(by Andrea Pinto) With the start of vaccination campaigns around the world, the military sector is in a hurry to make its men immune from the virus. USA, Russia and China they have already initiated mass vaccination of their military before other categories of the population to demonstrate that the priority is to maintain strategic dominance in hot areas of the world. China in its strategic documents declined an important part to the biomedical sector raising it as a top-level asset for its technological supremacy, thus opening it up to militarization. The United States and Russia have also invested heavily in the research and development of anti-Covid serums, giving the sector a purely military connotation. The Pentagon, for example, is putting a lot of resources into the lavish inter-agency program "Warp Speed".
The vaccine has now become a weapon to focus on to allow military departments to be immunized, especially those deployed abroad to leave no competitive advantage to the opponents. It is a matter of national security. It is no coincidence that the Pentagon was the first to simultaneously vaccinate its troops in Japan, Europe and South Korea. At the end of December, 8 doses of Pfizer-BionTech were delivered at the Yokota air base in Japan. On the same day, thousands of doses of Moderna were delivered to US Army medical centers in Ansbach, Grafenwoehr and Vilseck.
The Pentagon has optioned more than 100 million doses for $ 1,96 billion. Why so many doses? Once all the soldiers have been vaccinated, about 2 million units, with reservists they can reach 100 million soldiers, why so many doses? Maybe because it is better to remove them from the market, for military purposes? A good question also in light of the recent statements by the military pharmaceutical company Pfizer which has raised the alarm of not being able to cover the growing demand worldwide. At the same time, the newly elected President Biden announced that he wanted to vaccinate 100 million Americans by next February. Obvious contradictions are beginning to emerge on the subject which deserve appropriate investigation. It is not clear whether the XNUMX million doses ordered by the Pentagon are part of the Warp Speed program, or not.
What is certain is that the Pentagon had to run for cover immediately because it paid a very high price by registering over 101 thousand cases of infected among its men, with a marked incidence among the marines (5,5%). He never censored the data, distinguishing himself from the Chinese and the Russians. Moscow has never released the data. For example, at the end of last March, the coronavirus had compromised the operation of two crews of Russian nuclear submarines of the Northern Fleet, usually intent on battling with NATO anti-submarine aircraft. Nothing more was known about it.
The Kremlin on infections has only made positive propaganda by starting the vaccination of its military a month before the Americans, on November 27. Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu had Sputnik V injected as early as September, stating that the Defense would have vaccinated 80 men by the end of the year and over 400 soldiers as part of the entire campaign. Considering that the Red Army has over a million men, how come only 400 will be immunized? Also in this case, many think that Moscow's goal may be to remove the largest number of doses from the market, not revealing to the world public the actual numbers of vaccinations already done and those that are intended to be done according to the time schedule that no one knows.
In Europe, however, there is an unprecedented confusion. Faced with a vaccine distribution plan that makes water from all sides, the (classified) information on contracts signed with pharmaceutical companies is not yet known. We do not know how many vaccines were actually ordered and the delivery times, so much so that Germany had to enter into a bilateral contract with Pfizer to have 15 million more doses autonomously. Getting to herd immunity first means anticipating economic recovery. In Italy we fight over everything, even on trifles, managing the health emergency in a cheerful, Italian-style way. We still do not have clear ideas on the Recovery Plan of the Bel Paese between Renzi's invectives and the not-so-happy releases, by means of a press conference, by our Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte.
In Italy the vaccine doses foreseen by the European plan are starting to arrive at a rate of 470 thousand doses per week. It is a pity that we are unable to speed up the inoculation of vaccines to the population because we do not have the necessary health and perhaps we have not yet identified the places where to carry them out. In December we were still questioning about the overdue "ad acta" announcement of super commissioner Arcuri to find 15 doctors and nurses to dedicate to the vaccination plan. Vaccinate health care, law enforcement and military first? Did they think so? Long live Italy.