We refuse to buy Sputnik or Sinovac because of backroom deals. Doctors here (first-world country) want as many vaccines as they can get their hands on, but politicians strictly want mRNA. I can only get Pfizer or Moderna. I think J&J is starting to get accepted, slowly (if I was any more cynical I would say it’s because it’s a single-dose vaccine lol). If I got any other vaccine (say while on vacation), I wouldn’t even get a certificate. And if China put out an mRNA vaccine, then politicians would find some other excuse to get western vaccines.

And yes, the bourgeoisie feeds us this idea that “non-white” (let’s be honest, that’s what it boils down to) vaccines are not good, or that they are stealing technology to make theirs because we are much more advanced technologically than they are (China is now the world leader in number of research papers published per year, I imagine their biotech level is pretty advanced). It’s a white supremacist idea that they are playing on and feeding us because we’ll respond positively to it (I have heard those exact two arguments from family members).

China was going to stage their phase 3 trials for Sinovac (I think it was sinovac, might have been sinopharm, the names are too similar for me to remember lol) in Brazil – there were not enough cases in China to make them there – but Bolsonaro kicked them out after the US asked him to. This is clearly about politics and not about fixing the pandemic. We’re talking about billions of people being vaccinated, this is a huge market and Pfizer would be a fool not to try and get something out of it. This is once in a lifetime. The vaccine was funded by public money and now the private sector reaps the benefits without any of the expenses.

Speaking of Bolsonaro, he wanted to be paid 1$ for every vial he purchased of Moderna and Pfizer. Bolsonaro is an edge case because he doesn’t even care to hide his corruption, but he is certainly far from the only corrupt politician in the world. What kind of backroom deals have been made here? In any other situation making people choose between two providers would be considered a duopoly and broken up.

And speaking of money, China and Russia are giving out vaccines to countries, free of charge. They pledged to a UN resolution to make vaccine patents public domain and when that failed, they started funding a public domain patent for a new one. Meanwhile the west and our private companies absolutely oppose any sort of handout or free patent (citing bullshit reasons such as "we can’t guarantee the quality of the vaccine if the patent is open, which is not the priority when people need the vaccine!)

Cuba is working on their own vaccines since because of the embargo, they cannot get enough. Does the USA care? Not in the least. They have not lightened the (illegal) embargo on Cuba once since the beginning of the pandemic.

91% efficacy is… honestly not great. If you had a plate of 100 m’n’ms and one of them gave you covid, would you eat 1 m’n’m? At this level of accuracy, anything short of 99.99% is functionally the same. Yes the number might make you feel safer than 74% but the point of the vaccine as this stage (none claim to completely shield you from the virus) is to reduce hospitalisations and long-term side effects (and then again, I’m honestly not sure that was ever the point). I’m okay with those goals. It’s better than nothing. But in that sense, Sinovac and Sputnik are not any worse than Pfizer or Moderna.