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Holger Hestermeyer Profile picture
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27 Feb, 5 tweets, 1 min read
Public communication in times of covid is - quite frankly - a minefield. I no longer think there is a ”correct”. Allow me to give one example /1
A BioNTech person was asked whether they should not serve as an example and be vaccinated straight away. His answer (roughly): we would love to, we think of ourselves as essentials, but cannot currently be vaccinated.
Of course what he meant was “the rules don’t allow us to be vaccinated. We would love to - would you allow us to be vaccinated immediately, please”? His statement was cited by idiots as a lack of confidence in vaccines.
What do you do in a media environment in which every word, every sentence is taken out of context by the most radical groups? Err on the right “See, they have special rights” Err on the left “See, vaccines don’t work”.
This is not helped, either, by the increasing need for writing news and in particular headlines and teaser so that it attracts clicks.

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More from @hhesterm

Holger Hestermeyer Profile picture
2 Mar
As there's a lot of "this is all EU politics" out there on AZ drug admission: some food for thought. I have deleted a lot of tweets on this. I will try to be brief, informative and neutral. (Thread)
At the origin are reports that some of the AZ vaccines in Germany are in storage. The problem of AZ take-up exists. Numbers are not as high as people believe. /2
Germany has received 1.5 million doses of AZ, 6.7 million doses of Pfizer/BioNTech. /3 impfdashboard.de
Read 23 tweets
Holger Hestermeyer Profile picture
26 Feb
As there’s a popular line of thinking that takes the problems of Germany and the AZ vaccine as insulting the UK and this makes existing Brexit tensions worse I fear I have to depart from my plan never again to write on vaccines on twitter. So: Why is there a problem (thread)
First: where do I come from: I’d take the AZ vaccine in a heartbeat. It’s effective, it‘s safe - and if all Germans thought like me (many do, by the way) Germany would be better off. But what I want to explain is: why the scepticisim?
First off: I have spoken to a good many Germans who are sceptical - of vaccines overall, of the AZ vaccine in particular. There are several reasons. NONE are related to AZ or the UK. That does not mean that they’re all rational. Let’s start.
Read 17 tweets
Holger Hestermeyer Profile picture
19 Feb
The peculiar Sun story speaks to a larger problem how can the UK join its natural allies on trade? (thread)
In many respects the EU is the most of these natural allies: shared regulatory traditions, shared outlook, in fact, most of the UK FTAs are based on / copies of EU FTAs. It doesn't get more similar than that.
However, emotionally the EU is not perceived as that. The UK "feels" closer to the US or Canada.
Read 5 tweets
Holger Hestermeyer Profile picture
18 Feb
Some thoughts about AZ and the vaccine debate. None of them on contract law or wading into the emotional dispute on it - but relating to the consequences of what I see as a shift in relations to “big pharma” (thread)
Some years back I wrote on pharma patents. One of the big stories of the time was HIV drug pricing. Pharma’s drug pricing was a scandal. The argument was “we need the money because production and development is expensive”. But once exclusivity ceased, prices fell dramatically
It is fair to say that big pharma was at a PR low. In trade negotiations ever higher standards of IP were increasingly criticised. The US argument that it finances drug development for the world by having high prices didn’t carry the day, most of the time.
Read 4 tweets
Holger Hestermeyer Profile picture
18 Feb
I refuse to go into debates on the content of the contract, but there’s an interesting lesson on transparency: the contract was published months ago. Yet when CNN asked about it, the government said they cannot have it because of risks to national security. What do we learn?/1
We learn that “transparency” is more than just publishing a document. Because we no longer live in a time of information scarcity. We live in a time of excess information still poorly adapted to that change. /2
You cannot hide a document more effectively than by publishing it in an obscure place. (Yes, the hitchhiker‘s guide and the publication for the plans to destroy earth comes to mind). What to do? /3
Read 4 tweets
Holger Hestermeyer Profile picture
17 Feb
Politics is an interesting game. Three points on this (thread)
1) Everybody who knows about trade knows that significant barriers have been built up in EU-UK trade. As a consequence, comparatively EU-UK trade will take a hit.
2) I am entirely certain that the comparative decrease of UK-EU trade as opposed to UK rest of the world trade resulting from these trade barriers will be cited as evidence that reorienting is the right choice.
Read 5 tweets

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