COVID: Vaccine Readiness prompts more Geopolitical Posturing
While hopes spike for the approval of a Coronavirus Vaccine before the end of this year, sparked by US infectious disease supremo Dr Anthony Fauci´s recent comments, the death of a Brazilian national during third-phase clinical trials on the so-called “Oxford Vaccine” could well be the knell of death for the vaccine currently being developed by Astra Zeneca and the University of Oxford well certainly for the foreseeable future any way.
Dr Fauci the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases sparked huge optimism when he said last Sunday that it should be known by late November, early December whether a vaccine “safe and effective”. Fauci´s comments were further bolstered after news that the NHS in the UK is preparing to start immunising frontline staff with a vaccine within weeks.
To make a point of record it should be noted that the University of Oxford has announced that the volunteer who received their coronavirus vaccine, actually received a placebo, in this instance believed to be an inoculation against meningitis, and that he did not die from the consequences of the corona vaccine.
The Geopolitics of the Covid Vaccine
The outcome of which country successfully develops the first vaccine will surely be the catalyst of yet more Geopolitical posturing with pundits already predicting the outcome of a “Western” – “Eastern” vaccine war, as the outcome will no doubt enable the developer country to literally dominate the global Covid vaccine market and all that entails.
Image Credit: Willfried_Wende
