Reader TTS

When the jab wars between the EU and the UK are over, perhaps in just a few weeks or months, what will be its legacy? With luck, it will not be as toxic as that of Brexit — if only because

the EU side is far from united. It is already clear that the most aggressive jab warrior, Ursula von der Leyen, is out of step with at least some European politicians.  Some 24 hours after

the Commission President’s threat to invoke emergency powers under Article 122 of the EU Treaties — a hostile act aimed at the UK and tantamount to suspending the rule of law for

pharmaceuticals — not a single member state had signalled support for her flailing about. The “vaccine summit” summoned for next week may not, after all, endorse the belligerence of the EU

leadership. Instead, national governments may ask hard questions about why it is that the British have given 40 per cent of the adult population their first jab, while in the EU the figure

is just 12 per cent. Rather than back an incompetent Commission, there was a show of support for the AstraZeneca vaccine. Not only Boris Johnson, but also the French Prime Minister, Jean

Castex, announced that they themselves would be given the vaccine as soon as today. M Castex deserves particular credit because his President, Emmanuel Macron, did more damage than anyone

else by declaring months ago that the Oxford vaccine was “quasi-ineffective” for the elderly. This came after the European Medicines Agency rejected unscientific claims that it had caused

blood clots as a side-effect, causing 17 EU countries to suspend its use. Dr Sabine Straus, who reviewed the evidence, found that the incidence of blood clots among those who had been

vaccinated was “lower than expected in the general population”. Emer Cooke, the EMA’s Director, joined forces with the UK’s regulator, the MHRA, to make crystal clear that there was no link

and that the benefits far outweigh the risks. The risk of dying from Covid, even for patients in their forties, is about one in 1,000. Even if a link between the vaccine and blood clots had

been substantiated, according to the MHRA, the rarity of the side-effect — one in a million — would not have justified discontinuing use of the vaccine. The AstraZeneca vaccine is rightly

seen as British, as it was developed by a team of scientists at Oxford University with funding from the British taxpayer. As a condition of this support, AstraZeneca (an Anglo-Swedish firm)

is distributing the vaccine at cost, charging a small fraction of the prices charged by Pfizer, Moderna and other US pharmaceuticals for their vaccines.  Hence the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine

is being manufactured, distributed and is saving lives all over the world. It is a remarkable British success story, one of the greatest since the discovery of penicillin by a team led by

Alexander Fleming at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, led to the antibiotic revolution in medicine some 80 years ago. Is it for this reason that some people in the EU have treated the

“British vaccine” with suspicion, long after the scientific case for it was clear? First its efficacy, then its safety were called into question by those who should have known better. When

the dust has settled, academics will have a field day investigating precisely how the rumour mill was fed and by whom. The ensuing panic has already cost an unknown but substantial number of

lives. Even gestures such as that of Prime Minister Castex may not be enough to allay the fears of those who were anyway sceptical about vaccination. Even decades after the MMR scare in the

UK, the protection it provides for children has not returned to its previous level. The preposterous claims of a link between the MMR jab and autism were not dissimilar from the unfounded

claims now being made of a link between the AstraZeneca vaccine and blood clots. Anti-British prejudice has been amplified by the ubiquitous online propaganda of the antivaxxers. Yet science

continues in spite of these super-spreaders of lies. Only yesterday Oxford researchers announced that their investigation of the protection provided by existing vaccines against the three

new mutations of Covid — known as the Kent, Brazilian and South African variants — had yielded positive results. The Pfizer-BioNTech and the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines both offer high

levels of protection against the Kent variant (which Angela Merkel unforgivably referred to as “the British virus”) and the Brazilian strain, though somewhat lower in the case of the South

African one. The Brazilian variant seems to be less resistant to both natural and vaccine-stimulated antibodies than had been feared. In short: there is little to choose between these two

vaccines, except that the AstraZeneca one is much cheaper, despite the fact that the Pfizer too was subsidised by the EU. Yet this price differential has led some Continentals to regard the

AstraZeneca vaccine as second-best, down-market and inferior. How hard, really, have the authorities in the EU tried to reverse this and other negative impressions?  Or were they complicit

in the emergence of a false narrative? This too will one day be investigated. We can only hope that those in the EU who are responsible for denigrating the British and undermining “our”

vaccine will now desist. Many doctors and nurses in the NHS are angry about the impact on anxious and vulnerable patients here, too, of such groundless fears. Of course, the coincidence of a

Brexit and the pandemic was bound to be toxic. Four years of acrimonious negotiations have evidently created an atmosphere of animosity which will take time to dissipate. At a stroke,

Ursula von der Leyen has probably done more to consolidate support for Brexit than Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings or Nigel Farage ever did. Yet vaccine nationalism is by no means confined

to Europe. In the United States, a year into the pandemic the first exports of vaccines have only just been approved. The AstraZeneca vaccine has now been approved by 74 countries — but not

yet by the US. And to enter China, virtually all visitors are required to have been vaccinated with one of the five vaccines authorised by Chinese regulators. Non-Chinese vaccines are not

recognised by the authorities. Yet foreign residents in China are not entitled to receive Chinese vaccines. This means that if they leave, they may not be allowed to return. Such a blatant

display of vaccine nationalism has not been reciprocated in the West — nor should it be. It is one thing to protect a country’s population from infection, quite another to politicise the

process, sacrificing the individual in the name of collective self-aggrandisement. Here in Europe — and Britain is a European country — we should have the maturity to tackle the pandemic in

a spirit of co-operation. Let’s combat Covid, not one another. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an important

contribution to make, one that’s needed now more than ever, and we need your help to continue publishing throughout the pandemic. So please, make a donation._