H1N1 vaccines available at rock bottom prices in Europe

In a scenario that would have been unimaginable just two months ago, European countries are now scrambling to sell off hundreds of millions of H1N1 vaccine doses to the highest bidders. The race is on to find clients and the competition may well become fierce.

Well, if the development of the H1N1 story in Europe was made into a film it would have the kind of tortuous and unpredictable plot of which even Quentin Tarentino would be proud.

Before looking at recent developments, let’s go over the storyline again and remind ourselves of how things have unfolded up until the last week or so.

It all began with a sinister virus whose first major offensive arguably took place in Mexico before spreading to the United States and, from there, winging its inevitable way around the world in the pressurised cabins of jetliners.

Initial reactions were measured, with governments and the WHO trying to work out the best possible counter-attack strategies. Public reaction was relatively measured. However, once the novelty of the situation had dissipated and things began to look less serious than was initially predicted, secretly relieved cynics, in a sudden twist to the tale, began to trot out the usual conspiracy theories which held that the Powers-That-Be were hiding things from us, that we were being deliberately poisoned, that it was all a pharma-scam, that our governments were scare-mongering, and that our basic civil rights were being menaced by the threat of forced mass vaccination by hordes of jackbooted establishment shocktroopers.

Then, just as all the hullabaloo was reaching its peak, it was suddenly noticed that H1N1 infection and death rates were reaching proportions which were becoming conducive to a worldwide pandemic. So the story took another, and this time unexpected and dramatic, turn.

Citizens in many countries suddenly changed their tune and instead of slamming the authorities for scaremongering they began lining up at vaccination centres clamouring for vaccination, governments were widely criticized for not doing enough in terms of preparation, the labs were laminated because they couldn’t develop and produce vaccines fast enough. There was violence in police-controlled waiting lines –- notably in France –- and face masks began making their sinister appearance on the streets of our threatened cities. Predictions abounded of millions of possible deaths and, to cap it all, drug-resistant H1N1 mutant viruses were said to be lurking in the shadows, waiting to pounce upon us.

Then Christmas came and everyone forgot all about it, preferring to take a break from the ambient fear and flood the streets and malls in search of presents in the kind of heavy and close-proximity numbers that would have been deemed irresponsible a couple of weeks before.

Which brings us up to today.

It is being announced in the European press that governments, far from scrambling to obtain vaccines at any price, are now actually cancelling orders right, left and center and are selling existing stock off at bargain basement prices. Worse, total average vaccination figures in Europe are estimated to be a very low 5 to 8 percent and stagnating.

The French government has just cancelled orders for 50 of the initial 90 million doses it had signed up for and other countries are said to be following suit. Several countries are said to be refusing to accept further deliveries. Pharmaceutical companies are predictably trying to limit the damage by evaluating the validity of cancellation claims on a case-by-case and contract-by-contract basis, which translates into: “We are not going to carry the financial can for your hysterical pressuring and over-ordering.”

A good measure of the fear of financial loss is the totally unrealistic statement made today by French Health Minister Roselyn Bachelot, who said, “These orders have neither been delivered nor paid for, and [the contracts] are thus resiliated.” She doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on of course, just like other countries who think they have too much vaccine in stock. She seems to have forgotten that France selfishly ordered double doses all for itself until the OMS decided that was unnecessary last November.

Countries already known to be rushing to off-load vaccines are Germany, Sweden, Belgium, Spain, Holland, Switzerland, Great Britain and Italy. Other countries are expected to join them. Lucky bargain-hunting countries so far (or should I say poorer countries that were cynically and mercilessly squeezed out of the buyers market by the richer and larger European countries during the “shortages”) include Egypt, Ukraine, Romania, Mexico, Bulgaria and various Middle Eastern countries including Quatar.

Other doses are being “offered” to the OMS by richer countries who are resorting to sordid methods designed to disguise their actions as being a heart-warming gesture of human and international solidarity.

And make no mistake about it, all this is being taken very seriously by our governments. The French government openly admits that its ambassadors and embassies have been instructed to try and sell excess vaccines to their host countries. The French Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying, “We are selling vaccines, in a case-by-case manner, to governments who wish to buy vaccines and who request that we sell them. All demands are sent to the Health Ministry, which is the competent authority for dealing with the requests.” Concerning the fact that other countries are doing the same thing, another ministry official said: “That is true, but this isn’t about commercial competition.”

The cherry on the cake is that they will have to move quickly to sell the product, because another complication is that many doses are only a few months away from the end of their shelf-life. It’s the same for masks, the more sophisticated of which are impregnated with degradable anti-infection compounds.

So here we are, in the middle of one of the biggest and most cynical international health scandals of the last hundred years. And we have no one to blame but ourselves. A fickle and spoilt public, overbearing profit motives, spineless politicians and a hysterical press. Oh, and as a confirmed blogger, I consider that this episode has also shown the very narrow limits of what is fast becoming no more than a platform for hysterical paranoia dressed in uninformed “free speech” and amateur journalists’ clothing.

At the end of the day, and given that yet another “pandemic” is being predicted when the warm spring weather kicks in, I really do wonder if even the great Quentin Tarentino would be capable of coming up with the kind of byzantine and as-yet-unimagined direction that the next episode in this ugly soap-opera is very likely to take.