You're missing the point. All the details of the mistakes are here: politico.eu/article/europe… But the deeper problem is Europe's "vaccine hesitancy," which is a polite way to put it.
https://twitter.com/Seggitorial/status/1372880155153215492
Europe needs to get enough people vaccinated to achieve herd immunity. Failing that, the pandemic goes on until Europe achieves this the hard way--spawning God knows how many mutations in the meanwhile, a problem that legitimately concerns the whole world.
Yes, uptake has been high so far *among the elderly,* who believe themselves (correctly) to be at much greater risk. But the success of the vaccination campaign can't be measured that way. When finally the vaccine is available to everyone, will enough people take it?
Every mistake the EU made had its roots in Europe's "vaccine hesitancy"--and I need a more damning phrase for this phenomenon, because that makes it sound banal.
Do you think that if jumbo jets were crashing every single day in every country in Europe, the regulators would be sitting on their hands, fretting that fixing the faulty hydraulic system causing these planes to crash *might* lead to a one in ten-thousand risk--
of developing a fatal condition related to some theoretical risk of contamination from the glue you need to fix the plane? Even though the evidence suggests people exposed to this fluid are statistically *less* likely to develop this condition?
Of course not. They'd be fixing the goddamned planes.
Why didn't the EU invest in production capacities sufficient to meet the need? Why were they haggling about liability? Why were they haggling about the price?
Why didn't the EU invest in production capacities sufficient to meet the need? Why were they haggling about liability? Why were they haggling about the price?
This is an *emergency.* And it *isn't* noble to be sharing the vaccines equitably: They need to go where the epidemic is worst, first. Which is, right now, Europe. Stop mutations if you want to be noble.
The business about the AZ vaccine is a *catastrophe* because of people like @iamhurst's hairdresser. *Especially* given the way this disease spreads. From the very beginning, all focus should have been on defeating "vaccine hesitancy," once and for all.
That message should have been on every billboard, every television, coming out of every politician's mouth, every doctor's. Instead, this is indeed the most plausible scenario:
https://twitter.com/KuperSimon/status/1371899212594622470
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