I can understand President Joe Biden putting Americans first in getting vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus. And I really appreciate his efforts to ramp up vaccine production through the Merck and Johnson & Johnson partnership.
But I disagree with what, up until Thursday, has been his reluctance to send vaccines to other parts of the world.
On Thursday, the U.S. agreed to send millions of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Mexico and Canada.
The U.S. has yet to approve AstraZeneca — but will — and has been stockpiling it for that day.
Meanwhile, our neighbors have far less than necessary to vaccinate their most vulnerable. Sending them vaccines is not only the humane thing to do, but the smart thing to do.
First, the danger of letting vaccine schedules lag elsewhere is that it gives the COVID-19 virus the chance to mutate at an ever more rapid pace. So far, the current vaccines seem to cover these variations, but scientists say the more mutations are created, the less effective the vaccine becomes. The only way to reduce the number of variants is to get more vaccines into the arms of people. Otherwise we’re leaving ourselves open to the possibility of another destabilizing outbreak.
Second, vaccine diplomacy is smart for geopolitical reasons.
This is no time for me-first vaccine nationalism.
The global pandemic has killed more than 2.7 million people — and it’s far from over in countries without vaccines. If we fail to do what we can for others during this crisis, then it lessens our chances for receiving cooperation to address the next pandemic, terrorist threat, weather event, cyber crime, nuclear weapons acquisition or any other challenge that requires collective action.
Diplomacy is based on partners willing to share information. If we threaten those relationships by hoarding vaccines, it puts us at further risk when the next crisis arises, whatever it may be.
IN THE MONTHS since the Dec. 14 vaccine rollout, nine countries have received 80% of the world’s doses, including the United States. In terms of low-income countries, only four out of 29 have even started administering vaccine doses. There are 86 countries, representing 1.5 billion people, who have yet to administer a single dose.
To ease your conscience, the United States is administering the vaccine at a rate consistent with its cases. That’s because our infection rate is 29% of the world’s cases. Other countries with extremely low rates of infection, such as Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore and Chile, are vaccinating more people than their health situation demands.
The solution to this problem should have been addressed during the race to discover a vaccine. Unfortunately, leaders were slow to take up the mantle to coordinate global distribution. It’s only been in the last couple of weeks that Covax — the World Health Organization’s vaccine-sharing program — has been able to start disseminating vaccines to third-world countries.
In the case of Israel, for example, it has many times over the number of doses needed. Today, a 16-year-old can receive a vaccine there. Meanwhile, there’s not one vaccine available in all of Haiti.
It’s incumbent on the world’s wealthy countries, including the United States, to address these shortfalls. Else, we’ll all rue the consequences.
