Such are images of hope: Nurses getting vaccinated. Pallets of packaged vaccines distributed on special flights. Mayors exulting over “the beginning of the end of the pandemic.” A president who is preparing the country for better times.
These images are from the United States.
In Germany, on the other hand, you see desolate shopping streets, shuttered restaurants and a government that is preparing its population for long, dark days.
The contrast is unmistakable. On the one hand, there is the supposedly incompetent Trump administration, which will provide vaccines to 20 million Americans in the next two to three weeks alone. By the end of March, the plan is for around 100 million Americans to have received the two vaccine injections they need.
On the other hand, there is the supposedly well-prepared Europeans, who continue to have to wait for a vaccine that was developed in Germany. And who still don’t know exactly how much of the vaccine they will be getting in the coming months.
That isn’t from the WSJ or Fox News but from Der Spiegel. Europe moved too slowly. Moreover, according to the article (take with grain of salt), Europe was riven with national partisanship leading to deadly decisions on par with the Trump administration battling states with Democratic governors.
Why were only 300 million doses of a vaccine secured that had already demonstrated 95 percent efficacy in clinical trials at the time? One that had been hailed as a sensation and was already on its way to regulatory approval? German Health Minister Spahn pushed for more to be purchased, but he failed to prevail in the end due to opposition from several EU member countries — in part, apparently, because the EU had ordered only 300 million doses from the French company Sanofi. “That’s why buying more from a German company wasn’t in the cards,” says one insider familiar with the negotiations. The European Commission has denied that version of events, saying it isn’t true that Paris took massive steps to protect Sanofi.
Not everything is as bad as the article indicates, however. Michael Kremer and the Accelerating Health Technologies team that I am a part of made the case that it was worth investing in a large portfolio of vaccine candidates some of which had a low probability of success. Operation Warp Speed did that which is why looking forward we will very likely have more doses than we need. OWS made big investments in the Johnson and Johnson, Novavax, and the Astra-Zeneca vaccine among others and some of these are likely to be available early next year. We won’t need all of that capacity and so some doses will become available to other countries. Europe should be making deals with the US right now.
In addition, Europe should take a closer look at the dark horses, the Russian (Gamaleya) and Chinese vaccines, Sinopharm, CanSino and SinoVac. The Sinopharm vaccine has already been given to over one million people and it has been tested in trials in multiple countries (some of which are still reporting).
As a result, it can be much better to start vaccinating now with a 70% efficacious vaccine than wait for a 95% efficacious vaccine–thus, we need to encourage early vaccination. Indeed the AZ vaccine ought to be approved immediately (I predict the UK will approve by next week) and be made available to anyone who doesn’t want to wait for another vaccine.
For the next year or two, we will be operating under conditions of scarcity and we need to use every tool at our disposal. A 70% effective vaccine is great, well above what the FDA required and better than the flu vaccine. If you live in a country in which everyone has been vaccinated you won’t give a damn whether they were vaccinated with a 95% effective vaccine or a 70% effective vaccine–both will give you nearly 100% safety and allow life to return to normal.