The West have been fighting the vaccine war with China, bragging about their 95% efficacy rates and denigrating Chinese vaccines for low efficacy rates. With the passing of days, more and more problems are surfacing from the use of western vaccines, with some very deadly. Two are already on the verge of being banned but clinging on like the past great white hopes, desperately explaining away problems and adverse effects associated with them. On the other hand, Chinese vaccines using the proven traditional methods continue to be used widely with very little adverse effects, safe and with very good track records on reducing or preventing serious infections.
The West continue to demand for more data on Chinese vaccines as a way to smear Chinese vaccines. Yes the West can produce their own data, cooked their own data to suit their claims. China has some difficulties producing data from their trials not because China was hiding or being not transparent. The West conducted their own vaccine trials themselves in their own countries with their own technicians and expertise. The Chinese did not have this privilege.
China was hit by the virus first. China was the first to map out the virus genomes and shared with the world. China was the first to start work on the vaccines. Then came the road block because China was so successful in stopping the spread of the virus. There were too few cases of infection in China to make conducting vaccine trials meaningful. China needed to seek assistance and cooperation from foreign countries with high infection rates to conduct vaccine trials.
Several precious months were lost negotiating with countries on the trials and training foreign staff on the trial processes. By the time 5 countries agreed to conduct the trials, several months had gone by. Thus China started the trials later than western countries.
This is not the only problem faced by the Chinese. China had to rely almost completely on foreign expertise in the conduct of vaccines trials. The participating countries wanted to be the ones managing the trials. China could not use their experts to conduct the trials. China could not have full control of the trials and could not have dedicated and committed experts to see through the trials. China was at the mercy of participating countries and their expertise to conduct the trials professional and zealously according to the prescribed methodology.
China was also at the mercy of foreign interference and sabotaged. There were elements in these countries that were less cooperative in conducting the trials, let alone western meddling to undermine the effectiveness of the trials. Without its own dedicated experts involved in the trials, China had to struggle to make the best of the data made available by foreign expertise. This is not the most desirable outcome for China. This could also explain the huge discrepancies in the efficacy rates obtained from different countries, ranging from 50% to 90% that made moderation and calibration very difficult.
The same vaccines and recommended methodology but conducted by different experts in different countries with different understanding and commitments and level of training would lead to a wide range of results. The reconciliation process thus became problematical. How to make sense between 50% efficacy and 90% efficacy from the same vaccine but done by different people in different countries? If only China could do it on its own in China and write its own narratives like the West, the consistency of the trial data could be more manageable.
As it was, China has to make do with whatever data that were compiled by the different countries and their agencies. The shortcomings were never due to China being not transparent and not forthcoming but due to external circumstances.
What is important today are the results. More than 100 countries have used Chinese vaccines and are happy with the results. They were no major adverse cases or incidents, no blood clotting, no death etc etc and no chance for the West and its vicious media to talk bad about Chinese vaccines.
More and more western vaccines are going to stumble and their shortcomings cannot be covered or hidden for long. AstraZeneca and John and Johnson are down and going out. Should have been stopped from use if they were not western vaccines. They are desperately trying to hang on to the two white hopes and praying that they could go on using them while gambling with other people's lives.