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The European Union Pulls Ahead of the United States In Vaccinations (nytimes.com) 192

Posted by BeauHD from the vaccination-race dept.
gollum123 shares a report from The New York Times: The 27 member states of the European Union altogether have now administered more coronavirus vaccine doses per 100 people than the United States, in another sign that inoculations across the bloc have maintained some speed throughout the summer, while they have stagnated for weeks in the United States. E.U. countries had administered 102.66 doses per 100 people as of Tuesday, while the United States had administered 102.44, according to the latest vaccination figures compiled by Our World in Data. This month, the European Union also overtook the United States in first injections; currently, 58 percent of people across the bloc have received a dose, compared with 56.5 percent in the United States. The latest figures provide a stark contrast with the early stages of the vaccination campaigns this year, when E.U. countries, facing a shortage of doses and delayed deliveries, looked in envy at the initially more successful efforts in the United States, Britain and Israel. But the European Union is now vaccinating its populations at a faster pace than most developed countries. More than 70 percent of adults in the bloc have now received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine.
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The European Union Pulls Ahead of the United States In Vaccinations More

The European Union Pulls Ahead of the United States In Vaccinations

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  • Yay (Score:5, Insightful)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Thursday July 29, 2021 @05:22PM (#61636123) Journal

    Good job.

    • Re:Yay (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anubis IV ( 1279820 ) on Thursday July 29, 2021 @05:45PM (#61636203)

      This. It's a good thing. No sarcasm. It doesn't matter which country leads the way, so long as we get enough people vaccinated that we can push this disease into obscurity.

    • Re:Yay (Score:4, Funny)

      by The_Noid ( 28819 ) on Friday July 30, 2021 @03:36AM (#61637215) Journal

      Good jab!

    • This "victory" is probably not long-lived though. The rate of 1st dose vaccination is flattening out, and people under 40 have 50% vaccination rate here. And this is just before the summer vacations, when everyone should have the most incentives to get vaccinated to be allowed to travel to the sea resorts.

  • Not really a surprise (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday July 29, 2021 @05:24PM (#61636133)
    We have a major political party and their multi-billion dollar propaganda apparatus pushing anti-vax nonsense.

    And before anyone brings it up yes I know blacks and Latinos have low vaccine rates. This can be traced back to the primary reason people who are hesitant to take vaccines get vaccinated: their doctors. In this case a lack thereof. Studies have shown to the vaccine hesitant primarily become willing to take the vaccine after talking to a doctor, blacks and Latinos both have very low rates of access to medical Care. In other words they can't afford to go see doctors and so they don't have anyone they trust telling them to take the vaccine. Instead they have a bewildering array of anti-vax propaganda put together by skilled professionals and focus group tested to millions every night during prime Time on Fox News.

    • Blunt but true (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Thursday July 29, 2021 @05:27PM (#61636141) Journal

      Fox Kills

    • There's also that whole medical experiments on African Americans thing in the not-too-distant past.

    • . . . blacks and Latinos both have very low rates of access to medical Care. In other words they can't afford to go see doctors and so they don't have anyone they trust telling them to take the vaccine.

      But even when they do have a doctor they trust, that doctor might not believe in the vaccine.

      Dr. Eugenia South I'm a Black doctor who didn't trust the Covid vaccine. Here's what changed my mind [nbcnews.com]

      So it's not always about access to healthcare and trustworthy medical professionals.

      Part of the problem comes from the way the U.S. govt treated blacks in the past such as during the Tuskegee Syphilis Study [wikipedia.org]

      Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice,... Nope. There won't be a second time.

    • Studies have shown to the vaccine hesitant primarily become willing to take the vaccine after talking to a doctor, blacks and Latinos both have very low rates of access to medical Care. In other words they can't afford to go see doctors and so they don't have anyone they trust telling them to take the vaccine.

      Gee, we ought to implement a healthcare program focused on providing healthcare to those without coverage. Why, we could even subsidise it so that many pay just a few dollars a month, and many would pay nothing. It would be wonderful.

      Then, to really drive home the idea that everyone should get vaccinated the government should offer the injections for free, allowing anyone that WANTS the vaccine to get it.

      And we'll run countless TV ads, encourage vaccinations on every news or "news entertainment" show as wel

      • You keep bringing up this Tuskegee experiment thing, and I have no idea what that reprehensible chapter in venereal disease research 80 years ago has to do with what's happening today. Are you suggesting that the vaccine is a placebo so that researchers can track the full progression of COVID? I think we've got more than enough people in hospital beds to get that research done without any amoral activity.

        Are you also going to bring up the forced sterilization of native americans in the 1970s, or the injec

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tom ( 822 )

      they can't afford to go see doctors

      This is the part that most Europeans won't understand without explanation. How is "can't afford" and "doctors" related? Don't you have health insurance? Can't you go and see a doctor for free whenever you feel ill or think you need a check-up?

      I have never, ever, not once, paid a single Euro to be seen by a doctor.

      • Yeah, the real irony here is that you don't need to see a doctor to get this vaccination either. You need a smartphone. You go to a web site to make an appointment at a pharmacy, and then you get a free ride from Uber or Lyft to your vaccination appointment at the pharmacy, a pharmacist administers the shot for free, and you go home without spending a single cent. Then you do it again in a couple weeks unless they gave your the J&J vaccine.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Tom ( 822 )

          RTFS (read the f*cking summary) - you don't even need to read the article to understand that it's not about visiting the doctor to get the shot. It's about visiting the doctor to get good medical information that increases the percentage of people who WANT to get vaccinated.

          Or in other words: People who go to school less often are worse at math and sign contracts that are financially not beneficial to themselves. News at 11.

    • The public school system teaches that facts and opinions have equal standing. Kids today dont learn that the truth is the truth - you cant have alternate versions of the truth .As far as science is concerned there is only one truth. Kids need to learn that. Then when presented with the science follow it instead of thinking the opinion of your barber, your grocer or your butcher have the same value as the opinion of your doctor on medical matters. I certainly wouldnt let my doctor cut my hair, why do anti v

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by k6mfw ( 1182893 )

      Insightful comment, perhaps people can argue whether it's true or not that a major political party and their multi-billion dollar propaganda apparatus pushing anti-vax nonsense. My opinion not exactly pushing anti-vax nonsense but not containing nonsense or occasionally push "muh freedums, etc" which cancels any pro-vaccine comments they said earlier.

      You do bring up an important topic of blacks and latinos usually these demographics are in poorer economic tiers both have very low rates of access to medica

  • Behoooold- (Score:5, Funny)

    by locater16 ( 2326718 ) on Thursday July 29, 2021 @05:28PM (#61636143)
    - the power of a decent public education system!!!

    • Wait you're telling me that a government can do something right?

    • Also the power of having an end goal in mind and applying government policies in a way to achieve that end goal. E.g. when the AZ blood clot issues came up many European countries decided to stop administering it pending an additional review knowing full well that it will set back the vaccination program a few weeks. End result: vaccine hesitancy *decreased* as people had more faith that the government was taking necessary precautions. I still remember Slashdotters being critical of this back in Feb but as

  • America 'reopened' and stopped pushing. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Thursday July 29, 2021 @06:09PM (#61636303) Homepage
    Around here, they shut down all 5 or 6 of the walk in vaccine clinics and opened one single location to serve the entire area. I guess people just stopped showing up, so they gave up really trying.

    Dropping the mask mandate also flagged to everyone that the pandemic is over. They did this too early and it makes those that still need masks feel like shamed lepers - well if you are shamed is it easier to just drop the mask or go get a vaccine?
    • My cousin is a nurse working at a vaccination center. That's pretty much what he reports - people stopped showing up. So they shut down the bigger centers (he worked at Disneyland), and reassigned staff to smaller centers scattered around. I guess in the hopes that some people unwilling to go to and wait in line at a vaccination super-site like Disneyland or Dodger Stadium, would be more willing to visit a site closer to home and with shorter lines (even if they spent just as long or longer waiting in line)

    • You need to tie the vaccine to something you love. Here the economy is effectively open but you either need testing or vaccination in order to attend larger events or to travel internationally.

      Tell Western Europeans you can't go to a Spanish, Italian, or Greek beach in the summer and you get people madly falling over each other trying to get vaccines, including the absurdity of paying several hundred euros to buy fake vaccine papers rather than just getting the free vaccine.

    • Dropping the mask mandate was a double edged sword. The vaccine was sold on the premise that once you were fully vaccinated, life could go back to normal. As it turns out, the delta variant and the nature of vaccination effectiveness turned out to be more complicated than that, and we're into situations nobody really expected, like the vaccine is still effective but vaccinated people can get breakthrough infections and spread high levels of virus, even when they don't get very sick.

      But the problem was a l

      • You couldn't push vaccination but continue mask mandates without undermining the vaccine's payoff of returning the normal.

        Sure you can, for the same reason that you can advocate for car manufacturers be required that their cars have airbags and crumple zones while also still encouraging people to continue wearing their seatbelt. Saying you should still wear a seatbelt doesn't "undermine" the payoff of airbags and crumple zones. It's just a reasonable recognition of the fact that no one solution is panacea and that the best approach is often defense in depth.

  • If the vaccine is as politicized as it is here in the US? I imagine that could be part of the difference.

    • Obviously not. [youtu.be]

    • Not really. There's some populist parties that made and some still make some half-assed attempt at trying, but most notice that the backlash costs them more votes than they get from the loonies.

    • It is, but many countries here don't give the political nutjobs a podium. Every European country has a flavour of Trump, but only a couple actually elect them into a position of power.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Yes, but the idiots usually do not have a major political party behind them. So same number of idiots (education does apparently do nothing), but fewer supporters and hanger-ons. Still plenty of genuine idiots.

  • When your odds are 1:100 or worse, you save your hide rather than procrastinating or listening to online cranks.

    • When your odds are 1:100 or worse, you save your hide rather than procrastinating or listening to online cranks.

      There's a 4% difference in age brackets. That doesn't even remotely account for the difference in vaccine hesitancy and vaccination rates over time between Europe and the USA.

  • The US doesn't have a monopoly on stupidity and there is a very loud minority in most European countries objecting to vaccines, mask mandates, lockdown and restrictions on travel, indoor dining etc for those who won't vaccinate.

    I think for the most part they're ignored despite being incredibly screechy and annoying. Social media is doing a piss poor job of shutting misinfo. Twitter claims a 3 strikes policy but it is trivial to find people spamming dozens if not hundreds of bullshit stories around its pla

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Indeed. One good thing is that the talk of restrictions for the unvaccinated plague-spreaders is getting more serious. There will not be a way around that in the end.

  • Canada just passed the UK to take the #1 spot for G7 country with the most vaccinations. 70.7% of the country has one dose and 57.7% have two doses. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada... [www.cbc.ca]

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