Thread by @boosulyn

The Lancet describes COVAX as a “beautiful idea, born out of solidarity” that did not materialise as “rich countries behaved worse than anyone’s worst nightmares”.

Rich countries bypassed COVAX by making huge deals directly w/ manufacturers, leaving insufficient doses for COVAX.

https://twitter.com/codebluenews/status/1407552066118029312

But Malaysia only officially signed up with COVAX on Nov 25, two months behind Singapore.

COVAX aside, our direct deals w/ vaccine developers were made later than Sg -- because of shortsighted conservative health policymakers who didn't see last year the importance of vaccines.

Countries like US ordered Covid vaccines before knowing whether the shots would work.

Sg also used the same strategy by accessing confidential data from vaccine developers before journal publication so that Sg could place early orders.

Their bets paid off.

I hope there will be a White Paper of some sort tabled to Parliament -- once we resolve the acute phase of the epidemic, on all the mismanagement of Malaysia's Covid public health response.

Policymakers must be held responsible for their mistakes.

And Msia must learn from it.

And yes, I do want blame apportioned in any review of Malaysia's Covid response.

For too long, policymakers and govt officials in Msia have escaped accountability for bad policy impacting the lives of Malaysians.

It's time they faced up to it and face the consequences.