European autoimmune vaccine – WSJ

Europe, USA and UK have orders or options for about the same number of doses per person. But the US and UK moved faster to secure contracts, which made it easier for pharmaceutical companies to prepare. Washington and London also spent about seven times as much development, improvement and supply per person, according to British analytics firm Airfinity. Some US states, like many European countries, face transmission challenges, but American and British regulators have approved vaccinations faster than their EU counterparts.

The results are already clear. By our Thursday date, the UK had given doses to more than 11% of residents, while the US was approaching 8%. Denmark had a European success story at 3.7%, while France and Sweden lamented around 2%.

This did not provoke much deliberation in Brussels. EU mandarins spent this week honoring AstraZeneca after the company announced that production issues at a European factory meant it would deliver tens of millions of doses less than expected this quarter. The European Commission ordered an attack on the AstraZeneca production site in Belgium on Wednesday.

“Europe at the time wanted to be handed over more or less at the same time as the UK, even if the treaty was signed three months later,” AstraZeneca chief Pascal Soriot told Italian newspaper this week. “So we said, ‘Okay, we’re going to do our best, we’re going to try, but we can’t make a deal because we’re three months behind the UK'”

EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said the deal calls for vaccines to be sent from UK factories to Europe. The company should publish the agreement and allow the public a judgment that tells the truth. But this ugly program is a good advertisement for Brexit.

Anyway, London gave the go-ahead for the AstraZeneca vaccine in December. German officials ruled Thursday that the vaccine should not be given to those over the age of 64, and an EU decision is not expected until Friday.

Brussels will soon give national governments the power to ban millions of doses of vaccines from being expelled from Europe. Such a ban will certainly go backwards, as other countries go against Europe and complex supply chains fall apart.

Brussels is revealing its unique knot for self-loathing by transforming its crisis of vaccine inequality into deeper economic harm. The EU ‘s main challenge in the post – break times is to revive economic growth despite decades of policy mismanagement. But nothing says “closed for business” like harassing companies that provide life-saving medical treatments.