All This Vaccine News Is Meaningless To Most Of The World

How vaccine nationalism shafts billions like me

Vaccine Nationalism: the same toxic nationalism, now in injectable form

All of your great vaccine news might as well be from Mars. Billions of people like me are last in line. Perhaps you don’t get it. Irresponsible, rich countries have created tons of demand, bought up all the supply, and are doing it all for profit.

There’s no vaccine for the world. Just the wealthy.

“The reality is that the majority of countries where 87 percent of the world’s population live, are going to have a very limited supply of vaccines, at least for 2021,” Professor Shabir Madhi says. (Al Jazeera)

The US, EU and India alone have bought up at least 4-billion doses, while the entire COVAX program for the Global South has 700 million (The Continent). To put it another way, Moderna and Pfizer might as well be Rolex and Omega. Luxury goods.

Here’s a damning report from Duke University:

According to the analysis, the root problem is that finite global manufacturing capacity is colliding with wealth disparities and self-interest to create a zero-sum game where low-income countries simply can’t compete.