We live in strange and unprecedented times. Logic has been sacrificed at the altar of public opinion on many occasions in the previous year...
We live in strange and unprecedented times. Logic has been sacrificed at the altar of public opinion on many occasions in the previous year, but the last week in particular has been – even by recent standards – a nadir.
India will now combat the threat of Covid-19 by running a tremendously expanded vaccination programme. All the editorials declare that this is wonderful news.
Two crucial components of this programme will be as follows:
- The Indian government will pay two privately held firms Rs 4,500 crore to augment their vaccine manufacturing capacity
- Indian states will be free to purchase vaccines in the open market from the May and will be responsible for vaccinating their populations that are older than 18 years – adding approximately 600 million people, and therefore 1.2 billion doses to the vaccination programme, at the very least.
This is not, to put it mildly, good news.
Consider this simple question: what did the government actually get for Rs 4,500 crore? What is the opportunity cost of the grant given to Serum Institute of India and Bharat Biotech when there were many perfectly viable, legal alternatives?
For example, the government could direct existing manufacturing plants (there exist over 20 manufacturing facilities in India that have the ability to...
