Has the EU has overtaken the UK in Covid vaccinations?

Readers may recently have started to see reports that the EU is now doing very well with its vaccination programme. I can state categorically that this is not true. The simple fact is that the UK’s performance still exceeds the EU’s by a substantial margin. I have investigated and can reveal the latest comparison on how the EU is doing compared to the United Kingdom.

The EU ‘has not had a good Covid’

It is widely recognised that the EU ‘has not had a good Covid’. Bureaucratic delays in approving vaccines, indulging vain hopes that France’s pharma manufacturer would ever produce a vaccine, more bureaucratic delays in negotiating vaccine contracts with other, hugely expensive suppliers, and strongly negative statements about vaccines by leaders such as France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Angela Merkel all contributed to a very slow start.

In a typical attempt to divert attention away from its own failings, the EU Commission has spent a lot of time attacking both the United Kingdom and one of its vaccine suppliers — AstraZeneca — instead of applying all its energies to sorting out the problems. At the end of January, the EU Commission even briefly invoked Article 16 of the Withdrawal Agreement, effectively placing a hard border on the island of Ireland. They were forced to retract some five hours later after an international outcry, but their motives had been made clear for all to see. They then made abortive attempts to sue British-based AstraZeneca through the EU Court of Justice.

So how does the EU now compare with the United Kingdom?

Percentage of the population vaccinated against COVID-19
An aggregate of EU27 countries, compared to the UK, latest figures as at 11 Aug 2021.

1. Share of the population fully vaccinated

• United Kingdom: 58.94%
• EU27: 52.95%

2. Share of the population fully or partly vaccinated

• United Kingdom: 69.48%
• EU27: 61.74%
• Pro-rata, the UK has fully or partly vaccinated 12.5% more of its citizens than has the EU27

It is now nine months since the United Kingdom started vaccinating against COVID-19

On 08 December 2020, Brexit Britain launched the world’s first mass vaccination programme. Margaret Keenan, a 90-year-old grandmother, became the first person to receive the vaccine at a hospital in Coventry. Interestingly she received the US-German Pfizer-BioNTech jab, not the AstraZeneca version.

I have shown the EU27 countries in aggregate. The reason is simple. The EU Commission took advantage of the COVID-19 crisis to take over the approvals and rollout of a vaccination programme from its individual member countries. This was a significant ‘power grab’ by the Commission, extending its sphere of domination yet further. It is therefore perfectly reasonable to look at the EU’s performance compared to that of the United Kingdom.

Totalitarian France has helped to improve the EU’s latest figures

I have investigated and can reveal the latest comparison on how the EU is doing compared to the United Kingdom. countries like China than with western democracies.

Three weeks ago the beleaguered French President Emmanuel Macron rushed a law through the French Parliament which has more in common with totalitarian countries like China than with western democracies.

It initially applies to all adults but will apply to everyone aged 12 and older starting on 30 Sept. French legislators had just six days to consider the draconian new law and it was passed on 26 July 2021.

In the first 17 days since the law was passed
the percentage of French citizens having their first vaccination jumped by 13.8%

The latest move means that in France you can no longer use public transport, visit a museum or cinema, go to a restaurant, or even sit outside a café unless you can prove that you have been double-vaccinated or can show a very recent negative COVID test. And if you work in the health sector you face suspension if you have not had both jabs.

The result? French people were suddenly forced to get vaccinated or lose the ability to function in society as normal citizens. Since this law came into effect, hundreds of thousands have been going to clinics each day to get the jabs. That my friends is what happens in countries like China and the old Soviet Union, that my friends IS what a Totalitarian state or country does.

This is about performance and liberties, not COVID-19

Once again I must start by saying that the above report does not discuss the efficacy or advisability of being vaccinated against COVID-19. This article focuses purely on the avowed policies of the governments in the UK and the EU to vaccinate as many of their citizens as possible, as fast as possible.

By this measure, the EU has come up very short against Brexit Britain, and it continues to do so even to this day, nine months after the United Kingdom launched the world’s first mass vaccination programme against the new virus.

Totalitarian government in a major EU country — where is the EU Commission on this? Yes, folks if you now live in France you are living under a Totalitarian law which means your civil liberty is curtailed.

Over the past few years, countries such as Poland and Hungary have started facing legal action from the EU Commission over their domestic policies on a range of different issues.

Now we have a major EU country, France, imposing what amounts to a diktat on its citizens to get vaccinated or face social and work exclusion. And this comes after months of the French President spreading such anti-vaccine messages that France has had one of the lowest take-ups of vaccinations of any European country.

Regardless of any debate about vaccines and their side effects, when any government imposes such laws on its citizens surely there are major questions of civil liberties at stake here?

Strangely, the EU Commission has been completely silent on the unprecedented and draconian controls imposed on the French people almost three weeks ago. Aside from anything else, I doubt that this law would pass the scrutiny of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which the United Kingdom is still and inexplicably (in MY view) part of.

It is one thing to encourage people to have jabs, but quite another to threaten their livelihoods and their normal daily freedoms such as having a coffee if they don’t obey a newly rushed-in law.

The EU Commission has proved to be incompetent in their handling of the EU’s vaccine programme, and missing in action when it comes to defending the rights of its citizens.

The face of a French Totalitarian President

Sources: OWID | Johns Hopkins University ]5