, Columnist
Vaccine Enthusiasm Gives Way to Squabbles and Gloom
Scarce supplies will push countries to play hardball, as is happening with the EU and Astra Zeneca, but also make plain the benefits of cooperation.
We’re in this together.
Photographer: Alex Kraus/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
It’s been a month since the European Union gave its first approval to a Covid-19 vaccine, and enthusiasm has given way to gloom.
The rollout’s fitful start in France has left citizens fuming as tiny Israel and post-Brexit Britain speed ahead. Germany has effectively gone it alone, snapping up more doses to side-step a joint EU deal whose flaws German politicians have pinned on the French. And EU officials, under fire over their handling of the process, have hounded manufacturers and threatened to limit vaccine exports if orders from abroad don’t arrive on time.