Friday 4 December 2020

Vaccine Nationalism

I see the small and ever-dwindling Brexit Tribe is crowing about Britain being the first nation to authorise a Covid vaccine and using it in its culture war to vindicate Brexit and Britain's superiority. Boris has cottoned on to this and the Churchillian rhetoric is being dusted off once more.



The fact is that the UK is still obeying EU rules, which happen to allow member nations to speed up approval of drugs in an emergency. While other nations have decided to wait till the EU regulator gives approval, the UK has declared such approval early, precisely because it's staring yet another emergency in the face. No, not the fact the UK has the 4th highest deaths per 100k population in Europe and 7th highest in the world, despite the highest spend on Covid among the G7, but due to the fact that the vaccine is made by a German company in Belgium and waiting for the EU regulator would risk shipments getting caught up in the impending and self-imposed chaos at channel ports from the 29th December. 

It's not Brexit that has enabled the UK to approve earlier, but the consequences of Brexit meant it had to approve earlier in order to avoid a disaster. There again, the government could have waited a little longer for the EU regulator to give approval and arranged speeded up logistics using a shipping company with no ships. 

That said, the testing regime has finally produced record, world-beating results, despite a disastrous start earlier in the year and the debacle of Test and Trace. A stopped clock, as they say, is right twice a day...


1 comment:

kate steeper said...

i just find it a bit suspicious that you wont be able to sue if theirs problems and i wonder who the governments connection to Pfizer is ? Whos making the money from using the UK as a clinical trial?