I feel concerned about vaccine agreements made by the Swedish government. Politicians are under pressure and need to show that they are able to make executive decisions. Otherwise they will lose voters. I do not understand why they are making agreements now. Politicians do not have any medical background so they have to rely on other professions. People with various industrial connections. The development of a vaccin is complex, and new approaches of developing vaccins are being found. Vectors, RNA and classic adjuvants are examples of important keywords.
Recently a clinical trial was stopped. A clinical phase III study testing a Covid-19 vaccine being developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford. It is very good that they made a paus, because they understand the possible development of serious side effects. I believe that people in general understand that medicins can give side effects, and therefore, it is worth waiting a little longer to stay on the safe side. The industry must demonstrate that they are not premature.
Why not learn from this pandemic and introduce new habits? We know for sure that hand washing and distancing are important tools in reducing the spreading of a lot of diseases. Not only the Corona virus. This virus probably jumped from an animal reservoir to a human during the first week of November 2019. This will happen again, and we need to learn more. My opinion is that we should “sit still in the boat” and wait for the scientific development. Not only the political development. These developed vaccines will be scientifically different. We are on the frontiers of vaccin development and we need to understand what we don’t understand.
This regards with no doubt also politics. When I was at the university in Uppsala I was actually elected for “Landstinget”. I was in the top, but when I realised that I was going to be elected I had to think. My conclusion was at that time that I did not know much about life. I had no life experience and I thought I needed to learn more about life before getting involved in politics. Today, I try to contribute with my life experience which is scientifically based. I am a bridge between medicin and politics.
In my diary.