Analysis. When the European Union’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom, João Vale de Almeida, tried to explain the hesitations of European countries on the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, he made an argument: “When there are doubts, the precautionary principle prevails”, he explained to the BBC on March 16. Across the Channel, the argument fell completely flat. The precautionary principle, present in the preamble to the Constitution in France, enshrined in Article 191 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, is a concept little used in the United Kingdom. Some jurists have appropriated it and the term is found in English law, especially environmental, but the idea is almost non-existent at the political level.
The argument seems all the more absurd to the British that on April 4, 31.5 million of them were vaccinated (and 5.4 million with the two doses), including 18 million with AstraZeneca. Until very recently, no serious side effects had been noted. On April 2, the British Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) nevertheless revealed that thirty cases of blood clots had been detected, causing seven deaths. But the conclusion of the MHRA does not change: “The benefits of vaccines (…) are higher than the risks. “
Based on these figures, the risk of a vaccine-induced thrombosis death is one in two and a half million, a level much lower than the risk of death from the English variant, which exceeds 1%. The precaution, seen from a United Kingdom which records 127,000 deaths from Covid-19, one of the worst results in the world, would be more to speed up vaccination than to suspend it.
Bet a big hit
The various European health authorities have also come to the same conclusion. But several of them have chosen to suspend the administration of the doses for several days, at the risk of casting doubt on the reliability of the product. The first step was to apply the precautionary principle.
The AstraZeneca vaccine case illustrates a profoundly different approach to risk between the UK and the EU. In his provocative way, Boris Johnson summed it up with a joke during a phone call with Tory MPs (which then leaked to the press): “My friends, the reason for the success of our vaccines is capitalism, the greed [« greed »]. “ Downing Street assures us that it was a joke. The British Prime Minister has, however, found many defenders. “The lure of money is a good thing and the Prime Minister should not be embarrassed to say it”, endorses historian Andrew Roberts in the Telegraph, March 24.
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