Seriously Mr. Drakeford, seriously?

There seems to be a certain misunderstanding of how vaccination works here from Mark Drakeford, First Minister of Wales:

We will be using all the Oxford vaccine that we get as we get it, the Pfizer vaccine has to last us until into the first week of February.

So we have to provide it on a week-by-week basis. What you can’t do is to try and stand up a system which uses all the vaccine you’ve got in week one and then have nothing to offer for the next four weeks.

We won’t get another delivery of the Pfizer vaccine until the very end of January or maybe the beginning of February, so that 250,000 doses has got to last us six weeks.

That’s why you haven’t seen it all used in week one, because we’ve got to space it out over the weeks that it’s got to cover.

Vaccine delivered into arms protects. Vaccine sitting in the fridge does not. There is absolutely no point at all in having vaccine in fridges rather than arms. A vaccine is not like a bandage, or an antibiotic, where it is useful to have some on hand. Rather, with a vaccine, get it into arms and if there’s a gap to the next batch so, there’s a gap the the next batch. More people are protected for longer the faster the move from fridge to arm.

This all rather illustrates a most unkind anonymous comment about the problems of devolution in a general sense. There aren’t all that many bright people who actually desire to enter the cesspit of politics. Thus whatever the political unit is it has to be large enough that those competing to run it are competent to do so. In very small units the selection available of those willing might not include enough of those able.

Of course, no, no, of course, this does not apply to a nation like Wales but it is something we worry about concerning local authorities, regional assemblies and the like. Our solution being to devolve power not to the smaller political unit but to the people not involved in politics - a much larger group than those willing to enter the cesspit. That is, restrict government to only those things that must be done and which can only be done by government and leave the rest to whatever structures people wish to use as and when. You know, markets.