of your post), but they had good intentions and it is not as bad as you make it sound.
No. The UK government publishes a list of medicines blocked for export[1] and the vaccine isn’t on the list. The EU is solely to blame for being at the back of the queue and are the only state I know of to threaten blocking exports.
Not much difference between using 100% of the locally produced doses locally and blocking it for export. Let's rephrase the question: which countries are the US and UK currently exporting vaccine to and in which quantities?
If you buy up all a local farmer’s apples for your cider business that is not protectionism. If you arrange for him to effectively become your sole supplier during your busy period that is not protectionism. It’s free trade, that well known opposite.
Hard enough to defend the EU’s protectionism and disorganisation when it’s just food, didn’t think I’d see anyone lining up to do it over vaccines.
That's literally apples and vaccines. In the future you might as well not bother with such pointless digressions.
Back on topic: recently read on CNN that the UK contract's exactly the same as the EU one (best effort) and it was signed later than the EU one even if it was negotiated earlier.
If we combine that with the fact that the UK is not exporting any vaccine and the EU is, including to the UK, it seems to me that the EU was right to be upset with AZ and put pressure on them.
The UK is being selfish and trying to make the EU look like the bad guy.
If you're unwilling to be civil and also unwilling to engage in the argument presented to you - even when made clear via analogy - then I'm not sure why you think anyone will bother to listen to you.
The UK is currently not exporting vaccines and there are no countries which are receiving vaccines from the UK.
This is what OP claimed and there is only one argument that can be made against that: a list of countries where the UK or the US is exporting vaccines. By now it should be clear to anyone reading this far that you can't provide that.
> there is only one argument that can be made against that
Again - no, there are other arguments against that, the best being that black and white thinking is a terrible way to analyse reality, the second best being that a list was provided above of medicines blocked for export by the UK and no SARS-COV-2 vaccines are on it.
If the logic evades you further it may help to ask a question: which vaccines are you exporting and is it because you are blocking exports?
That should make it clear that there are more possible reasons for exports not to happen than their being intentionally blocked.
Human beings are able to move past the narrow meaning of specific words and look at the bigger picture, which is that vaccines are neither leaving the UK, nor reaching other countries.
This is the measure that will be used to judge the UK. Whether the vaccine is on some list may be an aggravating factor, but it's otherwise immaterial.
> Human beings are able to move past the narrow meaning of specific words
How convenient. Considering you claimed one thing that was false and are now claiming another thing that is also false but would help make your original claim true because you say so, I think I'll stick with the "narrow" form of interpretation that humans have managed so well with up till now.
> This is the measure that will be used to judge the UK.
Only by those with such strong prejudices that it requires a reimagining of the English language and of logic to help protect them from having to re-examine their notions.
> Whether the vaccine is on some list may be an aggravating factor, but it's otherwise immaterial.
Unless you have evidence of the vaccine being blocked then it is material indeed, however inconvenient that is for you. Feel free to supply actual evidence of the vaccine being blocked that goes beyond "because I say so" and doesn't require pushing words beyond their actual meaning.
I've been trying to say for quite a while now that it doesn't matter why something/someone is not present where they should be, if the consequence is people will die. How hard can it be to understand that? :)
Every country they promised to, which is the core of the matter.
It's one thing to be upfront from the start about how you're going to independently produce vaccine for yourself first, ensuring nobody plans on receiving your production.
It's another entirely to promise to export and then later threaten to hold back.
The EU's local manufacturers were supplying non-locally because they had a contract to do that and the EU hadn't set up such a contract, or a contract at all. Usually, if you've not got a contract then you don't get a say, and usually, if other people set up a contract first, they get supplied first, which is why the EU tried to use other means, and because that jeopardises the most fundamental part of all trade - contracts - everyone condemned them. Quite rightly.
If the state (any state) would decide on this, we would have not any mRna vaccines because "obviously this new thing will not work and/or is too risky".. Remember that just a year ago the AZ vaccine was the clear front runner. That is also one of the reasons why the EU did not order enough/too late of Biontech.
These seem to be preliminary results; it is mentioned in the paragraph at the top and throughout the report. The estimated completion date is May 1st, according to the clinicaltrials.gov link.
Of course EU/UK/USA consider it. But none of these vaccines have provided any trustworthy data of their efficacy and safety. And none of the makers of these vaccines even applied to be used in EU/UK/USA.
If today's publication changes that status for Sputnik V remains to be seen. Still many open questions.
Well... maybe not. What the EU suspects is that vaccine that was produced in the EU with EU money was shipped to the UK in December. I have read that even until last week shipments went from the EU to the UK.
If so, AZ and/or the UK government are actively cheating the EU. Is it true? I guess time will tell.
From the reports we're seeing over here the claim is that until the Wrexham factory came online, we were producing the vaccine in the UK but shipping it to the Netherlands for fill and finish, and then it was shipped back. If that is the case then the EC is going to look a bit stupid. If it does turn out that AZ has been shipping vaccines fully produced in the EU to the UK then I can understand their anger more, although I think it's a bit daft to make a public fight out of it - to me it would make sense that early production would be routed to the UK as we approved the vaccine earlier, and we could get a head-start on vaccinating our most vulnerable population, and then when the EU approved it later we could have returned the favour and routed some of our production back that way. But I also understand that the UK hasn't exactly inspired...confidence in our generosity in recent years.
The EU doesn't own everything in the EU, it's not the Soviet Union (much as people like you seem to want it to be).
They aren't "EU vaccines". Astra Zeneca can ship them wherever they want based on contractual and legal practices. Those are privately owned AstraZeneca facilities. The idea that you can separate out "EU money" within a private company is also ridiculous.
If the EU wants to start playing games then other countries and corporations will simply remove the EU from supply chains etc. Japan and South Korea for example trusted that normal contractual and legal practices would be followed when they ordered vaccines produced in the EU, and are now publicly stating their concern.
Do you think they'll ever trust the EU again if it tries to violate their contractual rights on the moronic grounds that "they were made in the EU therefore they belong to the EU"?
Some journo sent an email that wasn't answered and suddenly they've "used" a random amount of money?
This is Astrazeneca, with a turnover of $24 BILLION. £336 million is a couple of days turnover for them. The accusation doesn't even stand up to the slightest little bit of scrutiny or common sense.
*X= Air Travel, Bitcoin, Cement... whatever creates large amount of CO2
And while we are at it: Overfishing is another huge tragedy of the commons that needs more attention.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons