Dear reader,
What’s been most on my mind this week is getting vaccinated against Covid. I’ve been watching for months on my Facebook feed as, in the US and UK, friend after friend celebrates receiving a first and then a second shot. As far as I could see, nothing was happening here.
The truth is that things were happening here, just much more slowly than in the US or UK. The European Union as a whole moved slowly, and the Netherlands was the slowest in Europe.
The problem in the Netherlands, generally speaking, is with bureaucracy. It is intended to regulate vaccine distribution so that it is orderly and fair. However, it has been terribly inflexible, unable to deal with changes in supply or distribution.
An example: the Netherlands focused at first on the AstraZeneca vaccine, but the Pfizer one was available first. Yet the Netherlands wasn’t prepared logistically for the low-temperature storage that Pfizer needed.
The European Union’s vaccination program
The vaccination program is led by the European Union, but it’s had to coordinate approvals and logistics across all 27 countries. The EU was particularly focused on funding the development of vaccines that would be affordable for everyone and on making sure the pharmaceutical companies were responsible for the quality of the vaccines they produced.
Fairness and safety were paramount, which is a good thing, but it slowed things down. The US and the UK simply got there first, investing in several different vaccines and reserving them for themselves. The EMA (European Medicines Agency, the European version of the FDA) took longer to approve vaccines as well. They were cautious, perhaps overcautious.
Then there were the vaccines that the EU ordered, but didn’t get. We got less than half of what we were promised by AstraZeneca, for example. Some companies producing vaccines, Johnson & Johnson in particular, exported vast quantities of their vaccine to the US: vaccines that are produced here.
Later, when the AstraZeneca vaccine turned out to induce blood clots in very rare cases, its use was simply stopped. It took weeks before it was reapproved, delaying the whole vaccination program. It’s now only allowed for people over 60: again, perhaps an example of overcaution, when you look at how other countries responded. Having to turn to other vaccines for the younger age groups means, again, delays in receiving vaccine supplies.
We had another delay in the program when the Johnson & Johnson version was found to cause blood clots too, though at an even lower rate than AstraZeneca. Fortunately that only lasted a few days before the EMA decided that one in a million was a risk worth taking.
What especially irritates us in the Netherlands so soon after Brexit is how quickly the UK is succeeding in getting its citizens vaccinated. Our assumption has always been that they’re going to regret withdrawing from the EU and that things would go downhill in the UK once they did. Yet, at least in this one respect, they’ve already proved us wrong.
The vaccine schedule
The Dutch government has published a rather complicated set of schedules for when each group – different levels of health workers, people with health issues, people living in institutions, and healthy people of different age groups – will get vaccinated.
For reasons that are unclear to me, they haven’t vaccinated strictly by age group among healthy people. They did the people born in 1941 and earlier in order of birth year, then skipped to the people born in 1956-1960, then back to the birth years starting from 1942.
Why? I can only guess that it’s because those born in 1956-1960 are nearing retirement, and they want them to keep healthy and keep working in the meantime.
Not only that, but that age group’s vaccines were distributed by province, so that our province, Groningen, got their first shots last, but will get their second shots among the first.
My husband’s shots
My husband, who is in the 1956-1960 age group, got his first AstraZeneca shot last week. Yet the government, because of the shortages of vaccines, has decided to lengthen the time between first and second shot to between 8 and 12 weeks, so it’ll be a while until he’s fully vaccinated.
Annoyingly, my husband got his shot based on his age. Much as he tried, he could not get one any earlier based on being a dentist. He’s been treating patients since the beginning of the pandemic, yet as far as I can tell, dentists are not included on the list of health care personnel getting vaccinated.
Why not? I have no idea. If you’ve ever been to a dentist, you know how up close and personal they get! It makes no sense to me.
My shots
I’m in the next group in line – 1961-1971 – though not really because they’re vaccinating more health care personnel first as well as people with various medical conditions. Our group is scheduled to get a Pfizer, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson vaccine starting in the beginning of May. The schedule, we are warned, may change depending on vaccine supply. My 22-year-old son’s group will get theirs starting at the end of June.
My daughter (28), meanwhile, lives in San Francisco and had her first Moderna shot this week, with the second scheduled in just four weeks.
Frustration
It’s been interesting and frustrating to watch the slow progress of vaccine distribution when I’m, frankly, desperate to travel again – I am a travel blogger, after all, which is tough when you can’t travel.
The frustration was evident among expats and immigrants long before the Dutch started complaining. Some American expats even flew back to the US to get the shot. The general attitude among the Dutch was, for a long time, that the government and the EU were doing their best and were trying to be fair with distribution. When I brought it up, they were generally dismissive: “Just be patient.”
A month or so ago, though, I noticed a change in tone: criticism coming from Dutch people and the media as well as foreign residents like me. We’ve been under quite a strict lockdown: shopping only by reservation and only two shoppers per floor; all cafes, pubs, restaurants, clubs, museums closed; only one visitor per home per day; no group sports; a nighttime curfew, etc.
The Prime Minister – still Mark Rutte, as the government-forming negotiations continue – has announced that starting next week we’ll be allowed two visitors per day and that outdoor cafés and restaurants can open from noon to 6pm. Shopping will still be limited to two per floor, but reservations are no longer required. And the curfew will end.
The vaccination rate is rising, with almost 800,000 receiving shots last week. If this number continues, all adults should have at least one shot by the beginning of August and about 2/3 of adults should have already received their second. The government is trying to speed it up so that we’d reach the same level of coverage by the beginning of July.
Hope, and spring, are in the air.
Wishing you a pleasant week and quick vaccinations, if you haven’t had them already. May we all get back to something resembling normality soon!
Met vriendelijke groeten,
Rachel
P.S. I write about independent travel at Rachel’s Ruminations. Please join me there!
Being a teacher I was vaccinated in the middle of March with AstraZeneca.I had some worries, but only had little side effects. Peter was lucky to get one with me because so many teachers stepped back from AstraZeneca. Still we have to wait for the 2. shot until June... Hope you get yours soon!