The EU and AstraZeneca (AZ) are in a stand-off. The EU took longer to approve the AZ vaccine, and production of it has been slower in EU-based than UK plants, which are to give priority to UK distribution. The plot thickens with confusions about who knew what, when about this prioritisation.
To break the impasse, the EU could seek legal action to requisition the output of UK plants. If that succeeded, it would divert supplies from the UK, slowing down vaccine delivery here. The UK might then weigh options to reverse this—actions which may or may not breach the recent free-trade agreement with the EU.
Alternatively, the EU could seek to achieve the same ends by diktat: it is moving to bloc AZ exporting its European output anywhere beyond the bloc without permission, and the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, has even raised the thought of seizing control of vaccine production.
This episode is only the latest to raise the spectre of “virus nationalism.” Earlier, we had instances of fights to procure PPE and ventilators, and the decision whether to back nationalpharmaceutical “champions” over co-operative cross-border ventures that could pool expertise and disperse risk. In this context, “vaccine nationalism” is a predictable mutation.
So how to handle it in Britain? There would be short-term gains from refusing to let AZ top up EU-based vaccine output. The UK would hang on to more shots, and more people would get vaccinated more quickly. Deaths would fall more rapidly, or—looking at it the other way round—any given threshold for “acceptable” deaths would be reached more quickly, allowing the government to loosen restrictions faster.
But, vaccine nationalism is, excuse the pun, not a one-shot game. The world may well be entering a protracted period in which new mutations arise, with tweaks to vaccines having to be designed, trialled and delivered all the time. A nakedly selfish strategy now might make it harder to sign up willing partners for future laps of the race against the virus.
Nationalist strategies are risky because we can’t be sure where the best vaccine for the next mutation will be designed or made. Those countries that go it alone might be lucky and turn out to be well-placed to implement the next tweak; or, an isolationist country may discover the appropriate inoculationis made somewhere else far away, and find itself far down the queue. And even putting “mutation chasing” to one side, relying solelyon your own domestic supply chains is always a gamble that there will be no local mishap.
Winning at the expense of a neighbouring “competitor” bloc like the EU could carry a special curse: allow higher infections on your border, and you are more likely to incubate mutations that render your “national” vaccine obsolete. And that’s before we factor in the potential for EU retaliation. It could interfere with cross-border travel or trade, which could well affect—along with everything else—the UK’s vaccine supply chain at some point.
To those who have studied political economy, the new pandemic dilemmas suddenly confronting governments look rather familiar—for they illustrate very old arguments about international trade. Ideally, it’s best to specialise, and then trade what you do well for everything else you need. You get richer that way, and also spread risks because you’re not reliant on local sectors for most goods, but can source things from all over the world. But doing this requires a guarantee that any agreement you strike will be stuck to, and that there will be no reneging, or requisitioning valuable goods locally later.
The stakes are obviously much higher for life-or-death vaccines than most goods. If co-operation goes well, the gains relative to isolationism are much greater. If it goes badly and you are cheated, the damage is incomparably worse.
Politics complicates the economic and public health calculations. Some Brexiteers value going it alone for its own sake. (This impulse may have been behind the UK declining last year to participate in an EU-wide ventilator procurement effort.) And the electoral cycle can shorten time horizons: a UK government fixated on how it stands at the time of the envisaged 2024 election may not put enough weight on Britain’s ability to tap into global efforts to fight what could be a full decade of viral mutations.
As I write, news has broken of a new “Novavax” vaccine clearing phase 3 trials successfully. Since the UK Vaccine Taskforce managed to secure 60m doses of this, it might well be that we will find ourselves—across the different vaccines—with more doses than a population of 67m is going to require any time soon. If so, the calculation becomes less fraught—and we can afford to help the EU out. Or indeed, we—and in time the Europeans too—could turn our minds to assisting poorer countries elsewhere. That would of course be a humanitarian thing to do. But with a virus that can mutate anywhere, and then infect everywhere, it would also represent enlightened self-interest.
