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Comment by mrtksn | Hacker News Reader

I still don’t understand why EU did not consider the Chinese and Russian vaccines.

Very populous countries are getting them and any distrust towards the reporting of these vaccines could have been scrutinized(Turkey run its own "stage 3" on the Chinese one, got its own numbers and is inspecting the deliveries for 2 weeks before vaccinating the population).

Now we have this situation where EU is lagging behind very seriously and the allied countries say that they should have signed better contracts.

Okay, do your thing on TikTok and Huawei businesses in your trade war but not even considering buying vaccines from them then being left behind and and arguing on contract technicalities is not OK.

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Presumably because (despite your point about customer countries doing their own testing) China and Russia are undemocratic and authoritarian regimes which are not trusted to produce a vaccine that has been properly tested in a fully accountable way.

That is not to doubt their scientific prowess, but the ability of their science to avoid gross political interference.

Neither is it to imply the West are angels, but comparatively China and Russia are not subject to the same democratic oversight.

>Presumably because (despite your point about customer countries doing their own testing) China and Russia are undemocratic and authoritarian regimes which are not trusted to produce a vaccine that has been properly tested in a fully accountable way.

That's the last thing they care about (if it's even in the list). For one, we could easily verify the vaccines of those countries with independent testing here or there, we don't have to "trust" their development method and testing.

Not to mention we seemed to have no problem trusting their drugs and vaccines (Chinese ones) for decades. Suddenly we don't?

It's the trade war with China and the pressure on Russia (to just give in and open up to western companies/demands like in the Yeltsin era).

The rest are excuses for gullible citizens.

> I still don’t understand why EU did not consider the Chinese and Russian vaccines.

Politics, that's pretty much it.

For months now people have been indoctrinated that nothing good could ever come out of China or Russia.

A lot of that facilitated by misleading headlines about how their vaccines were supposedly "rushed" and somehow disregarding approval processes, as if that wasn't happening pretty much everywhere.

A narrative that solely rests on embezzling the fact that there is no global authority on pharma approval, every country sets up their own rules.

Throw in some really sensationalized and misleading headlines about how they supposedly force people to be guinea pigs for their vaccines, and both of these vaccines have become so toxic, publicity wise, that even considering them would be a political death sentence in many Western countries.

This is a political suicide in many countries+ the likelihood of people wanting to take it may be on the lower side.

I’m sure dying off and keeping businesses shut will be huge political win when the allies return to normal.

Everyone will appreciate the bad contract and simply not make big deal out of it. Take a knee for the western alliance.

When we are on it, we should also ban Xiaomi and TikTok.

This. Singapore, an ethnically Chinese country, has announced they're buying Moderna, BioNTech and (Chinese) Sinovac, and approximately nobody trusts or wants to take the Chinese one.

Exactly. I have some friends in Singapore and the gov’t said “everyone will get a vaccine but you won’t have a choice as to which one you get”.

Since they stand a better than 1/3 chance of getting SinoVac (since the other two will be reserved for the elderly as they have strong data) a lot of them are planning to delay getting vaccinated until more is known about SinoVac.

I'm in Venezuela and we're apparently only getting the Russian vaccine. I haven't met the first person that says they're willing to get it.

It’s not like you would be the first people to get vaccinated with sputkin-V, you know. Rollout in Russia is slow (as per usual), but my whole family got at least one dose already, and we are all fine. No third arms, no blood, coming out of our eyes.

Russian vaccine is ok. Don’t know how true the effectiveness numbers are, but I don’t believe they are significantly lower in reality then on paper.

It's definitely not a "political suicide" in Europe, in the sense that people have political objections to that.

It is a political suicide in the sense that the political establishment will punish those that opt for it, however.

China literally runs concentration camps for some of their citizens. If that's how they treat citizens, why should foreigners expect good treatment?

We won’t have to live in China, we will consume the vaccines like we consume the iPhones.

But you inject the vaccine into your body.

Remember the melamine in baby formula scandal? To this day, many Chinese parents are still buying formula from abroad.

Remember the Nestle baby formula scandal? Fraud is not a Chinese-exclusive thing.

Sure. But the comparison to iPhones is irrelevant.

>I still don’t understand why EU did not consider the Chinese and Russian vaccines.

Because they care for politics and diplomacy plays (and playing second fiddle to American rivarly with these countries), not for the citizens...

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