Vaccine Villainy

Three questions that are, so far, unanswered about the coronavirus vaccine affair.

The Pandemic

I’ve written before about the failings of journalism in this country. This is another one of those, I think, but as I write the story is still emerging and the details are still unclear.

During the Coronavirus Pandemic the ability of journalists to convey effective news to people has been compromised on a way that previously hasn’t been seen. There’s a reason for that. People are frightened, true, but also desperate for news, updates, rumour and all the things that journalists are supposed to supply. The desperation has led people to check some unsavoury sources for updates. Many of these people are relatively new to getting information that way and poorly prepared for their early exposure to the fanciful, mendacious creators of these things and consider something as more factual if it seems to be widely believed, a logical fallacy that more experienced consumers of social media and unsubstantiated primary sources might be more inured to.

That, though problematic, is not the story I’m telling here. Over the last few days the strained relationship between the UK and the EU has hit a nadir, of sorts. It has led to the EU making the ridiculous decision to interfere with vaccine exports. Let me be very clear. That decision is a terrible mistake, and it is indefensible. Now, if you’ll give me a few moments, I’m going to explain why it does need a little defending.

The Background

Months ago, Boris Johnson, along with almost everyone else in the leadership of the free world, made a speech to the WHO about the dangers of vaccine nationalism and the requirement that people worldwide have access to the vaccine based on the global need, not the wealth of the country they inhabit. It was the right thing to say.

In the UK, meanwhile, the government had made steps to speed up the approval process for the vaccines and get manufacturing up to speed. Doing that was going to reduce the early availability of vaccines but make the production increase rapidly as the new facilities and expanded plants came online. These were the right decisions.

In the EU, things were moving more slowly. A combination of the complexity of the EU institutions attempting to manage the disease and its response and the fact that the actual health resources were sill based in individual nations. Still, in the UK the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and, soon after, the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine were approved and began rolling out.

Everything seemed to be going reasonably well, even though the Pfizer plant in Puurs, Belgium, was about to throttle its production while it made upgrades to expand its output in the future.

Then we hit a snag. The AstraZeneca vaccine was being produced in relatively low yields in their EU plants. In contrast their facilities in the UK, accelerated through the use of government resources and the money from pre-orders, were at high capacity.

AstraZeneca announced to the EU that its delivery schedule was going to slip, and by a huge amount. Only around a quarter of the first few months of planned deliveries would be made in the EU. This was obviously a worry, but it shouldn’t have been that unexpected, supply glitches were almost inevitable. In the EU, the news was greeted with disappointment, of course, but that was tempered by the fact that the vaccine was still pouring out of the UK facilities. The EU contract with AstraZeneca explicitly made clear that the EU deliveries would make use of facilities including those in the UK. So, the problems were real, but not too awful.

I think, but I caution again that new information is still emerging, this is a reasonable potted history of the story so far.

The Bombshell

When it emerged that AstraZeneca was dramatically slowing vaccine deliveries to the EU it also emerged that supplies to the UK would be substantially unaffected.

The EU pointed out that their contract explicitly gave them access to a share of the UK output and stated that no other contract would supersede it. AstraZeneca said that, in exchange for British support in upgrading their facilities and because the British contract had been signed first, the UK would get priority on vaccine produced in the UK.

The EU, without even really considering the ramifications, began imposing restrictions on vaccine exports and even threatening to limit transport across the Irish border. It was a stunning act of foolishness, rightly condemned.

Piers Morgan announced on British television that the outcome was to make all of Britain more sympathetic to Brexit. The EU decision was so crass that it was roundly attacked across the British press and ran the real risk of making Piers Morgan seem like he was on the right side of history. Mr. Johnson was simultaneously being treated like a hero.

But all of that, though very big news, may not actually be the story.

The Story

Again, I have to point out that this part of this post is rather speculative. It’s dependent on things that are unconfirmed or unclear. But if I were a journalist there is a story I would be interested in right now.

If AstraZeneca is telling the truth then the reason for the dramatic drop in the EU supply is partly down to the details of the contract it has with the British government. If that contract does ensure that Britain gets priority on vaccine produced in the UK then we need to know that immediately.

You see, if that’s true, Mr. Johnson has engaged in an appalling act of nationalism. But it’s worse than you think.

The British government was basking in the glow of public approval over the vaccine rollout. It was, more or less, the only undeniably good thing they had done in office. The first month of that rollout was mostly dependent on the Pfizer vaccine, produced in Belgium, and the AstraZeneca vaccine, mostly produced in plants in the EU while the British facilities had the leisure to upgrade.

In other words, the vast majority of British recipients of the vaccine, in those glorious early weeks, were being given vaccine that had been imported from the EU. When the situation reversed, and the UK was producing more vaccine, suddenly the contract stopped it flowing the other way.

Nobody is going to defend all of the foolishness the EU displayed in response, but the decision to restrict the ongoing exports of the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines to the UK was made while the UK was, by default, refusing to allow any to leave the country. It doesn’t make the EU decision correct, but it does perhaps explain it.

And, as this contract was being assembled, Mr. Johnson was making speeches opposed to vaccine nationalism.

The Questions

Firstly, what is in the contract? We need to urgently get visibility of the contract between the UK and AstraZeneca. That may prove difficult because the British government has declared it to be secret in the interest of national security; something I find rather suspicious.

Secondly, we need to ask, frankly, whether our journalists missed the real story. I may have got all of this wrong, but so far I’m not seeing much interest in doing anything other than lauding our government for something that might be seen as an act of war. This could be a British policy that will, in future, be seen as an act of great national shame, possibly the worst thing the country has done in my lifetime.