The noise that hides bad management

Political noise only scares people the best vaccines in the world in a country with a vaccine shortage. Opponents and government officials have been braided in recent days about the frustrated contract with the Pfizer company for the supply of vaccines. The fact that the word “return” appeared, as an alleged request for ex-conduction from the Ministry of Health to this North American laboratory, It could scare other North American medical companies providing vaccines (like Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, which makes the Janssen immunizer). US law prohibits its companies from paying foreign bribes and provides for fines of several million dollars. “If there is a fear of North American laboratories, it is precisely to be suspected of corrupt practices,” said a doctor who usually frequent these companies. However, the noise is only noise, which masks the undeniable conclusion that there was Argentinian ineptitude in handling the purchase of vaccines.

Let’s look at the facts of the dispute with Pfizer. This laboratory carried out the largest trial in the world in Argentina, which included the vaccination of 5,762 Argentines at the military hospital in Buenos Aires. The tests were in charge of the Infant Foundation, led by prestigious infectious disease specialist Fernando Polak. It was assumed (and well assumed) that the country would have some priority in the provision of vaccines after being the largest testing laboratory in the world. According to official sources, Pfizer pledged to ship over 13 million doses last December. A first problem arose when the law on immunity of laboratories included in the Chamber of Deputies the word “negligence” as the cause of elimination of immunity. This word was added by the deputy Cristinista Cecilia Moreau, from film recordings of the sessions of the Health Commission. In Juntos por el Cambio, there was even some internal dissent because his bloc had supported this law. Then, what the Uruguayan president, Luis Lacalle Pou, expressed publicly with sincerity, was clarified: “The laboratories manufactured in five months what in the history always took them no less than 5 or 6 years. It makes sense that they are asking for some immunity ”. Pfizer never accepted the word “neglect” and the government did nothing to change the law, even though the opposition was determined to vote on a possible change in the law.

Later, we learned that the Ministry of Health, then in charge of Ginés González García, he had asked Pfizer for a local partner and a technology transfer. Pfizer was unable to transfer technology because it simply wasn’t done. The local partner was questionable, as Pfizer owns a well-known drug factory in Argentina. It is true that Mexico and Brazil also demanded technology transfers, but they did not make it a condition for the purchase of vaccines. In fact, Brazil has purchased 100 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine. Mexico has purchased more than 50 million doses of this vaccine. Argentina, which was Pfizer’s main test bed, couldn’t buy it.

It has happened in recent days that Patricia Bullrich, president of Pro, had the affirmation that González García had asked for a “return” (ie bribes) to buy the Pfizer vaccine. Pfizer’s Argentinian office denied this claim. Consulted by LA NACION, Bullrich specifies that she never spoke of “returns”, but of that González García claimed a local Pfizer partner and that it was part of the “Kirchnerist matrix of corruption”. “I have never compromised Pfizer in my complaint, without even having received a return request,” he said. Alberto Fernández immediately sent Bullrich to see lawyer Gregorio Dalbón to bring a civil action for damages. Dalbón is a specialist in throwing more mud on the muddy court. Now, how is it possible that Argentina’s political leaders cannot talk to each other to clarify things and then bring them to the public before going to court? How, when the issue is the supply of vaccines to Argentines who lack vaccines?

A serious version of a Pfizer bribe demand has never been heard before, perhaps because it sure would have been unbelievable. Pfizer has signed a sales contract with the European Union for 1.8 billion doses. So, could you be very interested in the 13 million modest doses Argentina would buy? The problem (and the interest) is from Argentina, not from Pfizer. Argentines have lost the opportunity to have a significant amount of one of the most prestigious vaccines around, licensed by the major drug control agencies around the world: the North American FED, the European EMA and the World Health Organization.

The scandal of wrongful trials and judgments, however, serves to mask the fact that Argentina is one of the countries with the worst vaccination conditions. The country was also able to contract the purchase of 25 million doses of vaccines from the Covax Fund of the World Health Organization, vaccines authorized by the most important world authority in the field of health and medicines. He only bought 2,275,000 doses, barely ten percent of what he was entitled to. Mauricio Monsalvo, undersecretary of the Ministry of Health, told the Chamber of Deputies at the time that “opting for the minimum floor (when buying the Covax fund) was a wise decision”. He said it while the government bet all its purchases on bilateral agreements, without intermediaries, in particular the vaccines of the Anglo-Swedish laboratory AstraZeneca and the Russian Sputnik V. production, and then privileged the supply of vaccines of the Great -Brittany, where it has its headquarters. The European Union has taken legal action for breach of contract because it suspects he has favored his home country. Sputnik V still does not have clearance from the World Health Organization, let alone the European EMA and the North American FDA. It was an ideological choice, as Cristina Kirchner implicitly said when she pondered in a public speech that Argentines get vaccinated with vaccines from Russia and China. “Who was going to say it?” Meanwhile, Argentines who can pay disproportionate prices for plane tickets to get to Miami or New York and get vaccinated there with the vaccines of their choice (Pfizer, Moderna or Janssen). Ideology is an imposition of those who rule those who cannot. Impossible greater injustice.

It is true that there is a global shortage of vaccines. Supply is only one sixth of demand. This is why it is also excessive to talk about bribes for the purchase of vaccines. Argentina vaccinated with both doses only 5 percent of its population and with one dose at 18 percent. Spain has had problems accessing vaccines, but it has already vaccinated 38 percent of its population with one dose and 18 percent with both doses. France did so with a 32 percent dose and 14 percent with both doses. Closer, Chile vaccinated 43 percent with both doses. Uruguay has immunized 24.3 full doses and 35.6 single doses. Too far from the poor Argentinian percentages. Something (or a lot) has been mismanaged in Argentina, beyond the noisy spectacle of politics in recent days. Someone should investigate the reasons why so many opportunities were missed.

For the worse (Kirchnerism always has a worse recipe), the tightest wing of Christianity came out yesterday to demand that the debt with the Monetary Fund or the Paris Club not be paid in the name of the needs of the pandemic. They propose a break with the organizations to which Argentina owes and with which the Minister of the Economy, Martín Guzmán, is trying to agree on more generous terms and interests. This is the consequence of the populist speeches of the president and the vice-president. There will always be those who perform both of them from the left. The solution they advocate is more or less the same. After having broken off negotiations with the main laboratories in the world, it would now be necessary to break with the most important multilateral credit organizations. Argentines fall ill and die between madness and nothingness.