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It’s not because the US and UK are better at giving injections that they have managed to vaccinate more people than Sweden.
Without enough vaccine in the freezer, it is difficult to vaccinate.
The lack of vaccines is partly due to the fact that pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer prefer to sell to countries that do not fight. The heroic glory of business is not always well deserved.
How can it be that countries like the United States and the United Kingdom have managed to vaccinate a much larger part of the population than Sweden and the EU?
The UK has 27 doses per 100 inhabitants, according to the BBC. USA 19. Sweden and most of the EU countries around 5-6.
The main reason is that they received many more doses of the vaccine earlier than the EU countries. A fact that is not only due to the fact that the EU wanted to pay less or was later to approve the vaccines.
An important part has been on the responsibility that companies should have for the secondary effects caused by vaccines.
The United States, Canada and the United Kingdom were quick to agree to a waiver clause. The UK even changed its legislation to facilitate negotiations with companies.
The countries agreed that affected people should not be able to sue companies for allergic reactions or side effects from the covid vaccine. There are other mechanisms to attend to the compensation of victims.
Photo: Jeremy Selwyn / TT
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson.
The EU has a different approach. Among other things, in order for people to dare to get vaccinated, the European Commission demanded that Pfizer, Moderna and other manufacturers be responsible for the side effects, for example. Not the EU countries that ordered the vaccines.
German Christian Democrat MEP Peter Liese is one of those who claims that Pfizer lobbied the Commission to include disclaimers in the deal.
– Pfizer initially did not want to accept what the law is in Europe, that is, if someone makes a mistake and people are injured, there is a responsibility to be assumed, it says according to the German news site Deutsche Welle.
Mandatory disclaimer
He accuses the company of putting profit before human health.
Others with knowledge of the negotiations have recounted how a group of American lawyers was suddenly seated on the other side of the negotiating table, greatly delaying a deal.
There are also reports from other countries that they have felt abused by pharmaceutical companies.
Argentina lined up 6,000 people in a large pilot study on behalf of Pfizer, but when it came time to distribute the doses of the vaccine, no contract was signed. According to the president of Argentina, because Pfizer demanded his exemption from liability.
It seems that countries that accept the terms of the companies can buy vaccines faster. An example is that of Covid Peru, which signed a contract for 20 million doses with Pfizer.
Victor Zamora, who was the country’s health minister when the pandemic broke out last year, is not very happy.
“Pfizer knows at what price and under what conditions countries buy the vaccine,” he told Deutsche Welle. The company knows which countries have accepted which clauses.
Among other things, Pfizer is said to have demanded a state guarantee in the form of real estate for fear that it would not be paid.
Angled Hero Halo
There has been a kind of heroic halo over the pharmaceutical companies because in record time they managed to develop vaccines against the new disease and their stated goal was to provide vaccines at cost. But, as is often the case, the truth is a bit more multifaceted.
Basically, the problem is the classic one of supply and demand. In a situation where everyone is asking for a COVID-19 vaccine and there is not enough capacity to manufacture, not everyone can get as much vaccine as they want. So there are always some who manage to be first in line. Because they pay, they don’t make difficult demands or are generally influential.
So it is not a coincidence that the rich world with 16 percent of the world’s population seized 70 percent of vaccines.
Photo: Evan Vucci / TT
US President Joe Biden visits the vaccine manufacturer Pfizer-BioNtech in Portage, Michigan.
The EU has not been as cooperative a customer as the US and the UK, but it is still much better off than the rest of the world, where 130 countries are still waiting for their first dose.
The bottleneck is the vaccine itself, not the shortage of people who can physically administer the syringe.
Mistakes have been made in the EU’s vaccine strategy, EU President Ursula von der Leyen has acknowledged.
But I find it hard to believe that Sweden has managed to get more vaccines faster if we have chosen to negotiate on our own rather than being part of the EU.
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