Alison O'Connor: It feels like we are living in slow motion but we must keep an eye on the prize

 Jill Biden receiving a COVID-19 vaccination from nurse practitioner Tabe Mase at ChristianaCare Christiana Hospital on December 21, 2020 in Newark, Delaware. Picture: Getty Images

Why have our Taoiseach, Tánaiste and the rest of the Cabinet not received their Covid-19 vaccines yet?

As we have seen, vaccines can be a toxic issue for politicians. It is unlikely our senior politicians will be putting themselves ahead in the queue anytime soon. But that is wrong. The people who are currently running the country need to get their shots. While they’re at it they can post their “vaxxie” to encourage others.

You may not like their politics or some of the decisions they take, but surely the importance of their roles, individually and collectively, mean they should already have gotten their shots. Some Cabinet members — Agriculture Minister Charlie McConalogue and Justice Minister Helen McEntee — have already contracted the virus, but luckily neither was hospitalised.

But do we want a situation where our Cabinet members, especially the Taoiseach, acquire Covid and become so ill they cannot work or end up in hospital. Surely the country faces enough difficulties without these sort of complications. It highlights an immaturity in our public life in Ireland that the lobby which believes this should not happen, because of the “all politicians are wasters” attitude, would prevail in such a key decision.

There has been debate over whether or not Micheál Martin, if invited, should bring the bowl of Shamrock to the White House for St Patricks’s Day this year.

He absolutely should go. What better way to put on global display the new President’s immense grá for Ireland. But even Joe Biden’s céad míle fáilte would be stretched by the idea of welcoming to the White House an unvaccinated Taoiseach 

The President was vaccinated on live television in December.

When Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was getting the shot she broadcast it on Instagram Live, urging people to ask her questions about it. “Just like wearing a mask, I’d never advise you to do something I wasn’t willing to do myself,” she told followers.

Remember when concern about the uptake of a vaccine for Covid 19 was a genuine issue? It was a theme that ran through a number of months early in the pandemic.

Whenever vaccine research was mentioned by a public figure there was always the added message that it was of the utmost importance that all precautions be taken in the rush to find a vaccine, and no steps missed in the safety protocols.

In recent times we seem to have moved to a position where such caution is almost forgotten. This has meant that those with a political motive to by-pass such protocols are being looked upon as being far more vaccine ballsy

Given the circumstances people find themselves in, starting at the same four walls of their own home for weeks on end, the desire for escape, at any cost, is an understandable one. But it is worth putting it all in some context.

To quickly clear a few things up — it’s too soon to tell how well or otherwise the EU Commission has done overall on vaccines. What we do know already is that when it comes to political rows over vaccines the Commission scores atrociously.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson's handling of the crisis appears to be paying off - in the short term at least.

 Secondly, Boris Johnson’s handling of the pandemic has been so dire the British prime minister knew he needed a big vaccine win. He was prepared to take risks. Thirdly, as a small island country on the edge of Europe we should be giving thanks every day that we are in the EU and part of it’s vaccine purchasing and regulatory programme.

Boris’s swashbuckling approach to vaccination has really paid off — in the short term at least. Remember, the UK recently passed the dreadful milestone of over 100,000 deaths. However, a poll last weekend showed the Conservatives have overtaken Labour, up 4 points percentage points, on a fortnight previously, to 41%. The Opinium poll showed Keir Starmer’s Labour at 38%, down 3 points.

To put further context on their swift vaccine moves, the UK’s Health Secretary Matt Hancock revealed this week his backing of the early purchase of large volumes of vaccine was significantly influenced by the 2011 Hollywood thriller Contagion, about a fictional pandemic

Back to the EU Commission. In a move no one could ever have predicted President Ursula von der Leyen’s actions gave Boris Johnson the higher moral ground. What happened last Friday evening in relation to the Northern Ireland protocol has resulted in the opening of  Pandora’s Box. The full implication’s of the attempt to use article 16 of the Northern Ireland protocol, with threats to put checks on the border to prevent vaccines produced in the EU from reaching the UK, simply cannot be gauged at this point. What we do know is that it is an absolute mess.

Von der Leyen has expressed her regret at the stupidity of the attempted move but, in truth, the actions of the Commission during this period have been really worrying. Those efforts to bring pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca to heel had all the political signs of headless chickens attempting to outdo each other in sound and fury. There was also the appearance of a child stomping its feet at the prospect of the UK getting its supply of AstraZeneca while the EU was left short.

There is no doubt but AstraZeneca behaved really badly but roaring and shouting was hardly the best manner in which to resolve the issue. 

AstraZeneca will now provide an additional nine million doses by next month, but this is still only around half of what had been hoped would be supplied, around 40 million for the first quarter of this year. 

Having had the upper moral hand in the Brexit negotiations for so long, it was like a fog of red fury descended on the Commission, fuelled by the criticism of member states at the slow roll out of supply. Rather than pragmatism and politics the response was blatant efforts at vaccine nationalism towards the UK

The next step is to wait on approval for the single jab Johnson&Johnson vaccine. That company hopes to apply for approval this month to the European Medicine Agency. It is mind-boggling to think there are over 320 Covid-19 vaccines in development all over the world. But in our own scramble to get hold of some we are almost all failing to see that vaccine nationalism will ultimately only serve to prolong the pandemic. If we don’t share with less well off countries and end up vaccinating a lot of people in those places the end result is Covid continues to spread unhindered there and more new variants emerge. For purely selfish reasons alone we do not want this to happen where our current vaccines and treatment would be rendered ineffective.

There is no doubt but having to wait to be vaccinated is one of the most frustrating experiences ever to be had by many of us in our lifetimes. But now is the time to keep an eye on the bigger picture; to remember that soon we will have an embarrassment of vaccines for Covid-19. After everything vaccine-related appearing to happen in slow motion for so long we’ll see an incredible amount happening at once. We need to keep our eye on that prize.