Irish Examiner view: Patience thins as EU exports 34m vaccines

European health commissioner, Stella Kyriakides,  criticising AstraZeneca for failing to deliver the promised doses of its coronavirus vaccine. Picture: John Thys/Pool Photo via AP

It says something deeply reassuring that it took science less than a year to deliver vaccines capable of controlling, or at least containing, Covid-19.  Last November's announcement — not yet six months ago — that several elixirs had been found was a moment to celebrate. 

Then, human nature, as it always must, intervened, in the form of vaccine nationalism and commercial opportunism, as did the consequences of limited production capacity. So, too, did the oldest of all of the laws of economics: The monkey with the biggest stick gets all the coconuts.