YOURSAY | ‘It’s all about planning. If you fail to plan, you are actually planning to fail.’

KJ lashes out at global vaccine inequity after Hungary comparison

Apa Nama: Whatever we could say about this vaccine supply, whether we support coordinating minister for National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme Khairy Jamaluddin or not, we cannot run away from one thing - our leaders should know that we are facing a health emergency.

What surprised me most is all these people (the prime minister and his cabinet ministers) do not seem to treat the pandemic as a health emergency. We know where their mind is on daily basis. It is not about vaccine supply. It is their survival, political survival.

Khairy, it is all about planning. If you fail to plan, you are actually planning to fail. This is what you have done with this vaccination programme from the beginning.

This has nothing to do with other countries. It is all about us. How you prepare us for mass vaccination so that we could reduce the number of infections and also reduce the number of deaths.

Lovemalaysia2: Khairy obviously thinks nobody here can read news reports from Europe. Most of his statement is inaccurate. Hungary is in the European Union (EU), but they decided to go it alone and buy Russian and Chinese vaccines even though it was not approved by EU authorities.

The Hungarian government is run by a right-wing government that breaks EU laws on a regular basis. The EU was very late in ordering vaccines and was months behind the UK and US.

As to hoarding, this is misleading as it’s a commercial arrangement between governments and suppliers. Malaysia was late in ordering the vaccines. Supply is limited so the government should have ordered earlier, as soon as the vaccines were offered.

Vijay47: The first controversy about our vaccination programme was the high prices we were paying, much higher than most other countries, and you came out with some mumbo-jumbo.

With the higher prices we were supposedly forced to accept, early delivery of the vaccine should have been a done deal, for which you issued a far from impressive schedule of stock arrival.

Speaking of which, you organised and starred in a colourful circus when the first batch landed at KLIA, with Transport Minister Wee Ka Siong playing a walk-on role.

And in the months since then, we were constantly fed with tales of progress in our vaccination efforts in some of which you personally had a credible part. I grant you that and would say “well done”.

My point is if the hoarding by Wicked Europe is true, how is it that you never mentioned it all this while? Any sensible manager would have informed the country that vaccine delivery would be seriously delayed since there was no stock to send to Malaysia.

Surely the individual European countries would have made their purchase orders more than a year ago and the suppliers would have notified you accordingly.

Until this Utusan Malaysia exposé, you did not mention the words “vaccine shortage” even once.

IndigoTrout2522: Don’t keep blaming other countries for your government’s collective ineptitude and incapability. This is a capitalist economy. If you didn’t procure the vaccine early on, you can’t expect to get them early.

Even in the US, the Trump administration didn’t place adequate orders and it was the Biden administration that quickly secured more supplies and now they have more than enough vaccines and they are sharing them with the world. So is China, EU and Russia.

To make it simple, don’t play the blame game but learn to be smarter. It is natural for every government to help their citizens first. Malaysia is no different and you should take care of your own citizens first, but your government failed to procure adequate vaccine early on.

So, stop blaming others but find solutions. This is what the rakyat are expecting from you. No doubt, many countries, especially in Africa, are even in a worse situation. Don’t compare us with them, but work hard and smart.

YellowBear8212: You want monopoly and you want control, so the results are clear. How about the SOP (standard operating procedure) on purchasing?

Do we need a middleman? How about allowing the private sector to help by allowing them to import directly? How about using the hospitals and private clinics to vaccinate?

The people are suffering and some are dying. Businesses are closing but the decision-makers are still drawing their full salary and working half time at the most.

Kim Quek: I wrote on May 23: “Khairy signed an agreement with China back in November last year, whereby Malaysia was given priority access to Covid-19 vaccines developed by China, but now we have only received one million Sinovac vaccines (out of 15 million purchased), compared to the 67 million received (out of 140 million purchased) by our neighbour Indonesia.”

Will Khairy tell us why that is so?

Isn’t it because the monopoly given to crony company Pharmaniaga (which bottles the Sinovac vaccines in Malaysia) had throttled the supply?

If not for such greed to profiteer at the expense of the people, wouldn’t we have made much greater headway in vaccinating and protecting our people?

Dr Raman Letchumanan: You placed full trust and betted on Sinovac and Pharmaniaga. Was this vaccine also cornered by US and the Europeans?

By the way, I think you said Pharmaniaga will be procuring four million doses in June and up to eight million per month in July onwards. Did this happen?

Enlightened Globalist: Let us get the facts straight:

1. Phase 1 and 2 results of the efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine were published in Nature in August 2020.
2. Singapore signed an advance purchase agreement with Pfizer and Moderna vaccines in August 2020.
3. Malaysia signed the first agreement to purchase the Pfizer vaccine in November 2020.
4. US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the Pfizer vaccine for emergency usage in December 2020.

Summary:

1. Singapore was pro-active and signed a purchase agreement with Pfizer as soon as the phase 1 and 2 reports were published (August 2020).
2. Malaysia waited three months (November 2020) to order these vaccines.

Let’s not blame the West as they have spent billions in developing these vaccines and it is only logical that they have the privilege of enjoying the fruits of their investments.

We could have been ahead of the curve, if, like Singapore, we had been proactive and placed our first order in August 2020 and not wasted three months.

A Little Bit Crazy: Khairy, don't blame the West, find ways, or even beg the West to get more vaccines, speed up the process, run 24-hour vaccine centres, give the first dose to more people, get more volunteer medical personnel to take shifts to run our vaccine centres 24 hours, seven days a week, renovate buses to become vaccine mobile centres.

Do all you can. Be cool, be smart, be good. We will sail through this hardship together.

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