The cost of morale

Compared to the great power it wants to be, the European Union has emerged as a mere province of the world during the pandemic crisis.

While 38% of Americans and - worse still - 58% of British have received the vaccine, Europe pedals in the tail with a nondescript 14%.

We Europeans know that we are privileged in the great framework of things, as there are many countries that do not yet have a single dose, with the possible exception of a tricky satrap, but to go four times behind a United Kingdom that has just finished abandoning

ourselves

in the adventure of History reveals with balconies to the street that those of

(beyond the sea), as the British call us, have to rethink about morality and efficiency.

• There will be more pandemics, are we ready for the next virus?

The reasons for the European delay are becoming quite clear.

The subcontinent is largely organized into densely populated cores, where close relationships are almost mandatory, and it has repeatedly failed to detect, trace, and contain outbreaks, as China and other Asian countries have, under whose regime, of course, few we would like to be inspired.

The population is very old, and that makes it more vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2.

Regarding vaccines, Brussels has behaved like one of the clients in the queue of the pharmaceutical industry, instead of financing it from the beginning and assuming some of its risks, such as the disaster that a company represents that its drug does not work or, worse still, that it has unforeseen side effects.

It is not enough to fill your mouth about the need for the public sector and industry to collaborate.

You have to build the necessary bridges for that to happen.

That would have saved us in passing a fight between President Ursula von der Leyen and the multinational AstraZeneca, which has served above all to piss the population off about a vaccine that has all the papers in order.

Compared to the great power it wants to be, the European Union has revealed itself as a mere province of the world during the pandemic crisis

It is true that the European style of doing politics exhibits a more presentable morality than that of its Anglo-Saxon partners.

Europe has not guaranteed vaccine doses, but has approached the global pharmaceutical market with candor.

It has also donated part of the drug to developing countries, unlike the United States and the United Kingdom, which have chosen to vaccinate their population as soon as possible.

Here the decision of Brussels is not only guided by ethics, but also by science, since the pandemic will not end as long as we have vaccinated the planet.

But the consequences on the European economy of the sauropsid apparatus that governs their destinies, or should govern them, are vast.

According to data from 'The Economist', the North American economy will be 6% larger in 2022 than in 2019, in the pre-pandemic era, while European wealth will remain stagnant.

Adding up the cost of the 2008 financial crisis and that of the pandemic, Europe will lose 3 trillion euros.

It is the cost of morale.

Or maybe the clumsiness.

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