More on vaccines

The EU has exported 21,000,000 doses of COVID vaccine to the UK, while the UK has exported a grand total of zero to the EU.

These are partly cmmercial decisions taken by the makers, but also a policital decision by the EU, its member states, the US and UK. The US and the UK export no vaccine doses between them, and the EU has little choice as the contracts signed by the big pharma in the bloc have contracts to honour.

All that could be stopped. Today.

If we wanted.

I have written before about the vaccine not going to reach the poorest countries until next year, maybe even later. And in the meantime, hundreds of thousands of the poorest people will die.

We, the UK, the EU and US have decded that is the way it is going to be, so create the situation where one nation might block exports to another becausr they are keeping all doses for themselves.

It is madness. And greedy.

The copyright for the vaccines should be open source, common knowledge, so that the vaccine can be made all over the world, for the whole world.

Instead of this.

I have my vaccine and might have my second dose in may None of my colleagues in Denmark, Italy or India have theirs, though in India frontline staff get theirs frst, which we could do, if we really wanted to. But don't.

India is blocking eports of the vaccine too, but that is not making front pages in the Mail and Express.