Thread by @sritara

THREAD - On the dangerous Indian free market approach to vaccination
1. This is about the wishful fantasies of free market warriors about vaccines, who welcome SSI’s decision on a three-tier price structure - 150/dose for Centre, 400 for states and 600 for pet hospitals.

2. First and foremost, this is by no means a “free market” for vaccines. There is heavy intervention by way at every stage, including in development of the vaccine, its distribution and lastly in terms of orders placed, which made production possible in the first place.

3. IOWs SSI or BB cannot by any means plug the familiar claim that they have developed and therefore need to be compensated. More imp, the vaccine is unlike any other “good” - it is a matter of life and death for all, irrespective of the purchasing power of the “consumer”.

4. But even more importantly, the vaccine needs to reach as the MAXIMUM number of people in the QUCIKEST possible time. ALL OUR LIVES depend on that, even of those middle class warriors who claim thay they are “willing to pay” for it.

5. Thus, those who fall through the gaps in the three layers of prices set by the vaccine producers, simply because they are unable to pay, do not risk their own lives but endanger public health. Crucially, this would happen not because of their egregious conduct but BECAUSE of..

5a) the NaMo Govt’s latest move to give a free pass to these companies.

6. The free market warriors who seem to naively believe that the “market” will address the shortages “efficiently” are just peddling snake oil economics. The logic is that higher prices in shortage-hit areas would “solve” the problem is not just naive economics, it is +vely....

6a) dangerous from a public health standpoint.

7. Take a real example. Vaccination rates are among the lowest in UP and Bihar, two states that are also extremely poor. Can it be anyone’s sane contention the new pricing formula will ensure that vaccines will flow towards these “deficit” areas? But the problem is even bigger.

8. States/regions deprived of vaccines in the days and months ahead will ot only harbour and facilitate the spread of the Covid virus and its mutant strains but also act as a reservoir for fresh infections COUNTRYWIDE in the future...

8a) Notice that these regions are also places in which India’s desperately poor migrant labour force come from.

9. The NaMo regime’s track record in dealing with States does not inspire confidence. It has been utterly opaque about the data on how it has distributed vaccines to states - what normative standards and yardsticks it has adopted, what criteria it has chosen and why.

10. There is a real danger that the naMo Govt will use the pandemic and the vaccine as a stick to beat the States - especially those it regards as “opponents”. The public health consequences can only be tragic.

11. There is a real danger that the NaMo Govt will use the pandemic and the vaccine as a stick to beat the States - especially those it regards as “opponents”. The public health consequences can only be tragic.

12. There is little doubt that Indian vaccine prices are too high for its people - no amount of parading of prices in other countries will do because prices have to be seen relative to incomes. Amusing that economists/journos who otherwise use sophisticated methods, refuse to see

13. The Indian vaccine drive, hobbled for some time by hesitancy — attributable to the NaMo regime’s utterly opaque approach — was just beginning to gather momentum before it slackened ironically during the Tika Utsav. This move is going to set it back even more.

14. India is an outlier in the way it has gone about its vaccination drive. To my mind there is not a single vaccinating country that has chosen to adopt this novel free market approach. We stand alone in the comity of nations fighting the pandemic - tragically unique.

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