The fuel injected Brexiter comments on the EU's vaccine problems miss many points.

1) no-one wanted to get out of the EU or the single market to protect ourselves better against a pandemic. See Brexit Tory controlled government policy 2016-2020 regarding the NHS and pandemic preparedness.

2) we could have, and, perhaps thanks to the need to genuflect to nationalists, or out of pragmatic needs, chosen to go our own way on procurement even within the EU.

3) none of this explains why it's good to be outside the single market, restricting our trade and making us poorer.

4) the implicit celebration of the vaccine nationalist cause, seemingly [but not actually] permitted by Brexit, ignores how this game plays out, namely:

The titbits I get fed about the debate over a hypothetical post indy monetary policy in Scotland make it seem like a lot of nonsense is being talked on the indy side.

One could say 'it is doable, with some institutional risks, to set up a new central bank and do independent inflation targeting, with credible political backing, and the reservoir of econ and cb expertise, and history of inflation targeting itself.'

However, SNP don't want to say this, as it - rightly - fears that people fear the risks of setting up a new currency. Even though IMO this is a perfectly sensible and doable option.

There's also the complication of EU membership. On the face of it, given what that would require, the trajectory would be, in this case, 1) period of independent inflation targeting, 2) ERM like period, 3) Euro membership.

Owning up to this is tricky, because there is presumably the worry that people won't want to vote indy because they are against the Euro, a feeling aggravated by the EZ crisis.

@bbclaurak asks what went wrong. Many things....

1. The government and particularly the PM was complacent in getting into gear as the virus gathered pace in China and Italy.

2. The March lockdown came far too late. A fault that may lie with the govt and the scientists advising; perhaps the latter were incorrectly assuming a lockdown would not be agreed to and so did not recommend it early enough.

3. The first lockdown was arguably too stringent and inefficient, and possibly even too long. IMO it was a reasonable precautionary design. But a case can be made.

4. Test trace isolate was a total disaster. Including the hiccoughs developing the app[s], and the non digital side of the operation. Time spent lockdown, and enjoying low transmission in Summer, was wasted.