N-TV had a curious story to lay out late yesterday, and it's worth a moment to examine.
Johnson and Johnson has a vaccine product that they are working on for Covid-19. It's developed in Europe (not the US). The company itself? Well....it's a US company.
This vaccine is kinda late in the game....even the company will admit that. They are working on emergency approval and if you were looking at various suggestions....they probably will get it by the end of March. At that point, their factory in Leiden, Netherlands....will start producing the stuff.
The amount? Based on contract chatter....400 million doses. Yeah....this will be a big deal. The purchaser? The EU itself.
But because there is no import-export agreement between the EU and the US....based on how things currently work (prepare yourself)....once the vaccine is made in Leiden and boxed up, it has to be shipped to the US, and then exported from there....back to Europe.
The way this is structured...it's a major problem.
EU bringing up this problem? No, that's also part of the amusing story. Austria's Chancellor Kurz....brought the issue up. The EU? Rather silent.
Adding more to this entire story? Well....the effective nature of the vaccine is 66-percent (the company itself admits that). Most of the vaccines have a higher effective nature number.
What has to happen here? The EU needs to step up....write a brief excuse for some import-export deal between the US and the EU, and hope that President Biden just looks the other way. Odds of this happening? Unknown.
It would be fairly funny if some plane took off with a massive amount of this vaccine from Amsterdam, and flew into the US....with the vaccine sitting there for three months while the EU plays some import-export game. Should the EU have thought about this problem a couple of months ago? You would think that, but these are strange times.
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