We mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Bahrain had offered to provide vaccinations to Formula 1 and the teams ahead of the Bahrain Grand Prix.
According to reports, F1 had turned the offer down, as did teams, stating that they didn’t want to be seen cutting ahead of more vulnerable people waiting for vaccinations.
It was reported today that some teams have now taken Bahrain up on the offer. According to the Gazzetta dello Sport newspaper, 90% of Ferrari staff traveling to Bahrain had accepted the offer for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on arrival.
An article at ESPN says that Mercedes boss, Toto Wolff, said it was a personal decision, not a team decision.
“It is a personal decision who would like to be vaccinated and who would not and not a decision that we make as a team, in one direction or the other,” said Wolff.
Apparently the desire to get the vaccination is more important than F1’s altruistic statement about saving the doses for those more vulnerable. While F1 may feel taking the vaccination isn’t correct, individuals on a team do feel it is correct. Wolff did well to distance the team from the issue by labeling it a personal decision.
I don’t understand how they are “stealing” doses if they are out of country. If anything, they are saving doses.
I agree. If the UK or Italy, or whichever nation has secured a certain number of doses for its citizens, having the nation of Bahrain offering to vaccinate F1 personnel does not take doses away from those other nations. In fact, every Italian who gets it from the nation of Bahrain, is one more dose for an Italian citizen to receive from the Italian gov’t. To me, saying one wouldn’t take it because others in <insert nation here> aren’t getting them, seems like a bit of wrong-headed virtue signaling.
Current Bahrain vaccination rate 16% population. F1 is taking doses which morally belong to elderly/vulnerable Bahrain population.
Considering how badly Italy have mismanaged the vaccine roll out, I’m not surprised 90% of the Ferrari team have opted to take it.
At least they have vaccines to mismanage! Canada is literally being given vaccines from the ‘soup kitchen’ vaccine pool because our leader failed in securing adequate supply early on. Pretty embarrassing.
The good news though is that we don’t just have one or two vaccines anymore, so I can see why the about face on vaccination makes sense. I think we’re at the point now that the finish line is approaching at a rate of knots so offering those who will knowingly be glommed together, like sports team, is a responsible direction to go.