13 January

The seduction of numbers. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have higher efficacy numbers of more than 90%. But those numbers are based on laboratory-based trials, not on real-world conditions of vaccination. This is where I think our populist thinking betrays us again. The vast, complex expertise of actually *administering* things seems almost completely invisible to our thinking. We call it ‘red tape’. Red tape actually does 99% of the world’s work. A vaccine is only ‘effective’ if it can actually be rolled out across a whole population, no matter how great it is in the lab. There are multiple reasons neither the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines pass that test right now.