Dougie I don't know if Michael West is 'genuinely independent' or not but he is either unaware or deliberately omitted a key piece of information.
I reported earlier on the conversations I had with contacts in New Zealand and they told me that the offer that Pfizer made to the kiwis and us had an important string attached: the agreement to exclusively use Pfizer as its vaccine supply.
They will not make this public - at least at this time - as both countries still depend on Pfizer. Supporting this is Pfizer's 'offer' was 40 million - our entire requirement. The Kiwis told me that Pfizer was pretty aggressive about it and took out their wrath on them in the fallout from the WTO motion I mentioned previously.
Would anyone, particularly Australia with its capacity to produce another vaccine, go down this path with this option? New Zealand had to having so antagonised Pfizer with their enthusiatic support for the WTO motion sponsored by India and South Africa and only signing up after Australia in December 2020 - with Pfizer getting what they wanted. I don't see Jacinta Ardrern coming in for criticism in the chat here when New Zealand's rollout is actually slower than ours.
Both Australia and New Zealand were going down the same path. Buy Pfizer initially as it was going to be the first approved and provides rapid protection but is difficult to transport and store, is very expensive and represents the first broadscale rollout of this style of vaccine = use it for front line workers. Buy AZ when it becomes available later, a more traditional vaccine but slower acting which Australia could manufacture that is easy to transport and store and is more cost effective = use it for the balance of the population.
Any rational person would consider that to be a sound strategy with lower risks. Where would Australia be now if we had taken the Pfizer offer with strings attached and it developed serious issues? At the very least we would have had a significant delay to the rollout while we tried to find an alternate vaccine.
I am not for one moment trying to say the Morrison government did a perfect job with the vaccine rollout which they haven't or that they were totally blameless in their negotiations with Pfizer. But the original choices on how to use Pfizer and AZ were actually sound in the circumstance. It was the selection of their other other vaccine options that can be seriously questioned and the mechanics of the initial rollout left a lot to be desired.
