JanSan
Of course the rest of Europe were vaccinated but surely it was a time scale thing. Boris broke away from Europe to set up our own R & D for a vaccine and we started the vaccine programme a lot earlier no doubt saving lives. Keir wanted us to join the European effort. Its amazing how people easily forget about Covid and the furlough support given out The country would have been in a totally different position financially without a pandemic
By breaking away from joint EU price discussions, he has forced the UK to pay a lot more for the vaccines. Not all figures are available, as suppliers did a deal with EU and contracted them into no disclosure. But it goes in billions- billions of unnecessary debt for the UK (never mind the PPE and other debacles!).
For instance, the UK paid £25 approx for each Moderna dose, wherease the EU, as a join and much bigger buyer, paid £13. About the same for Pfizer. For the AstraZ vaccine, the UK paid 2.17 dose and the EU 1.56. Multiply that by the number of vaccinations, and the sum is massive. The EU caught up very quickly with vaccinations, were stricter with restrictions and had quite a lot fewer deaths per 100000.
So Johnson could have bargained as part of EU, got a much lower price and saved huge sums of money, and with more careful earlier restricitions and not sending elderly people back to Nursing homes without testing- saved many more lives too.
Other countries suffered the debilitating effect and cost of the pandemic, and supported workers- but NONE of them are in this mess. They are also very much affected by the war in Ukraine in many ways.