From what I'm reading, vaccination in Europe outside the UK seems to be a hot mess by developed countries standards. Looking how it's going in America as we speak, who would have thought a year ago?
You're not wrong, though it's more complicated. Vaccination in the EU, and I can mostly speak for Germany, is not working well because of two major factors. One is due to the failures of political leaders and institutions, and the second is due to a lack of vaccine doses in general.
That the EU Commission ordered vaccines for all members was generally a good thing, but the price negotiations took way too long before they finally placed the orders. That was even better under Trump, who put billions on the table already in May 2020, when it was unclear whether there would be a vaccine and when. The EU didn't order until November that year because they were slow in general and wanted to save money.
Today, the biggest problem is that there is just not enough vaccine doses available to move on faster. That's (1) because the orders came too late and (2) because not all sellers like AstraZeneca are not delivering the committed amount of doses in time as promised. Furthermore, production capabilities were insufficient so far and are currently in the buildup process. Said infrastructure for mass production was already there in the US and UK. At least Germany has acted quickly here, aiming to self-produce all vaccines by next year. Several factories are already under construction. But that of course doesn't solve immediate shortcomings. I think that situation will improve in the coming months as more doses are expected to be delivered and distributed.
And the last point is the bureaucracy, especially in lower government levels. It's moving way too slow. Americans and Brits don't spend weeks and months discussing vaccine rollout, they're pragmatic and just do it. Vaccination in stadiums and pharmacies are quite common. Not the case here. Germany is discussing for weeks how doctors can vaccinate and how, while "vaccination centers" have organizational difficulties. We also discuss back and forth in which order certain groups should be vaccinated and so on. And last but not least, our public management is stuck in the past with technical equipment as well because we missed to invest more in digital infrastructure and software solutions. That has been a problem for years, but the pandemic revealed deficits here and made them visible for the public. All that shows that Germans bragging about being so great in organization and management is just not true these days.
It certainly feels from a UK perspective that there doesn't seem to be a realisation on the continent that there is a difference between business as usual and what is effectively a "war-footing". Von Der Leyen saying today how this is the "crisis of the century", and yet at every step both the commission and national governments haven't seemed to appreciate you need to change attitudes and working procedure in what is effectively a natural disaster situation. Priorities must change.
Who gives a toss how much you pay for a vaccine when whatever you pay is going to be substantially less than the cost to the economy of a pandemic? Who in their right minds makes it a priority to "stick it" to pharmaceutical companies by putting all the liability on them when surely the priority is just getting the vaccines as fast as possible?
Btw we've had problems with supply from AZ too, it was just earlier on before the EU blew up over it. What exactly do you expect when pharmaceutical companies are trying to execute the largest vaccination programme in history? The priority should be investing in as much diverse production capacity as possible, not just paying the least amount possible to sponge of existing capacity and then attack said companies, making them even more cautious in ramping up supplies.
In an emergency situation you make things as simple as possible; instead of pissing about on choosing who to prioritise you just do it by age group and get it over with. By the time you've fannied about with people's complaints about which priority group they are in you could have vaccinated most of the vulnerable anyway.
Overall it just feels like the situation isn't being taken seriously.
