| | |  | BY RENUKA RAYASAM | With help from Alice Miranda Ollstein VIRAL CURTAIN — For the first year of the pandemic, Europe was a harbinger of what would soon come — Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations, deaths, lockdowns — to the United States. That’s no longer the case. The U.S. is far outpacing Europe when it comes to vaccinations, and many European countries are pausing the rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine despite scant evidence that it is unsafe. More than 22 percent of the U.S. population has gotten one dose of a Covid vaccine, compared with about 8 percent of EU residents, according to Bloomberg’s vaccine tracker. And Covid cases and deaths are plummeting in the U.S., while they are rising sharply in many European countries including Germany, Italy and Poland. Many left-leaning Americans look to Europe with envy and admiration: Many Europeans have universal health care, paid parental and sick leave and state-funded child care. Plus they take long vacations and have shorter work days. But when it comes to Covid, now it’s Europe doing the soul searching, Sarah Wheaton , chief policy correspondent for POLITICO Europe, told me from her home in Brussels. “It’s a reminder that Europe isn’t this bastion of Enlightenment when it comes to public health and public policy,” she said. Europe saw early successes in keeping the virus contained and with vaccine development. But now it looks like Europe is losing on all fronts, neither successfully eradicating the virus nor vaccinating its citizens at a fast clip. Most of the EU’s 27 member countries never got virus cases and deaths down to the levels of South Korea and New Zealand. And they’re losing the vaccination race to the U.S., the U.K. and Israel. Since Monday, Italians have only been allowed to leave their homes for essential tasks. The French are under curfew from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. Poland closed schools, malls, pools and other business for a few weeks. Germany has been easing restrictions ahead of Easter holidays, but health officials are weighing whether to reimpose Covid measures as cases rapidly rise. The EU doesn’t coordinate health policy across member countries, Sarah said. Each country imposes restrictions based on its own population, national values and government structure. EU members generally fared better when it comes to Covid cases and deaths per capita than the U.S. and U.K. but are now dealing with a third wave. There is a certain randomness with the virus spread that makes it hard to figure out the precise role of policy and behavior, but it seems like most European countries haven’t gotten a handle on their Covid cases.
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Charity workers administer rapid antigen Covid-19 tests to high school students on the second day after students returned to class during the pandemic in Dresden, Germany. | Getty Images | Vaccine procurement, the one area where EU policymakers in Brussels have been in charge, has faltered. The EU was naive in negotiating with pharma makers on behalf of the bloc’s nearly 450 million residents and to help supply the rest of the world, Sarah said. They got what they wanted, namely lower prices, but failed to negotiate supply commitments. Europeans were trying to serve as a counter to former President Donald Trump’s America first rhetoric. But pharma makers are distributing supply to the countries that negotiated better deals more quickly, like the U.S. and the U.K. The continent has abruptly reversed its magnanimous course. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen threatened today to cut off vaccine exports to countries that don’t share their supply. “The EU started out in this situation on a moral high horse that has just totally backfired,” Sarah said. Another thing that’s backfired: European caution. Certain European anachronisms seem lovely and quaint like German regulations on beer making or the French’s strict rules on baguette baking. Many European policies operate on a sort of precautionary principle, Sarah said. For example, Europe largely bans genetically modified foods even though evidence they cause harm is lacking. They just feel “yucky,” she said. Now that same principle has led many European countries to suspend their rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine even after the European Medicines Agency has pleaded that benefit far outweighs the risk. They expect to come out with a definitive assessment on Thursday. Many researchers are arguing that it is riskier to pause the vaccine — not only because it could slow vaccinations but also because it could fuel long-term vaccine hesitancy, even if the vaccine is found to have nothing to do with the blood clots. No one is happy with Brussels, Sarah said. But the soul searching has led Europe to an interesting place: Many are now arguing that the EU should have more jurisdiction over health policy to better coordinate a continent-wide response to lockdowns and vaccines. Right now EU officials are navigating another tightrope by trying to safely restart European travel and jumpstart its national economies with a Covid travel pass. They’ve outlined a plan, but left key details to member countries. “Ironically we’re seeing people say — people who support the EU — ‘Well the reason we didn’t perform as well is because we didn’t have the power,’” she said. Listen: Sarah tells POLITICO Dispatch’s Jeremy Siegel there are three reasons for the ‘Great European AstraZeneca Panic’: 1) The extremely cautious regulatory system; 2) Vaccine hesitancy; 3) Brexit. Listen to a clip of the latest episode, and listen to the full edition Thursday morning wherever you get your podcasts.
| | Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. The best kind of deadline extension: I don’t have to worry about my taxes for another two months. Reach out with news and tips at rrayasam@politico.com, or on Twitter at @renurayasam.
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| | JOIN THE CONVERSATION, SUBSCRIBE TO “THE RECAST”: Power dynamics are shifting in Washington, and more people are demanding a seat at the table, insisting that all politics is personal and not all policy is equitable. “The Recast” is a new twice-weekly newsletter that breaks down how race and identity are recasting politics, policy and power in America. Get fresh insights, scoops and dispatches on this crucial intersection from across the country, and hear from new voices that challenge business as usual. Don’t miss out on this new newsletter, SUBSCRIBE NOW. Thank you to our sponsor, Intel. | | | | | | | OPENING THE GOLDEN GATES — California Gov. Gavin Newsom spent the past year as one of the nation’s most restrictive pandemic governors. Now, he’s throwing the doors open, Mackenzie Mays writes. Facing a recall threat, Newsom in less than a month announced the return of outdoor concerts and Major League Baseball games, allowed Disneyland to open its gates soon and signed legislation that attempts to reopen schools. The Democratic governor has two things going for him: a decline in the infection rate and an increase in vaccinations. But the shift in his Covid-19 strategy has prompted cynicism from Republicans and some local leaders as a recall election becomes reality. Would this be happening if not for the movement to oust him? “Now the recall pressure is on him and suddenly he’s changed his tune,” said Jon Fleischman, a conservative pundit and former executive director of the California Republican Party. “He’s changing the very framework he set up, and it’s right about the time that it became obvious that this recall is going to qualify.”
| | THE LATEST FROM ATLANTA — A series of shootings over nearly an hour at three Atlanta area massage parlors Tuesday night left eight people dead and raised fears that the attack was yet another hate crime against people of Asian descent. Here’s the latest from POLITICO’s coverage: — Biden expresses sadness, briefed by FBI, DOJ: During a virtual St. Patrick’s Day event, Biden noted the investigation was ongoing, but was shocked by the violence. “Whatever the motivation here, I know that Asian Americans are very concerned because, as you know, I’ve been speaking about the brutality against Asian Americans for the last couple months, and I think it’s very, very troubling,” Biden said.
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| — Atlanta mayor: Asian massage parlor shootings ‘a crime against us all’: Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms condemned the attacks. “Whether it is senseless violence that we’ve seen play out in our streets, or more targeted violence like we saw yesterday, a crime against any community is a crime against us all,” Bottoms said at a news conference. — Yang decries Georgia shooting, calls for more funding for hate crime task force: Andrew Yang called for the NYPD Asian Hate Crime Task Force to be fully funded during a press conference today, in the wake of the shooting in Georgia and a steep uptick in anti-Asian hate crimes this year and last in New York. “What started out as invisibility or a sense of foreignness has now become hatred, violence, assault [and] people feeling that we do not belong in our own country or in our own streets,” Yang, a leading New York City mayoral candidate, told reporters during a hastily arranged press conference in Times Square.
| | ‘ONE AND YOU’RE DONE’ — Health care reporter Alice Miranda Ollstein emails Nightly with the latest edition in our occasional series about what the Covid immunization drive looks like around the world: Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.) was volunteering at a pop-up vaccine clinic at a senior center in his Coachella Valley district on Monday, when a woman approached him looking frustrated. She had left her spot in line after learning that the vaccine on offer that day was made by Johnson & Johnson. “She thought it wasn’t as good as the others,” said Ruiz, a former emergency physician and the leader of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. “But then I explained to her that it is just as good as the others. And I explained to her the difference in terms of the population and the studies. She said that was very helpful and that she now understands that where a vaccine is going is not based on the quality of the vaccine.” The district Ruiz represents includes a lot of agricultural workers and others who work in industries that put them at high risk of catching the virus. He was there that day to help his former colleagues dole out doses and to get a shot himself. But he ended up on the frontlines of a battle against Covid misinformation. The woman urged Ruiz to share the information with the hundreds of people who were waiting in a line snaking around the senior center, saying they might have the same misperceptions. Ruiz, worried they might also leave when they heard which shot was being offered, walked outside and began calling out in English and Spanish. It was a firsthand encounter with a common misconception about Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine, Ruiz said: the idea that J&J’s shot is less effective than those made by Pfizer and Moderna and that’s why it’s being distributed more in communities of color. Ruiz said that while he as a former doctor understands that J&J’s rating of 66 percent effectiveness compared to Pfizer and Moderna’s more than 90 percent was shaped by where the trials were conducted and the relative prevalence of new variants, he also understands why people in his district, who have historically been neglected by the government and medical system, might be wary. He wanted to assure them that the gap is not as significant as the percentages suggest, because the J&J shot is just as effective at preventing severe illness and death. “I explained to them that Johnson & Johnson is just one vaccine, but it’s as good as the two vaccines, and that the best thing is that it is ’one and you're done.’ You don’t have to come back,” he said. “I also went around showing my Band Aid in my left shoulder so that people could see that I got this vaccine, because I have confidence in it and they should too.”
| | — State Department announces sanctions on Chinese officials over Hong Kong crackdown: Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced sanctions against two dozen Chinese and Hong Kong officials for undermining the territory’s semi-autonomy from Beijing, just days before a crucial summit between the U.S. and China. — Biden admin unveils school testing plan for Covid-19: The Biden administration will spend $10 billion to screen schoolchildren for Covid-19 to help hasten their return to in-person learning. The CDC will administer the school-screening program, announced today. The agency is giving $10 billion in American Rescue Plan funds to states and certain cities to set up testing, with the aim of reopening schools in the final months of the school year. — Poll: 72 percent approve of Covid relief law: The coronavirus relief and stimulus legislation signed into law by Biden last week is earning high marks from voters, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll. More than seven in 10 voters, 72 percent, support the new law, the poll shows — far greater than the 21 percent who oppose it. — Fed sees U.S. economic growth surging to 6.5 percent this year: The Federal Reserve projected the U.S. economy will grow 6.5 percent this year, the fastest pace in four decades, fueled by growing vaccination rates and nearly $2 trillion in new federal spending. — Biden: Putin will ‘pay a price’ for interfering in 2020 election: Biden warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin will “pay a price” in the wake of a new report from the U.S. intelligence community that concluded the Kremlin interfered in the 2020 White House race.
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0 The number of Senate votes against Katherine Tai in the Senate on her nomination to become U.S. trade representative. The Senate voted unanimously to approve Tai to be USTR , thrusting the former House trade lawyer into numerous commercial disputes initiated by the Trump administration. |
| | | NORTH OF THE BORDER — Is there actually a crisis at the border? See if immigration reporter Sabrina Rodríguez, who traveled to El Paso, McAllen and Brownsville this week, can answer in three minutes.
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