The surprise of the day today came in reading Richard Prebble’s column, and finally getting some confirmation as to why we are back of the OECD queue for the Pfizer vaccine.

Turns out, we didn’t pay the premium that other countries like Israel did to get their jabs early.

Israel paid about US$4 per dose more than the US, and agreed to share data, and got their first shipments in early December last year.

According to Prebble, quoting an economist, to get up the queue would’ve cost us $40m. 

That’s nothing. We probably paid Pfizer a quarter of a billion dollars for our doses.  $40m on top of that is a small amount.

It’s $10 per Kiwi on top of the probably $56 per Kiwi our doses cost.

Why did we agree to $56 and then baulk at another $10 to get it earlier?  Why would we say ‘nah we’d rather be right the back of the queue thanks, literally last in the developed world’?

Here’s perspective: $40m is the cost of only one and a bit days of Auckland going into lockdown level 3 back in March.

As we said yesterday on the show, we are the last country standing on the list of elimination countries that hasn’t had Delta through it. We are sitting ducks.

Australia, Vietnam, Taiwan, Mongolia, Cambodia, Laos, they’ve all managed to keep Covid controlled until delta came through.

95 percent of us have no jab.  In Israel, more than 80 percent have at least one jab. 

I do not buy the government’s argument that it’s unethical to pay more to vaccines ahead of others 

We didn’t elect them to prioritise citizens of other countries, they’re elected to look after us.

And in any case, Ashely Bloomfield admitted they nicked 100,000 Pfizer doses from Covax which is meant to go to third world countries, so when it comes to ethics they haven’t got a leg to stand on.

Now I think most of us are resigned to this vaccine roll out being as slow as it is. I think we have already written the rest of this year off, so this is not a massive upset.

But isn’t it an insight into the lack of urgency behind the scenes. For a mere $10 a person, we might’ve actually been front of the queue, instead of dead last in the developed world.