A Dodgy Vaccine Offering !

 There is real concern that rushing a vaccine to counter COVID-19 onto the market before full testing is complete could allow the pathogen to mutate into a more deadly form.   Getting infected with the coronavirus is not a death sentence unless you are older that sixty and even then many people manage to survive.

We are still working our way through the intricacies  of what is called the SARS-CoV2 virus and while early testing is looking promising it could be many months before science can prove that an effective vaccine has been developed.  It is not helpful that Russia is now claiming a vaccine success and appears willing to release it on the market well short of the completion, of long term testing.

Unfortunately, a desperate world seems ready to take risks to try and get people back to work and save their nation's economies and it seems this Russian vaccine may be readily accepted, despite prominent   scientists warning that " a poor vaccine is worse than no vaccine at all. "

The fact that this vaccine claim is coming from Russia is in itself a warning.  Russia is ruled by Vladimir Putin, who emerged from the implosion of the old Soviet Union and has cemented himself in the unassailable position of president for life. He runs a corrupt regime and the Russian people are stirring but elections are rigged and the remnants of the old KGB keep any form of opposition under control.

The Putin regime is well known for reaching overseas to silence critics and usually this involves some sort of poison. A dissident Russian businessman who fled to Britain died a lingering death when highly radioactive poloniun was administered in a cafe in London. Two other escaped Russian spies  recovered from a similar incident and the assassin escaped back to Moscow.

Once again a man who wanted to oppose Putin at the polls has suffered harm. Alexi Navalny was prevented from standing on trumped up charges and has been supporting a slate of opposition candidates.  While he was in Omsk in Siberia someone poisoned his cup of tea and he collapsed on the return plane trip to Moscow.  The plane made an emergency landing and he was taken to hospital, but the state prevented him being transferred to a top German hospital for several days until public opinion finally forced this to be carried out by air ambulance.  That delay may have prevented the exact poison used being traced.

Putin is desperate to win back the support of the Russian people and Russia is suffering the job losses and deaths from the pandemic.  A claim to be the first to develop a vaccine would certainly help him in the polls and could be the reason this Russian vaccine is being rushed onto the world market.

We would be wise to stay well clear of Russian politics.  Eventually, a vaccine will emerge that has completed all the necessary testing and can give the immunity that we need to safely dispense with isolation from one another.  Australia is well placed to manufacture the quantities needed to offer protection to our entire twenty-five million people.

The Commonwealth Serum Laboratories has the manufacturing depth to produce that vaccine under license and it is important that our government act quickly to gain that accreditation to access that formula when it becomes available.