The great European (and Italian) mess on the AstraZeneca vaccine and the sunset of the heroes
Despite the triumphal tone with which the European Commission accompanied the publication of the contract signed by AstraZeneca , the text does not sound entirely in its favor. If it is true that the commitment concerns all production centers, even those located in the United Kingdom, it is also true that it is measured in the light of the "best effort" , which in itself does not exclude at all its reconciliation. with some constraints assumed as a priority. All the more so, until yesterday, pending a desired, but far from certain, pass from the European Medicines Agency, with regard to both whether and how , whether or not it is bound to a certain age group.
However, this impasse has been used here by us to justify the slowdown if not the blocking of the same second round of vaccination, compared to an open campaign with extraordinary solemnity, complete with a first injection given to a young nurse, pretty just as much as not. spoiled, of the standard-bearer Institute of the war against Covid , the Spallanzani. But this is not exactly the case, starting with the pace held in the weeks preceding the decrease in the availability of doses of the Pfizer – Biontech vaccine; if I'm not mistaken, out of the 80/100 thousand vaccinated for the first round, such as to involve, for the months of February / May, the maximum use of 16 million doses, equal to 8 million subjects, far from the planned 20 for percent of the population.
It is not just a question of numbers, but also of preferences. Nothing to say about the choice of privileging the health service staff, with an extension to general practitioners, to guarantee their resistance in the presence of a pandemic that requires their full use, so as not to tolerate gaps in them easier to become infected for the close contact with positive patients. But there is talk of about 500,000 vaccinated extra health service, with an expansion to the administrative staff, albeit located outside the hospitals, not without the addition of many Portuguese, who naturally will also be entitled to receive the recall. Certainly a further proof of the moral laxity of the Italian people, which is used to mention as after all perhaps a virtue, that is, the ability to invent a new one to always get by. But one wonders how much the experience of vaccination as a competition between Italy and Germany may have influenced the numbers, in a sort of head to head, but above all between one region and another, with an evident incentive to inflate the numbers, recruiting people left and right.
We are now used to the daily lament about high mortality, as given by the number of deaths compared to that of the population, so as to ensure an unenviable record, even if today accompanied by a certain modesty in accounting for the very high cost paid by the over eighty-year-olds. Yesterday, that bill was a kind of tranquilizer for everyone else, albeit with a growing tremor for those over seventy; today it has become a politically incorrect thing, with the by now customary litany that thus an entire generation is lost. An important generation, indeed very important, thanks to a mixture of reasons, highly ideal and flatly practical: the loss of irreplaceable wisdom goes hand in hand with the care of grandchildren and the need to feed their children's budgets with their pensions.
There is something that changes, as given by the title of this writing, the sunset of the heroes. I heard the other evening one of the most hired of our virologists, epidemiologists, pulmonologists, microbiologists, infectious diseases and so on, that in the face of the green light given by the European Agency to the drug to the AstraZeneca vaccine, he invited you to uncork a bottle of champagne, what that I was going to do if even with some prosecco, when our guru added that yes the new vaccine covered 65/70 percent, but it was not excluded for the over fifties, as it was feared, to be the chosen champion in the tests used by society completely limited with regard to the older age groups, so much so as to convince Germany to exclude them from vaccination.
I confess to being a little smoker, so that I jumped up, almost shouting at the screen, like you, that maybe you have already had the call, with the Pfizer super vaccine, come and tell me, from the top of your acquired immunity to 95 percent, that I should be satisfied, hopefully, to receive the double injection no sooner than a couple of months, if anything with the AstraZeneca vaccine, covering 65/70 percent. If, then, it seemed, it would have been decided to do as in Germany, banning it to people over fifty-five, then the already decided planning should have been radically reversed, reserving the entire AstraZeneca supply, by far the most important for Italy. , to age groups not at risk or very low risk, leaving all those aged fifty-six and up unguarded, if not the only ones, certainly the most exposed to infection, with lethality and mortality rates close to if not higher than 90 for one hundred.
I understood at that moment that the know-it-all who was talking on TV was no longer a hero, he didn't risk his skin, even if covered by a real diving suit; he was a privileged person, who no longer shared the fear of people, he did not reassure and reassure him, he was different from the sick person nailed to the bed in a Covid ward. I was reminded of a joke I heard a while ago, an airplane that wobbles in a vortex of air, with passengers clinging to the armrests, the luggage expelled from the containers, curses and prayers that cross in the air, the hostesses livid with fear, when suddenly a steady voice bursts through the loudspeaker: “No fear the plane will keep very well, calm and cool. I am the commander who speaks to you from that dot you see below you, a ship on whose deck I have just landed ”.
Without this halo, there is no sharing of a dangerous fate, which gave doctors and nurses a sort of sacred authority, the feeling of being in the same boat, even with those white and blue coats, even if physically made distant by diving suits of various like, bent over the oars towards a common salvation. They have become almost robots, waterproof and imperforable by the virus, whose gestures appear mechanical, albeit accompanied by smiles clouded by the visors, which risk appearing stereotyped. Illness and death do not threaten them and affect them anymore, they are others and elsewhere, as if they had been granted relative immortality, which will also be granted to us, but only if we manage to survive for the next few months. They are waiting for us by now very dry on the shore, thinking they can cheer us up by shouting and waving their hands, while the surf continually takes us far away, where we risk being swallowed up in the swirling waves.
The post The great European (and Italian) mess on the AstraZeneca vaccine and the sunset of the heroes appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/il-gran-pasticcio-europeo-e-italiano-sul-vaccino-astrazeneca-e-il-tramonto-degli-eroi/ on Mon, 01 Feb 2021 04:51:00 +0000.