Chris

You're great value, I'll give you that.

Personally I don't care whether the German or the French governments approve of the AstraZeneca vaccine or not, except in the sense that it's mildly entertaining watching them sabotage their own vaccination programmes even as they desperately try to big up European endeavour post-Brexit. Whether or not individual national medicines agencies have acted truly without political interference is neither here nor there. The politically-inspired messaging that followed those decisions in certain key EU member states is the reason they are having vaccine uptake problems now.

Over in the USA, the FDA is being famously slow. It is well known for shredding conclusions offered to them by drug companies, going back to the raw data, examining it closely and forming conclusions of its own from scratch. This takes time. Are they prioritising domestic vaccine producers as well? Probably. Do I care ... no.

Italy's export refusal is the more interesting development this week. For my money that is more likely to have a long-term effect on levels of trust between nations, although I also note Australia doesn't seem enormously concerned. This is most likely due to their low infection rates and the fact that domestic production of AZ is about to begin.