A great person once said Not all vaccines are created equally...or at least I think they said that, Im not sure, but someone probably said it sometime somewhere. As weve moved through this pandemic, its certainly clear that not everyone agrees with the sentiment that the best vaccine is the one that is provided to your first, despite the quotes from medical professionals. Case in point is the country in which I am currently residing...thats right, you guessed it, Chile. Weve been somewhat fortunate as Chile has consistently ranked as one of the top 10 in vaccines given since they were first approved and available. Even now, I think its probably at around 80% of eligible people with first dose, and somewhere around 60% with two based on a quick google search.
Which gets me to my original point above, interesting has been the mix of vaccines given. I think Chile took a bit of a gamble at the start, when it contracted a significant amount of its source to be Sinovac, produced in China (did ya know?). About of vaccines given in the country have been Sinovac...the rest being a mix of Pfizer, Astra Zeneca and SInopharm.
And look, we are starting to see the fruits of this gamble, as cases finally settle here, but there has been a lot of uncertainty and in cases has been slow...so if you were offered, would you take Sinovac? Especially in the early days, and even now, there are still some questions about the effectiveness of the vaccine, and at the time vaccinations started here, it certainly was not clear how effective Sinovac was. If you look up the various studies, the results were quite different, and there was never an official peer review studied released by (effective ranged from Even now if you read articles, there are still a lot of questions about it (see
So, I ask again what would you do? Well, for us, and for many from the gringo set, it was grind to get Pfizer. We have a Gringos Whats App group here, all expats, generally for exchanging info (for instance, hey, I need a plumber, any oh yes, I Jesus...but wait a second, wasnt Jesus a carpenter). Obviously the pandemic was top of mind, and vaccinations were top of mind and most gringos (read, Westerners
(Cad, US, Europe, Aussie)) were concerned about receiving the Sinovac shot, especially when it was not clear how it would be treated by their governments...Canada doesnt recognize it as an approved vaccine for instance...so the chat became a trove of information as to what vacunatorio was giving Pfizer. The government had set up vacunatorios all over the city, and all you had to do was show up on the day your age became eligible. But the challenge was, you never really knew which one they would have...and with 85% of the doses as Sinovac, it could be like looking for a needle in a stack of needles. So each morning the call would go out Anyone know whos giving Pfizer and the responses Pfizer2 at Las Rosas, no Pfizer1, only Sino1 or Spoke to the guy at Bicentenario, he said they would be arriving later today or Just left El Tranque, got my Pfizer shot...and on it went. Ill up to our day, we were STRESSING...I did not want no Sinovac. And you know, you feel kinda guilty about it right, like you are too good from something, but god dammit, I would be recognized as
unvaccinated in my home country if I traveled back there right now (if I could leave the country that is, but those restrictions should at least end soon).
So what did I do? Well, I drove around from vacunatorio to vacunatorio until I found Pfizer! I personally went to 5, and then acting like a clueless Gringo stood in the line for people supposedly getting their second Pfizer dose for about 4 hours...
