The actions of various European Union member countries in suspending use of the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine appear to have caused consternation everywhere. Claims that the vaccine is potentially dangerous, causing recipients to suffer life threatening blood clots, have been made although the evidence is scant if not non-existent.
The medicines' regulator in the UK, a country in which many millions have now received this particular vaccine without ill-effect, can find no evidence of danger. The World Health Organisation has discovered no cause for alarm and it's reported that even Europe's own regulator doesn't believe there is any issue to resolve. Experts on the use of vaccines have said that there is always a risk of blood clots arising in any population but that the claimed incidence amongst those in Europe who've had this particular 'jab' is actually lower than amongst the general population.
So what is going on ?
Firstly, the EU has an ongoing dispute with AstraZeneca over vaccine supply and is unhappy about the speed of delivery; in typical EU style, its leaders refuse to accept that its own late ordering has contributed to its problems and, instead, want to lay the blame at the door of AstraZeneca. They have even gone so far as to propose banning the export of vaccines from the EU in order to safeguard their own supplies, a move roundly condemned by the rest of the world.
Secondly, a direct consequence of the EU's own failure to act quickly last year and a corollary of the first point, they have found themselves short of supplies and slow to get their own vaccination programmes up to speed. Politically, this has been disastrous for them, with people rightly angry that they cannot get the protection they need. Additionally, Germany and France are both approaching important elections, those for the Bundestag in September of this year and for the French Presidency early next. Angela Merkel's CDU party is in trouble in the former and Emmanuel Macron is not everyone's choice for the latter - both have reasons to try to divert attention from their own, and the EU's, failings. Italy is always in both political and financial crisis and the EU as a whole is in an almighty mess, financially and otherwise.
And so we have the latest row over vaccines. What better way to avoid blame and to save the people from further harm than to find some problem with the AstraZeneca vaccine. As well as demonstrating that they are protecting their populations from a dangerous vaccine, they can also cover up supply shortages by simply stopping vaccination programmes for apparently good medical reasons. Even further, they get to cast doubt on the efficacy of the vaccine produced by their current bête-noire, and to damage them. It just adds to the EU's joy that the this vaccine is produced by a part-British company and is linked to a major British university.
No doubt the EU's medicines' regulator will eventually state that their are no dangers, other than in NOT having the vaccine, and the vaccination programmes will restart but, by then, there will have been a degree of stock piling. Everything will look much better as the numbers vaccinated climb rapidly. What this tells us is that politicians will do absolutely anything in order to gain favour with their voters, regardless of truth, benefit, or disbenefit, to those same voters.
This is political truth laid bare.
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