When the pandemic began more than a year ago, lots of experts warned it might take ten years or more to develop an effective, safe, and efficacious vaccine. Safe against what?
by Victor Cherubim
In Brazil it is summer in full swing with the golden sands of Copacabana beach with bronzed bodies and colourful parasols. These iconic scenes may also tell a disturbing story. Intensive Care beds (ICU’s) are at 90 percent capacity and Rio de Janeiro with the towering Christ The Redeemer monument with hands stretched out, also reveals, the highest death toll in the country. And yet many of its residents in the city are hardly seen wearing masks and we are told have packed its beaches ever since the pandemic began.
That is during day, but at night it is no different, with many flocking the streets, bars and favellas as well as night clubs seeking respite from the sweltering heat and boredom. There is no one in this metropolis talking about lockdown. With 213 million total population, 6 million vaccine doses available in the country, 8,996,876 confirmed cases of COVID-19, and 220,061 total COVID deaths, (third highest death rate in the world only behind United States of America and India) and only 0.5 percent of the population has been vaccinated so far.
The country’s far right President Jair Bolsanaro’s response to the pandemic has been criticised, as he has downplayed the situation and opposed quarantine measures, as two of his Health Ministers have resigned for allowing the virus to spread unchecked, without mass testing. Observers warn that emergency supplies of oxygen have had to be trucked in from neighbouring Venezuela.
Small wonder the P1 variant originated deep in the Amazon city of Manaus and this mutation appears to make the virus more transmissible, circulating in Brazil since July 2020.There is talk that the existing vaccines might be less effective on this highly contagious variant.
Trade War or Vaccine War in Europe?
Who knows? Whilst the governments around the world, and particularly in Europe, have been caught napping to control this pandemic over nearly the past year, after much soul search there is a vaccine war in the making. It is called “Vaccine Colonialism”.
Rather than cooperating with one another to roll out a global vaccination campaign to rid the world of this dreaded disease which has taken more lives than all the previous pandemics, like the plague, the First and Second World Wars put together, the major powers of the world are instead descending into a fiercely nationalistic warlike competition, perhaps, the first great geopolitical battle of the 21st century.
EU Health Commissioner, Stella Kyriakides has stated in response to AstraZeneca not being able to supply Europe the vaccines “it did not order and pay in advance,” like what Britain did well in advance. She stated the EU rejects the logic of “first come first served”. She said: “That may work at the neighbourhood butcher’s but not in contracts and not in our advanced purchase agreements.”
Steven Barrett, a British Barrister argues: “We don’t know precisely what the contract between AstraZeneca and the EU member states was, but the EU has two massive hurdles to jump. First, contractors undertake to use their ‘reasonable best efforts’ to manufacture enough supply to accomplish a given task order. To win a case in contract law for non-supply of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Europe, it must show that delay is caused by either a shortage of ingredients, lower yield from a batch, or the contractor is already under a different contract to supply to a different country”.
The second point he states, is that to complain in contract law, you must have suffered a breach. It is suggested that the number of vaccines the EU asked for may not be met. What this means in layman’s language is that if deliveries were expected in Quarter 1,2021, that would mean the end of Q.1, or April 2021.
Whether this allows the EU from stopping or seizing Pfizer BioNTech vaccines manufactured in Belgium, as tit-for tat, being ordered, paid for, and despatched to Britain, is a matter for Belgian law.
What hardly anyone knows?
The Brits are a very shrewd people. They have researched the AstraZeneca vaccine trials over years at Oxford University well before the pandemic. Boris Johnson’s government astutely funded and ordered millions of doses of this vaccine in the early days of COVID-19 in March 2020,to assure supply of their vaccine. It was a gamble which paid off and the Brits are now laughing their sides out.
Besides, now to keep face, the EU has in the past 24 hours stated that according totheir research, the AstraZeneca vaccine trials on people aged over 65 was not conclusive for treatment of all the mutants of Coronavirus. But the arguments on both sides of Dover continues unabated. Could it besimilar to the Crusades, centuries later?
To summarise, governments around the world, were all taken on the back foot with the outbreak of Covid-19 when it started in December 2019 in Wuhan. They were unprepared to say the least. Thus, the mixed messages by many governmental health bodies and the WHO?
It alllooked very different when governments were looking for “something or someone” to save them from disaster management. The vaccine was the saviour. First Pfizer and its German BioNTech, then Moderna in the U.S. and then Oxford AstraZeneca unveiled one success after another.
When the pandemic began more than a year ago, lots of experts warned it might take ten years or more to develop an effective, safe, and efficacious vaccine. Safe against what? It was never going to be easy? France’s Sanofi and Pfizer’s rival in US, Merck failed at the first or second attempt and may never give up?
We are told today 28 January 2021 that another vaccine boost is ahead for the Brits. French firm Valneva announced the start of large-scale commercial production at a plant in Livingston, Scotland. It has been upgraded with funds from UK taxpayers. It could be approved by the summer and 60 million doses are on order by Britain.
Why is France not in the act or is a mutual agreement between individual leaders, President Macron and his friend Boris?
Vaccination League Table
So far 7.2 million or 10.5 % of people have received at least one dose of vaccine in Britain up to date. Israel has had 45 percent of its population jabbed. The United Arab Emirates has managed 26 percent with China’s Sinopharm vaccine. The United States has 6.9%. But the rest of Europe has only 2.1% German and less than 1.6 % in France. At this rate of roll out it may be 2024 before most of Europe hits the 70% inoculation rate. Australia and Japan have not even started, while most of the developing world is left to fend for itself.
What about the Antivaxers?
Anti-vaxxers are people who “sincerely”? believe vaccines of any kind are unsafe. There are some who say that they are sceptical of vaccination during pregnancy. Yet, there are others who oppose vaccination as a forced method, as it infringes their “human rights”. Then there are still many who typically deny the existence or validity of the science supporting vaccine use in the general population. The worrying part of it is when still others maintain Vaccines and particularly Corona vaccines are a masterful way of profiling one’s identity. Who would need passports in years to come?
Only time will tell whether the vaccine is to be feared or will it save humanity? Would we need to be vaccinated every year like the flu jab, as almost all vaccines are time constrained?
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