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Adam Chapnick's Blog

Another reason not to delay the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine...

1/25/2021

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Earlier this week, the Toronto Star’s Alex Boyd asked: “Is delaying second COVID vaccine doses a ‘half-baked solution’ to supply woes?”
 
Her article provides an excellent summary of the ongoing debate over whether, in light of the paucity of available COVID-19 vaccines, it might be worthwhile to hold off on administering the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine in order to provide more people with their first shot more quickly.
 
As Boyd notes, the argument in favour “is that it’s better to give more people the limited protection a single dose appears to deliver [52% rather than 95%] and they can still get their second shot, just a little later.”
 
I am more convinced by the arguments against, and there are plenty.
 
Dr. Alan Bernstein, a member of Canada’s COVID-19 Vaccine Task Force, offers eight, ranging from the dangers of tampering with “vaccines based on RNA technology that have never been tried on humans before,” to providing individuals with insufficient protection, to undermining faith in the integrity of public health recommendations, to upsetting Pfizer to the point that the company refuses to ship us more product.
 
Regrettably, Bernstein’s list of reasons does not appear to be sufficiently compelling to prevent some of our provinces, not to mention a number of Canada’s major allies, from planning to experiment.
 
So here is one more reason worth considering:
 
The global vaccination effort is no longer just a public health challenge; it has also become part of an ongoing diplomatic competition between China and the Western world.
 
For years, Beijing has tried to reshape the international order to better align with its interests.
 
To oversimplify, Chinese foreign policy has aimed to convince members of the global commons that Beijing’s illiberal approach to domestic and world affairs is superior to the liberal, democratic model typically championed by the United States and much preferred by the rest of the West.
 
And it seems to be working. Global confidence in democracy has been waning.
 
Most recently, Beijing has pointed to how its heavy-handed lockdowns and intrusive contact tracing methods have largely held the virus at bay, allowing the Chinese economy to rebound while the West continues to struggle.
 
So far, however, Beijing has not come close to demonstrating superiority in terms of its vaccines.
 
A recent article in The Economist details a Chinese approach to immunization that has included risky mass inoculations of untested products, inconsistent data, and a failure to match the 95% efficacy of Pfizer or the 94.1% efficacy of Moderna.
 
For now, then, it remains possible that when this pandemic finally ends, Western scientific discoveries could help discredit the Chinese model.
 
In that context, experimenting with the Pfizer vaccine – never a good idea in the first place – becomes an absolutely terrible one.
 
Against an adversary like China, we need all the soft power we can get.
 
***
I don’t follow a lot of people on Twitter, but I’m really impressed by the way that Lieutenant-Commander Amber Comisso (@cdnnavylady) uses her account. The tone and content of her tweets should make the Canadian Navy proud.

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    Adam Chapnick is a professor of defence studies at the Royal Military College of Canada (RMC). The views expressed here are entirely his own.

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  • Adam Chapnick
    • Contact
    • Biography
    • Employment
    • Education
    • Academic Honours and research grants
    • Professional Administrative Experience
    • Advisory/Editorial Boards
    • Scholarly Assessments
    • Academic Associations
    • Additional Relevant Information
    • Testimonials
  • Teaching & Learning
    • Teaching Philosophy
    • Teaching Experience
    • Supervisions and Thesis Defence Committees >
      • Supervisions
      • Thesis Defence Committees
    • Refereed Conference Presentations (Teaching & Learning)
    • Publications (Teaching & Learning)
    • Teaching Blogs >
      • Virtually Learning
      • The First Sabbatical
      • The Scholarly Edition
    • Other Teaching & Learning Activities
  • Research
    • Articles
    • Book Chapters
    • Books and Edited Collections >
      • Situating Canada in a Changing World: Constructing a Modern and Prosperous Future
      • Canada on the United Nations Security Council
      • The Harper Era in Canadian Foreign Policy
      • Manuel de rédaction à l’usage des militaires
      • John W. Holmes: An Introduction, Special Issue of International Journal
      • Academic Writing for Military Personnel​
      • Canada’s Voice: The Public Life of John Wendell Holmes
      • Canadas of the Mind
      • The Middle Power Project
      • Through Our Eyes: An Alumni History of the University of Toronto Schools, 1960-2000
    • Conference Presentations
    • Newspaper and Newsletter Commentaries
    • Publications in Conference Proceedings
    • Reports
    • Reviews
    • Teaching & Learning Publications
  • Public Speaking
    • Guest Lectures & Invited Speeches
    • Invited Workshops & Presentations (Teaching & Learning)
    • Arrange a Lecture, Workshop, or Presentation
  • Adam Chapnick's Blog