The Guardian
The richest countries in the world are accumulating vaccines. This is morally indefensible
Why does South Africa pay twice as much for vaccines as European countries? Why did Africa – home to 1.3 billion people – receive only 300 million doses? A medical worker receives a dose of the coronavirus vaccine at a hospital in Khartoum, Sudan, earlier this month. Photo: Ebrahim Hamid / AFP / Getty Images Last year, European and North American countries were able to ignore warnings of a highly contagious pandemic – dragging their feet in the definition of current protocols, delaying mandatory mask use and giving miserable alms. To millions struggling to survive the blockade. Although the virus originated in China, not in the west, Western countries imagined that the virus would not affect them in exactly the same way: Europe and the United States entertained the fantasy that they alone were the captains of a political and bureaucratic system more sophisticated that could not only withstand a global pandemic, but also remain immune to its threats. This year, these same countries managed to overcome themselves, vacating their role on the international stage – accumulating vaccines and practicing only the superficial and most convenient pretensions of vaccine diplomacy. The wealthiest Western nations have wiped their hands of any responsibility for delaying a pandemic that they have helped to increase and spread. Rich countries with 14% of the world’s population have secured 53% of the best vaccines. Almost all Pfizer / BioNTech vaccines will go to rich countries. The Modern vaccine will go exclusively to rich countries; it is not even being offered to the poor. In fact, nine out of ten people in poor countries may never have been vaccinated. Washington is taking vaccines, making sure that no one gets them while the United States needs them. The European Union exported 34 million doses to Singapore, Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong everywhere – countries that have no trouble buying or paying for vaccines. In fact, the EU sent about 9 million doses to the United Kingdom, a country that, no longer in the EU, also has what amounts, in practice, to an export ban of its own, despite official denials. Moderna’s top executives are unlikely to feel bad about the unvaccinated poor. The company expects sales of more than $ 18 billion in 2021, leading Moderna to profit for the first time since its founding 11 years ago. Pfizer didn’t do too badly either; they expect $ 15 billion in sales. The wealthiest Western nations have eliminated any responsibility for slowing down a pandemic that helped spread South Africa, the hardest hit country in Africa, is buying the AstraZeneca vaccine from Oxford for almost two and a half times the unit price of European countries. The French division of AstraZeneca told the press in November 2020 that it was limiting the price per dose to € 2.50, but somehow European countries are buying doses below the limit and African countries far above that. Canada bought more doses per capita than any other – enough doses to vaccinate each Canadian five times. But the entire African continent – home to 1.3 billion people – received a total of 300 million doses. As of the last week of January, in all of Sub-Saharan Africa, only 25 vaccines had been administered. Twenty five. The director-general of the World Health Organization warned that the world was on the verge of a “catastrophic moral failure”. But the west has long since crossed the line. Israel, administering more than 150,000 doses of vaccine daily at the dawn of the new year, leading the world in launching vaccines, is purposely, purposely, not vaccinating the Palestinian people it occupies. When asked about this, the Israeli health minister sniffed that Israel had no legal obligation to vaccinate Palestinians. What, then, were the Palestinians’ obligations, he asked, to care for dolphins in the Mediterranean? It is a very stupid – very cruel – statement to answer. Yes, you have an obligation to the people you occupy; yes, you have an obligation to “the sea”. Israel wants to donate its surplus of modern vaccines to countries that have moved their embassies to Jerusalem (or that they have promised), such as Hungary, the Czech Republic and Honduras. A virus, for some, is manna. Let the Palestinians die. As Western countries advanced, stocking up doses of vaccines for themselves, China and Russia practiced vaccine diplomacy. China offered free doses of its vaccines to 13 countries; between the two, China and Russia provided more than 800 million doses to 41 countries. Nobody imagines that they do it out of charity, but it is a clear and resounding sign of the change in the world order. Eight hundred million to the insignificant 34 million in the EU. The United States and the United Kingdom have given absolutely nothing. This petty vaccination nationalism is irreparably damaging the West, betraying its claims of magnanimity, inclusive global leadership and concern for global health. Vaccines from Covid-19 arrive at Harare International Airport in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is one of a dozen African countries that receive vaccines donated by China. Photography: Tafadzwa Ufumeli / Getty Images Covid-19 brought us new models: Vietnam, New Zealand, Iceland, Rwanda – smaller countries, countries in difficulty, poorer countries. These countries protected their populations, implemented protocols, saved lives. Until July 2020, according to the New York Times, Vietnam, a nation of 97 million people, was the largest country in the world to have not confirmed a single coronavirus fatality. In November 2020, it had registered just over 1,000 cases. On the other hand, a year after the start of the pandemic, half a million Americans died from Covid-19, more Americans than died in combat in the first and second world wars and in the Vietnam war together. However, even as their country suffered and struggled, the powerful power still found time to bomb Syria. Joe Biden does not announce a new beginning in American politics; it is a continuation of destructive and reckless American power. Trump, Biden and Obama are all guardians of a power that has neither funds for health nor money for stimulus checks, but is rich in bombs and weapons, full of money for war. A third of US military personnel refused to take Covid’s vaccine, hesitant and suspicious. It is a special irony that the organization itself, which had no doubts about invented weapons of mass destruction, is fighting skepticism about a vaccine. The same organization that has shown no fear about the specialized brutalities of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo is now paralyzed by the ethical dilemmas of the anti-xxx movement. Soldiers from the world’s largest and most sophisticated armed forces choose to do absolutely nothing, while hundreds of millions of people in the non-Western world do not have the luxury of questioning a potentially life-saving vaccine – it is not even being offered to them. It was the hypercapitalists who spread the plague, enriched themselves with the vaccine and will now cure themselves comfortably, first in line for the best vaccines they don’t even want. The poor who struggled to eat and survive, block after block, will wait in line and die. Covid-19 will destroy many things, but hopefully it will also destroy the broken scaffolding of our moral imagination. Fatima Bhutto is a fiction and non-fiction author from Pakistan. His novel The Runaways was published last year by Verso Books. This article was amended on March 17, 2021 to add qualification to the mention of a vaccine export ban in the United Kingdom.