A string of vaccine bungles on the Continent threatens health and the global economy.
www.wsj.com
Opinion - indeed, because the facts are certainly thin on the ground there. I apologize if this seems overly testy, but there's enough actual problems to go round, without people gratuitously inventing imaginary ones.
I can't read beyond the paywall, but just the free preview contains plenty enough nonsense:
WSJ said:
It’s hard to think of a recent fiasco that can match the European Union’s Covid vaccine rollout.
Define recent, because I certainly can - it's even recent enough to actually be related the same pandemic... And it caused Israel, the US and UK to have two to three times the number infections per capita as Germany today. Even Italy, despite their horrific first wave, is doing better by this standard. Two thumbs up for the successful vaccination campaigns - I am genuinely happy for it! But let's not forget over this rejoicing everything that went wrong over the 12 months before! Gosh, memories are short, aren't they?
WSJ said:
Protectionism, mercantilism, bureaucratic ineptitude, lack of political accountability, crippling safety-ism—it’s all here.
Protectionism? Sure, but not in a way that reflects well on the US or UK. While there apparently is no outright ban on export of vaccine from the UK (as the EU originally claimed in error), this is sophistry in practice: the bottom line remains that no doses appear to be leaving the UK even as there are regular shipments of EU-made vaccines to the country. Poor negotiating tactics put the EU in a position of having to threaten measures with really bad optics in order to secure a fair share, but we should not forget that these would merely mirror the effect of what the UK is already doing.
WSJ said:
As the pandemic moves into its reopening phase, Europe’s mistakes will cost the rest of the world economically as the Continent struggles to exit lockdowns.
If that's the author's biggest concern here, I rest my case.
WSJ said:
Take the latest fumble first. Various European regulators and politicians spent this week claiming the Oxford/ AstraZeneca vaccine—the only one currently widely available in the EU—might be unsafe, only to rethink and now beg people to start accepting it.
1) The European regulator (EMA) actually (and sensibly in my view, as I stated earlier) maintained throughout this debate that the benefits of the AZ jab outweighed any risk of clots. It was local regulators who decided to suspend vaccination - just to set the record straight that in this particular instance the problem is not to be found in Brussels.
2) Again: the AZ vaccine does (albeit VERY rarely) cause a dangerous form of thrombosis. That is all but proven at this point, and had the threat been handled in the cavalier fashion advocated in the US & UK, we might not know this and have a way of treating such cases now. No, the vaccination campaign should not have been interrupted, given the high case numbers, the demographic of those missing their shots as a result and AZ's reputation with the general public. But that's a separate issue - inextricably linking one to the other is fallacious and disingenuous.
3) Thanks to their continued inability to deliver, the AZ vaccine is actually not widely available in the EU, let alone the only one. First quarter numbers, adjusted for known shortfalls: BioNTech/Pfizer 66M, Moderna 10M, Astra-Zeneca 30M - this latter was supposed to be 90M, with the other two notably now supplying as contracted. I do think AZ are getting way more flak than they deserve, but by god they aren't exactly helping their own case!*
A single sentence, containing 3 patently incorrect claims which would have been easy to check. I guess the paywall operates as a blessing in disguise here.
* Take this, for instance:
www.telegraph.co.uk
It isn't - both decisions were supportable with cold-hard data (or lack thereof). There are good indications that the blood clot risk (minuscule as it is in any case) is indeed age-related, and given the current state of the vaccination campaign in France, few people below 55 would be eligible for a shot anyway. The initial cut-off at age 65 was based on AZ not supplying sufficient study results for a sound judgement on efficacy in old people to be made. So once more, while AZ is taking more criticism than objectively warranted, the fact that they failed to cut their exposure to such is on them - the other two manufactures prove that it's possible.
I would certainly agree that there was an overabundance of caution in both the above decisions which was inappropriate to a pandemic situation, but "completely crackers"? Completely crackers is how I would characterize an eminent scientist refusing to acknowledge the need to investigate risks, in support of political point-scoring!
www.reuters.com
