Why the UK shouldn’t engage in vaccine nationalism

There is a big, big hole in Ursula von der Leyen’s strategy of threatening to ban exports of the Pfizer vaccine to Britain unless Britain hands over shots of UK-made AstraZeneca vaccine to make up for a shortfall in EU-made supplies. Well, several holes perhaps – not least that EU member states have done their utmost to undermine public confidence in the AstraZeneca vaccine, with the result that millions of doses have sat unused in fridges. What is the point in extracting AstraZeneca vaccines from Britain if they, too, are left to languish in fridges while Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel and others put people off accepting the vaccine?

But the big hole that I meant was that one of the vital ingredients of the Pfizer vaccine – lipids – are made at a Croda International plant in South Yorkshire.