Today's morning assembly: numbers, brands & vaccines

Cardinal numbers designate quantity, how many of something you may have. Ordinal numbers designate an order in which we count. Let us say that you ask the teacher in your class a question, and once she answers it someone has something to add, or perhaps object to. This is a classroom – and the pursuit of knowledge is a little different from commodities in a market.

To begin with different brands of sneakers compete with each other, to sell more shoes at a price that can maximise their margin. If Reebok came to a mall before Addidas or Nike it will sell more shoes in that mall. Unlike a classroom, which are often governed by a curriculum brands are more like sections of a class, with the consumer like the principal of a school – who may compare how each section is doing – and choose to mention the best performing one during the morning assembly.

The Drug Controller General of India, in the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic – has already approved two vaccines, one made by Astra-Zenecca and another made by Oxford University. These will be joined soon by Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin. This drug is presently in Phase III clinical trials – which mean it is being tested on a large number of humans to see how effective it is. From an economic perspective this would mean how effective are the two doses delivered at preventing the contraction of Coronavirus.

It is not common for a drug to be administered to a population prior to complete testing. Even if we were to consider that this is a pandemic and we do need vaccination, there are already two other candidates which have been tested and approved. This makes the rushed entry of Covaxin into the market appear as a ploy merely to jump on the Coronavirus vaccine bandwagon. This is pressing for a company as governments across the world have, and are already ordering millions of doses.

This situation is not lost on our leadership, with MP Shashi Tharoor calling on the Health Minister Harsh Vardhan – asking how this was permitted, stating that the approval of Covaxin may have been pre-mature.