The U.S.' vaccine rollout is world-beating
noahpinion.substack.com
noahpinion.substack.com
The Astra Zeneca one may well be less effective (though it still should massively reduce hospitalisations and deaths), but the US/DE ones offer virtually no hope to most of the world given their dosage costs (£28 Moderna, £15 Pfizer). The AZ one goes for £3.
So yes, the US/DE vaccines may be world-beating (perhaps). At a mimimum of 5 times the cost, though, they're not exactly world-saving - which is what is really needed.
Disclosure: I'm British, but this isn't jingoism as I fully accept the UK has largely screwed up almost everything in its pandemic response. For the vaccine rollout though we've managed to get our own production capacity and a fast delivery based, despite the article, on the schedule AZ actually recommend (12 week gap, as longer gaps are being shown to give better protection, within limits).
I think, the emphasis is wrong there on bargaining as a group. The US bargained also "as a group", if you will.The EU prioritised (in my eyes wrongly) pricing over speedy delivery and was risk averse: The US purchased most of the doses a whole half year before approval, the EU only bargained for options on vaccines pending approval.
There is a 10 day delay between the emergency approval of the FDA and the full approval of the EMA. But we do not see a 10 day delay in the vaccinations.
A delay of a ramp-up on the other hand by half-a-year looks more like what we see.
Also, the US does not allow exports of the vaccines produced in the US. To my knowledge, no such restrictions are in place in the EU.
Can you cite this?
https://www.statnews.com/2020/05/15/under-an-america-first-p...
https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-digest-trump-orders-priori...
One correction: the EU also introduced export restrictions a few weeks ago.
Serious question for users from US: What "magic" are ye taught to expect? And where / when are ye taught to expect it?
....
Hmm, actually after a tiny bit of rumination on that new information, that actually could explain a lot.
Not such level BS. The teach the country's history, they try to portray most wars/disputes etc. from the perspective of the country (though most also allow for balance), and so on. Few, if any, countries tells students that they're some unique exception upon the world, or have some burdern to lead the others. Colonial Britain and WWII-era Germany comes to mind.
Prideful counties are hardly unheard of in the world.
Good news is that this BS is generally NOT taught at a college/university level.
Which explains a lot about our country... and our divide... as well. A large percentage of the country has been exposed to education that does not teach such ridiculous beliefs.
So we have "educated" folks with a slightly more realistic view of the world. And then "everybody else" who has only been taught that America is a magical place.
and the ones who merely think that their
own tertiary education group is Great.
There are plenty of folks with postsecondary education who think highly of America, and I'm one of them. It is highly flawed, and also a pretty good place. We get a lot of things right.
Let me be crystal clear: what I'm opposed to is simplistic, jingoistic, one-sided "America is the greatest thing ever" fantasies of American exceptionalism. This is how my primary and secondary education, in a fairly decent public school district in the 80s and 90s, generally described America.
And that's mild, as far as "American exceptionalism" goes. My dad's wife is a member of a radical Christian sect. On a regular basis, she mails me glossy pamphlets and brochures describing how America's greatness is literally foretold in the Bible. There are significant numbers of Americans who believe this wholeheartedly.
There is a clear divide between such delusional fantasies, and a more nuanced view of America. But that doesn't mean all of us on the rational side of the divide think it's an awful place or something like that.
As for me, I don't even have a postsecondary degree. Just some postsecondary education. Not exactly ivory tower stuff. But some of it was eye opening. Ideally our public primary/secondary schools would just teach America's flaws as well as its strengths.
I personally expect people with post-secondary education to be more ideological than people without one. After all, they’ve been in some kind of educational institution for longer...
It is quite common for people with a post-secondary
education to think that they have fundamentally better
critical-thinking skills and are much less prone to
propaganda, just because they have sat in lecture halls
for 4–9 years
There's no way to be clear enough against somebody with a bad-faith agenda.
It's pretty clear you want folks with postsecondary education to disdain those without it.
Perhaps you had a bad experience with education, perhaps it simply feels good to you to tee off on perceived elitism -- whether it actually exists or not. You wouldn't be the first. Some people just get off on that underdog angle.
I regret to inform you that I do not think that postsecondary education automatically makes anybody better than anybody else at any particular thing, and few do, and I've not said such a thing ever. Do I think there's a positive correlation between like, education and critical thinking skills? Yeah, sure. I'd also agree that universities turn out plenty of idiots, and of course some education sucks and can be worse than none at all, and that at best formal education is just one component of being a well-rounded person. All hail the autodidact.
There was also the massive boom that WW2 gave the American economy. While other countries were rebuilding their infrastructure, America was able to capture markets with the revved up manufacturing that was built during the war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism#:~:tex....
This is right, especially given much of the world is in abject poverty & starvation.
(Forgotting that in the 18th century most of the US was still a provincial backwater - some states basically mostly wild land -- and Europe had far more modern and beautiful cities and better infrastructure).
That, plus the heritage of some religious inspired BS from the earlier Americans (religious zealots from Europe), of the place being some beacon for the world, having a "manifest destiny", and so on...
If anything this “public-private partnership” goes against what Americans have been taught for the last half-century.
Canada were forced to work with Europe as Americans won't export any vaccines. I know dozens of 20-30 year olds vaccinated in America, while the largest hospitals in Canada haven't vaccinated even a fraction of their staff. Luckily for America, Canadians are too busy blaming each other for it to really damage the international relationship.
If anything the title should be 'Israel's vaccine rollout is world-beating'.
U.S. is doing pretty well compared to most other countries though, for sure.
Also the U.S. needs to be good at this because it's been so terrible at managing it otherwise. Countries like Australia and New Zealand and some countries in Asia can be more careful with vaccination approval because it's done such an excellent job of handling the virus, so well that it actually has to balance the side effects of the vaccine versus not getting vaccinated.
The US has to go "Well, at least the vaccine is better than the very good chance you're going to get Covid-19", which is basically what the emergency approval means.
Exactly. When you bungle the early response it increases the urgency for vaccine administration.