Elerond

Vaccine manufacturing uses global supply lines where over 60 countries participate to make those vaccines, but it is countries that do final steps in process that decide who gets the vaccines But vaccine hoarding accusations aren't because of that, but because of countries preventing of sell vaccines that they have not themselves approved because they want to keep them as insurance policy

Merck is manufacturer of Stromectol which is one of fewq ivermectin product that is approved for humans in USA and EU and they don't have any other products that compete against it when it comes to covid. Their statement sound more like that they fear law suits because of adverse effects without proven positive effects. https://www.merck.com/news/merck-statement-on-ivermectin-use-during-the-covid-19-pandemic/

For some reason drug's manufacture speaks against the drug Earlier this year ivermectin manufacturer Merck said there was “no scientific basis for a potential therapeutic effect against Covid-19” and “no meaningful evidence for clinical activity or clinical efficacy in patients with Covid-19.” https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/finnish_firm_earns_us_patent_for_covid_drug_containing_ivermectin_and_hydroxychloroquine/11946611 Although Finnish drug manufacturer Therapeutica Borealis says that in combination with other drugs and targeted correctly it will prevent infections. Although they have not yet proven that in clinical trials.

Viking era ended before we started keep records and Finnish were mostly receivers of viking raids instead of doing them, but probably there were some Finns that become vikings. There have been all sort of people during years. Cotters, serfs, teachers, blacksmiths, yeomen, soldiers, prisoners of war (maybe surprising but when you are kept as ransom for several decades you probably could count it as occupation I guess) etc.

That is question that people asked during last summer protest in USA

They are breaking EU's policies not sell weapons to countries that use them to start conflicts or break human rights, but that policy has never been strong until, but lately Germany has started to act like it should be actually be followed. I am not really any way passionate about Kosovo, just commenting your post because I by chance knew that it wasn't that accurate

That article don't isn't accurate about Germany's law https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/research/armaments/transfers/transparency/national_reports/germany/Germany_03_english.pdf I am originally from Finland, my family has lived here at least from 13th century when church started to keep record of Finnish people.

Germany recognizes Kosovo as independent state with 96 other countries. Kosovo is also member of World Bank, World Customs Organization and International Monetary Fund, so at least two formal institutions recognize it. Kosovo is also member of Venice Council Also Germany has banned sales of small side arms to non-allies (EU, Nato, Switzerland, New Zealand and Australia) Kosovo has standing army, Kosovo Armed Forces transformed form Kosovo Security Force in 2018. Germany didn't ban from bigger weapon systems, because French and British manufactures who use German parts were effected by them as they could not sell stuff to Saudi Arabia. I am only able to find that H&K was seeking license to sell weapons to Kosovo. Not that they have got such license.

Soap is best against SARS-CoV-2, because it destroys it protein shell and prevents it from infecting cells. Sanitizer is bit less effective but good to use if you aren't able to wash your hands with soap.

Millions. infants died in malnutrition, caused by combination of several factors. Powdered milk was already lacking some nutriments Water in poorer countries contained impurities that caused that powdered milk didn't mix well which caused that babies bodies had difficulties to adsorb nutrients from the milk and leading to diseases in infants. Powdered milk was relatively expensive, lots of people used too much water in order to save powder, causing nutrient amount that babies got from the milk to close to zero. Using milk powder often leads in decrease of milk that mother produces

https://www.euro.who.int/en/media-centre/events/events/2021/04/european-immunization-week-2021/news/news/2021/04/covax-helps-make-equitable-access-to-covid-19-vaccines-a-reality-in-the-who-european-region COVAX aims to deliver 2 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines by the end of the year, which should be enough to protect high-risk and vulnerable people, including frontline health workers. Its goal is to ensure equitable access for all participating economies across the globe, regardless of size or income level. So far, COVAX has shipped over 40.5 million COVID-19 vaccines to 118 participants. This includes both self-financing and funded countries and territories. Within the Region, COVAX has delivered initial batches of Pfizer–BioNTech and AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine doses to Albania, Andorra, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, the Republic of Moldova, Serbia, Tajikistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan, as well as Kosovo (in accordance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244 [1999]). Team Europe, which brings together the European Union and its Member States, is one of the lead contributors to COVAX, with over €2.2 billion pledged to help secure 1.3 billion doses of vaccines for 92 low- and middle-income countries by the end of 2021. We need only 10 billion dozes more and we can put this pandemic behind us.

I would not call it objective source of information when your source itself says that it is just their opinion EDIT: It seems that neither of the authors of that opinion piece have any expertise on virology

EU doesn't have funds to offer, as it doesn't have any taxation or borrowing powers. All its money come from member states in members fees, which are negotiated by member states during EU's budget negotiations and EU's budget is usually decided for 7 years to future. EU's budget has some unallocated funds, which EU's commission can use in situations like this, but usually if there is need for billions of euros worth funding then member states need to either decide emergency funding or renegotiate EU's budget. 3 billion euros may sound quite small when you compare it to sums that are thrown around in negotiations between western economies, but it is ~5% of Belarus GDP, and offer also includes 'magical' promises of lifting sanctions against Belarus, which value is difficult to calculate, but it would have massive effect in Belarus economy even in most pessimistic estimates.

Basically they are barring direct flight from central Europe to Moscow, which are currently almost non-existent, as almost all other flights that enter in Russian air space don't go over Belarus

It was really funding of development issue considering that BioNTech got their vaccine working already in January 2020. Issue has been to test it and mass produce it. Even though they got their vaccine working lab in January 2020 it wasn't until April 2020 when they were able to start clinical tries after signing agreement with Pfizer (who gave them 113 million dollars. EU then gave them 100 million euros and Germany gave them 375 million euros, so that they could finish clinical tries and start mass production. Pfizer for some reason decided not to take money from US warp speed fund ) and it took all the way to December 2020 to get approval for the vaccine. Scaling up vaccine production has not been easy for Pfizer as vaccine is produced in three stages. First stage is molecular cloning of DNA plasmids which is done in one factory in USA where it is transferred to stage two facilities, which there are two, one in USA and one in Germany, where they produce desired mRNA strands. From these facilities mRNA strands are transferred to stage three facilities, where mRNA strands are combined with lipid nanoparticles and filled in vials and frozen. There are also only two stage three facilities, one in USA and one in Belgium. All the vaccine dozes outside of USA are finalized in factory in Belgium (meaning that Pfizer vaccines that go to other parts of america than USA need two flights over Atlantic ocean). Whole production sequence according to BioNTech-Pfizer took from start to finish 110 days in February 2021 and they were aiming to reduce it 60 days. Also Pfizer revealed that they use 280 components produced in 19 different countries to make the vaccine. BioNTech signed contract with German production facility to expand their vaccine production capacity (using those funds they got from the government) in September 2020. Expansion is estimated to be ready end of this year and then facility should be able to produce 750 million dozes per year. In April Pfizer got authorization to scale up their production facility in Belgium. So it was more of question of where existing production facilities were located and as building new facilities just takes their time.

Consider that 1-year old has usually got ~15 vaccination shot against more deadly diseases. Even though medical experts use high caution principal towards covid vaccines, all the vaccines that have been approved so far have been effective and safer than almost all the medicine that you commonly use. And even though covid is only rarely dangerous for children, vaccines have been so far much much less dangerous to anybody.

They didn't start from zero, adenoviruses are used in quite lot other medicines (cancer etc.) which is why they were able to reach their current capacity. But they estimated that they could increase their capacity to hundreds of millions dozes in months, which proven to be much more difficult than they anticipated. And it is even more difficult if there isn't existing facilities to produce adenoviruses.

"Brazil should be licensing then producing their own vaccines en masse (as with local Sputnik)" That is easier said than done, as scaling up adenovirus has turn out to be more complex than was anticipated which is why AZ, Sputnik and J&J all have failed to match predicted production numbers

Best explanation how they have connected those solar fields is following 11.1 Transmission and distribution Most solar power systems in Germany are connected to the decentralized low-voltage grid (Figure 21) and generate solar power consumption. As a result, solar power is mainly fed in decentrally and hardly demands to expand the German national transmission grid. High PV system density in a low voltage grid section may cause the electricity production to exceed the power consumption in this section on sunny days¸ due to the high simultaneity factor. Transformers then feed power back into the medium-voltage grid. At very high plant densities, the transformer station can reach its power limit. An even distribution of PV installations over the network sections reduces the need for expansion. PV power plants are decentralized and well distributed thereby accommodating the feedin and distribution of the existing electricity grid. Large PV power plants or a local accumulation of smaller plants in sparsely populated regions require that the distribution network and the transformer stations are reinforced at certain sites. The further expansion of PV should be geographically even more consumption-friendly, in order to simplify the distribution of solar electricity. For example, Brandenburg or Mecklenburg-Vorpommern have installed 3 to 4 times more PV power per inhabitant than the Saarland, NRW, Saxony or Hesse [AEE2]. https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/en/documents/publications/studies/recent-facts-about-photovoltaics-in-germany.pdf Page 31.

Germans at least try to prove you wrong, or at least it feels like that Germany is full of solar panel fields like in above picture

For example Nokia already introduced process to reuse 100% of materials in lithium batteries in early 2000s. But battery recycling has seen some downturn after Nokia left cell phone making business. And of course larger batteries need larger processing systems than those which Nokia developed for cell phone batteries. Also in case of soil and water pollution, coal mining, fracking and drilling oil also cause massive amount of that, so badly recycled lithium batteries aren't really adding amount of soil and water pollution (in comparison if same energy would be produced using either coal or oil) in world put moving it to different locations.

Some of those energy storages are used regular base to sustain load in electric grid and district heating here. All the dam here have artificial lake, so that water flow can be controlled. (Hydropower makes 20% of Finland's total electric production) Wind parks have batteries and hydrogen production plant in order to balance output to electric grid and store overproduction. (Wind parks make 10% of Finland's electric production) Geothermal storages are used to store excess heat during summers to increase production capacity during winters. (geothermal heating, makes 33% of FInland's heat production) But there is no point for example to first transform kinetic energy from wind to electricity and then transform it chemical or potential energy and then back to electricity unless it is excess energy that can't be fed in electric grid. Because there isn't way where you can transform electricity to another energy form with 100% efficiency (some of that energy always transforms in form that can't be stored )

You store energy which can be used to produce electricity Potential energy storages like artificial lakes have been used from beginning of hydropower Batteries are also quite old invention. Using electrolysis to split water to hydrogen and oxygen is also couple hundred years old invention Geothermal storages are bit newer invention Compressed air/steam/liquid can also be used store energy NASA has experimented with FES/Flywheel energy storages in which energy is stored as rotational energy By lifting solid masses to high can also used as potential energy storages And there are quite lot other ways to store energy. So storing energy/electricity isn't the problem. Problems are scale and poor efficiency, especially when form of energy transformed multiple times.

There are other drawbacks in turbines than space. Like for example it is more difficult to control how much electricity is produced and you need temporal storages, like batteries, hydrogen etc.. Also noise pollution and turbines killing birds are problems. Need to build in windy locations, which creates its own challenges for transmission. Also repair routes and recycling materials from the mills need to be taken in account. Nuclear plants also take lots of space and they need much more additional infrastructure. Like for example hundreds of kilometres of tunnels to store the nuclear waste. Massive cooling systems (which of course can be utilized in district heating). Uranium mines, storages for uranium ore. Processing plants for uranium ore, urania/yellowcake, uranium hexafluoride,uranium oxide and nuclear fuel (uranium rods). Storage spaces for ore, intermediate products and fuel/rods. Transportation for ore, intermediate products and fuel/rods. Cooling storages for used rods. Transportation for nuclear waste. Also you need lots of work force and automation from start to end of the supply line. Also you need to have complex repair plans and workers with know how to repair such complex systems. And addition to that you need natural disaster and force major plans. Also transmitting so much energy quite lot infrastructure and controlling systems. It isn't that easy for Rosatom and CNNC and they also need to work with lots of private companies and state owned actors in their projects.

Sorry for double post. Even though video is 30 minutes long I would recommend to watch it as it gives nice insight what industrial partnerships may cause