Thread by @SDullien

Half a year ago,there was a huge outcry in Germany that the EU had presumably botched #Covid19 vaccine procurements.

Now, it shows that the mistakes at the EU level are dwarfed by failures of the vaccination campaign in Germany–but no one talks about it anymore.
A thread. 1/

When early this year, Israel, the #UK and the #US pulled ahead of EU countries in the vaccination drive, there was a lot of finger pointing at the EU commission. As was broadly discussed, the Commission had looked too much after not paying excessive prices 2/

and had ended up with contracts under which vaccine producers such as #Astrazeneca believed they could serve other countries first and the EU only second. (Some of this ended before courts.)

In Germany, media called it the “Impfdebakel” (vaccination debacle).3/

Already at that point, some level-headed observers from outside the EU such as @jfkirkegaard noted that the criticism of the EU procurement was overdone and later pointed out the benefits of the EU being the world’s largest vaccine exporter. 4/

https://twitter.com/jfkirkegaard/status/1347148025978880000?s=20

In early summer, it turned out that vaccine supply was not a problem anymore and that the delays in procurement had delayed the vaccine drive in the EU relative to the UK or the US by only 6 to eight weeks as @AndrewWattEU and I had projected earlier. 5/

https://twitter.com/AndrewWattEU/status/1370288332001923072?s=20

Now, in the fall, it has become clear that Germany has become a laggard among Western EU countries when it comes to vaccination. In fact, even #Brazil has now vaccinated a larger part of the population than Germany. 6/

This is tragic for Germany. There is a grave (but due to the election campaign not widely discussed risk) that the fourth infection wave with #delta will hit Germany hard over the winter and that this will actually delay also the economic recovery.7/

What is also not discussed: This is now entirely a failure at the national level.
And in the end, the consequences of the failure to further roll-out vaccinations will probably be worse than those of the initial delay by 6 to 8 weeks. 8/

I do not want to go into the discussion who is in detail at fault here in Germany as it is most likely a mixture of professional institutions (like the national vaccination board) which communicate poorly with the public, 9/

a long-standing vaccination scepticism in Germany (we vaccinated later against polio than other countries and less decidedly against measles), media which seeks a false balance between those warning of #covid19 and those playing it down 10/

and a lack in leadership in this issue from all leading politicians, including most Länder governments, and both in government and in the opposition. 11/

I have to admit that I (and the rest of the @IMKflash) underestimated this hesitancy. We thought that once vaccines are widely available, we could vaccinate our way into a more normal (and more healthy) winter. 12/

We did not believe that German vaccine hesitancy would turn the country which was a vaccination frontrunner in the spring into a laggard. Our forecast for a solid recovery in the second half of 2021 was based on that view. 13/

From a European perspective it is especially sad that in the end, in many German voters’ minds, the EU will be remembered as the level which made mistakes in the #vaccine procurement, but the mistakes made at the national level migh not be remembered, 14/

as the media has focused on the election campaign and no one is talking about the real “Impfdebakel” in Germany, namely that our vaccination rate stagnates at a level which is not sufficient to really control the pandemic and below that of Brazil. /END

Spiegel journalist @claushecking has pointed out that I have been too harsh in stating that “no one is talking about the real ‘Impfdebakel’”. He is right.

There have been some brave journalists who kept pointing this out. 1/

https://twitter.com/ClausHecking/status/1437386866467262466?s=20

My point was: Compared to what we have seen in the spring, the coverage now is very weak and very few seem to care (which might also be due to the fact that none of the political parties is pushing this issue before the elections).
Sorry if I formulated too harshly. /END