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Want a Vaccine? Elect a Nationalist
- mikece 6y agoHardly surprising. Say what you will about the person elected to the office of POTUS but if their dominant attitude is "America First" then it shouldn't be a surprise if policies -- and the result of policies -- actually put America first or at the head of the line. I'm curious how Israel out-did us though. I have to imagine their massive brain trust of medical and biotech has something to do with it.
- colpabar 6y ago>I'm curious how Israel out-did us though. They paid more. https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-will-reportedly-pay-more-than-us-eu-for-pfizer-coronavirus-vaccine/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-will-reportedly-pay-mor...
- maxerickson 6y agoThat's presumably for EU production of the vaccine. So Israel probably didn't really compete with the US for it.
- colpabar 6y agofirst paragraph: >Israel will pay a premium price for the millions of COVID-19 vaccines it has ordered from US-based pharmaceutical company Pfizer, over 40 percent more than the US government or the European Union, Channel 13 news reported Sunday.
- maxerickson 6y agoPfizer has a Covid-19 vaccine production facilities in the EU and is selling the vaccines produced there to countries that aren't the US.
- bfgoodrich 6y agoThe limited data about Israel's purchase is that they didn't particularly pay more. Further, the EU has explicitly excluded Israel from export controls. The US didn't even have to negotiate. They just implemented the defense measures act and basically nationalized the vaccine makers, or at least their output. It's very...socialist.
- browningstreet 6y agoMaybe there’s more to ending this pandemic than a vaccine.
- complianceowl 6y agoI see what you did there ;)
- practicalpants 6y agoThe idea of it being wrong to have a "my country first" government is a pretty unusual one, because the alternative is having prosperity fleeced by rivals. It's like a tech company saying they aren't going to compete anymore and slowly give away assets while lowering employee salaries. Would love to move beyond nationalism but you simply can't when the world's second largest economy (perhaps first soon) is the most ethnic-nationalistic country in recent history.
- bxrxdx 6y agoI think there are a few high profile examples where nationalism caused some problems...
- mantas 6y ago... fuelled by appeasement of democracies...
- throwaway6734 6y agoThe rise of Hitler was due to the German people, not the democracies that brought Germany back to sanity
- mantas 6y agoDemocracies missed plenty of chances to bring sanity back at much much lower costs. Be it not intervening at Rhein remilitarisation or Czechoslovakia giveaway
- smnrchrds 6y agoThe alternative is cooperation. Do you remember the beginning of the pandemic when US states were in a bidding war over PPE and the US federal government was seizing PPE shipments going to Canada? That went away with better inter-state and state-federal cooperation, not more nationalism (or state-ism or whatever). Why should the procedure that works for US states, Canadian provinces, and EU member states (i.e. distributing doses based on population) not work on a larger scale?
- low_tech_love 6y agoI’m pretty sure the author is right that, in some kind of game-theoretical way, the ”artificial boundaries” and a healthy nationalist attitude is for sure beneficial. The problem is that I think social media turned us all into extremists. You can’t say the word ”nationalist” without being labeled a nazi, because the person labeling you a nazi is getting points with his/her crowd. On the other hand, you can’t say ”let’s not screw other countries over” without being labeled a communist or some such, because again, points are being won. Most of the discussion completely fails to capture the complex nuances of real politics, and passion, hate, and distress end up being used as an instrument for other, completely different means. So yeah... a bit of healthy me-first is not bad at all (as long as you’re not using it to disguise the fact that you are, indeed, a nazi).
- eghad 6y agoI mean the substack author is far from someone who ejects nuance into any topic, they have a very clear right-wing bias (some of which I'd clearly note as actually extremist) by looking at their other articles. Some if I named or posted here I'd clearly be banned. Not sure why you think this flimsy evidence holds when the author's actual intent is "nationalism is good actually." Vaccine distribution/contracting is significantly more complicated that this binary analysis.
- bfgoodrich 6y agoHow does Israel keep getting held as some example? 0% of Israel's vaccines were domestically made. 0% of the components were domestically made. 0% of the R&D behind the vaccine came from Israel. Israel is tops in vaccines because of, apparently, European guilt about the whole WW2 thing. It is receiving enormous shipments of Pfizer and Moderna, made in the EU. So what does nationalism have to do with this? The country is completely relying upon the goodwill of others.
- wideareanetwork 6y agoThis glosses over the fact that it’s Biden who has actually executed on a vaccination plan. And he doesn’t fit with the articles overall premise. And Trump is the opposite of what this article is asserting - he’s me first conservative but he didn’t have any plan at all for vaccination, according to news reports.
- nvoid 6y agoI am pretty sure this has already been proven wrong. Please give credit where credit is due. If it weren't for operation Warp Speed [1] and the millions of doses bought under the Trump administration, Biden wouldn't have anything to take the credit for [2]. CNN neglected to credit the Trump administration for this. Yes, his (Trump's) handling of the crisis was awful but it doesn't help to lie. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Warp_Speed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Warp_Speed [2] https://nypost.com/2020/12/16/biden-should-credit-trump-on-covid-vaccine-and-other-commentary/ https://nypost.com/2020/12/16/biden-should-credit-trump-on-c... Edit: Clarity
- maxerickson 6y agoIt's likely quite true that the Biden administration has increased the speed of vaccination, with Warp Speed providing the base they built from. Hard to make a concrete argument about how much difference, but I think the direction is obvious enough.
- nvoid 6y agoYeah I don't doubt it, I just wanted to straighten out the facts.
- nvoid 6y agoHow does Israel manage to be over 100 per 100 vaccinated?
- maxerickson 6y agoIt's doses administered, vaccine is 2 doses.
- nvoid 6y agoAh ok
- low_tech_love 6y agoI’m guessing it’s counting doses.
- maxerickson 6y agoThe US is a wealthy country that is directly producing an awful lot of vaccines, we'd likely be vaccinating a lot more people with Moderna than any other country even if there were not national control of the distribution. In the medium term, vaccinating US people first and fast is a great way to sell them on building lots of production capacity.
- ThePhysicist 6y agoI don't think this should be on HN as it's really not tech-related and will most likely lead to heated political discussion.
- uniqueid 6y agoWhy not "Want a Vaccine? Elect a megalomaniacal warlord and plunder it from a less powerful nation"?