For weeks, we have had to listen to the sickening cacophony of vile Tory nationalists bleating about the superiority of Brexit Britain in relation to the development and roll-out of Covid vaccinations. Vaccine nationalism is just the latest form of nationalism to spread like cancer, dividing workers against each other.
Listening to the Tories, or their vile, slimey mouthpieces, such as the Daily Mail's Andrew Pierce, who is allowed to spread his filth each week on Sky News, as well as in the gutter press, you would think that it was Boris Johnson or Matt Hancock who had themselves developed the vaccine and ensured its roll-out. The truth is, of course, that the first vaccine produced, the Pfizer-Biontech jab, was developed entirely within the EU, and by Turkish scientists. Astra-Zeneca, whilst, like all big pharma companies, dependent on the medical-industrial complex, is not some arm of the British state, but a large multinational company. Indeed, all of the big pharma companies that have produced the extensive range of vaccines now available are multi-national corporations. They all rely on shared knowledge produced by scientists across the globe. Anyone who thinks that this would have been assisted by having Boris Johnson or Matt Hancock in control of these companies, or some state bureaucrat, like those that have completely mishandled the NHS response to the pandemic, is living on another planet.
Faced with mounting disaster from its Brexit policy, the Tories needed to distract attention, and to provide some justification for that policy by sinking even deeper into the nationalist mire. The suggestion that Britain had ben enabled to introduce vaccines sooner, because of not being bound by EU bureaucracy was a lie. Britain began to roll-out jabs whilst it was still inside the EU Transition Period. Every EU country is able to have done the same. The real problem for the EU, has actually been that, its failure to properly integrate - the thing the Brexiters most oppose - left it without an EU wide strategy, and so different countries within the EU went their own way. Its an argument against Brexit not for it.
Different EU states have seen different levels of take-up of the jabs, because of high levels of vaccine skepticism. That is not surprising given the number of actual scandals that have developed over the years. Things like Thalidomide are not a rumour, and the best way of dealing with the Anti-Vaxxers is to ensure that before any medicines are released into the public domain, they are as near to 100% safe as they can be made, so as to avoid any future such tragedies. The EU has done that, whilst Britain trying to score Brexit points rushed to make its vaccines available. So, when its found that some vaccines had not been exhaustively tested on certain age groups, its not surprising when other countries, withdraw their backing for their use in these groups.
Of course, creatures like Pierce turn these arguments upside down too. Pierce claims that it was Macron who argued that the A-Z jab was not safe for the over 65's, but when challenged said there was no proof of it. In fact, what was said was the opposite that there was no proof that it was safe for the over 65's, and that without such proof it was not wise to recommend its use in those groups. Were it to turn out that either it was not efficacious in those groups - the latest data does not indicate that to be true either - or worse that it had harmful side effects, such as causing blood clots - again, the data does not seem to confirm that either - then obviously the sensible thing for regulatory bodies to do is to act with caution, and delay authorisation until thorough investigation has taken place.
But, Britain has been gung-ho in charging forward in rolling out the vaccines, because it was desperate to try to obtain some Brexit kudos for its success ion doing so. Its been lucky, so far, in that no major problem has arisen with that approach, as far as we know, but given the record of the government and NHS over the last year, and its chaotic response to COVID that seems much more a matter of luck rather than judgement, or good management. But, even that now seems to be unravelling.
The government early on, in order to try to maximise its story about the vaccine roll-out, switched the policy from giving out first and second jabs to the most at risk, to one of simply giving the first jab to as many people as possible, with the second jab being pushed back to 3 months down the road. The argument was that there was no significant deterioration in the protection given by waiting 3 months rather than the original 3 weeks. That may be true, but it was clear that the government's real purpose was to see the headline number of vaccinations rise quickly, so as to compare it with a slow rise in Europe.
The reality always was that large numbers of people never needed the jab anyway. People under 40, with no other health issues are very unlikely to have any serious symptoms from contracting COVID. Very few people even under 60 would have serious consequences. What is more, large numbers of these people have probably already contracted the virus over the last year without knowing it, and have developed natural immunity to it. Continuing to provide jabs to all these people, rather than provide the second jabs to the over 60's, and those with other vulnerabilities, was, in large part a waste. It did, however, boost the government's claims to have rolled out the jabs on a wider scale, and did boost the profits of the drug companies producing the vaccines.
At the time, I predicted that this strategy had obvious limitations. The first jabs were done at the start of December, so that even with the 3 month gap, second dose would start to have to be given by the beginning of March. That meant that available vaccines would now start to get spread thin, having to deal with the roll-out of second doses, alongside continuing to provide first doses, to a wider group of people. It would be obvious that the number of first doses would start to slow down, as available supplies had to meet the needs of those who required their second dose.
It appears that this situation has now arisen, although the government has continued to try to expand the number of people still being signed up for their first jab. This is like a general who gets carried away with initial successes, and out of hubris continues to charge forward, then causing their supply lines to get stretched. The government is now facing a reduction in its supplies of vaccine from Astra-Zeneca, and other supplies, at exactly this point when it requires more does so as to be able to meet its commitments to provide required second doses, as well as to continue to provide first doses. It is now in danger that it may not be able to meet its requirements to provide all of the required second doses, which would mean that some of the benefits of the vaccinations already undertaken would be lost.
No comments:
Post a Comment