The fuel injected Brexiter comments on the EU's vaccine problems miss many points.

1) no-one wanted to get out of the EU or the single market to protect ourselves better against a pandemic. See Brexit Tory controlled government policy 2016-2020 regarding the NHS and pandemic preparedness.
2) we could have, and, perhaps thanks to the need to genuflect to nationalists, or out of pragmatic needs, chosen to go our own way on procurement even within the EU.
3) none of this explains why it's good to be outside the single market, restricting our trade and making us poorer.
4) the implicit celebration of the vaccine nationalist cause, seemingly [but not actually] permitted by Brexit, ignores how this game plays out, namely:
a) the EU retalliates with sanctions now or in the future.
b) we expose ourselves to mishaps in our domestic supply chains of the vaccine production we delightedly hold onto as 'ours'.
c) this is not a one-shot game. We are into a perpetual period of mutation, vaccine tweaking, vaccine delivery. We may be unlucky in not devising and manufacturing good tweaks and need to spread the innovation risk globally.
If anyone wants me to write 'Vaccination nationalism: not a one shot game' for their paper/magazine, obvs I am nearly there as I have the pun headline sorted.
It's actually a really nice econ teaching topic, as it brings together specialization, risk management under uncertainty, game theory, time consistency, political economy, international relations. Normal trade policy but on acid.
The interesting bit of political economy is how the electoral horizon relates to the horizon at which we are fighting covid. A quick vaccine war concluded before 2024 could be great to get another term. But the payback and extra deaths would come later.

More from Brexit

You May Also Like

And here they are...

THE WINNERS OF THE 24 HOUR STARTUP CHALLENGE

Remember, this money is just fun. If you launched a product (or even attempted a launch) - you did something worth MUCH more than $1,000.

#24hrstartup

The winners 👇

#10

Lattes For Change - Skip a latte and save a life.

https://t.co/M75RAirZzs

@frantzfries built a platform where you can see how skipping your morning latte could do for the world.

A great product for a great cause.

Congrats Chris on winning $250!


#9

Instaland - Create amazing landing pages for your followers.

https://t.co/5KkveJTAsy

A team project! @bpmct and @BaileyPumfleet built a tool for social media influencers to create simple "swipe up" landing pages for followers.

Really impressive for 24 hours. Congrats!


#8

SayHenlo - Chat without distractions

https://t.co/og0B7gmkW6

Built by @DaltonEdwards, it's a platform for combatting conversation overload. This product was also coded exclusively from an iPad 😲

Dalton is a beast. I'm so excited he placed in the top 10.


#7

CoderStory - Learn to code from developers across the globe!

https://t.co/86Ay6nF4AY

Built by @jesswallaceuk, the project is focused on highlighting the experience of developers and people learning to code.

I wish this existed when I learned to code! Congrats on $250!!