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The Unfortunate Reality of Worldwide Vaccine Nationalism
By Benjamin Beal
With the unbelievably quick development and implementation of a vaccine for COVID-19 from the United States to the United Arab Emirates, it would be easy to expect that a return to relative normalcy is on the horizon. However, despite the unprecedented progress made in fighting COVID-19 to this point, if some major changes are not made to the vaccine distribution process, the world will never fully eradicate the coronavirus, and the virus will continue to mutate for years to come. Wealthy countries like Israel and the United Kingdom are inoculating large numbers of people on a daily basis, providing some hope for a light at the end of the COVID tunnel, but this may just be false hope.1 The problem lies in the fact that Vaccine Nationalism prioritizes limiting transmission of the disease within countries’ borders as opposed to the eradication of COVID worldwide, setting up the unfortunate reality that herd immunity or eradication may not be as close as we think.2 The phrase “Vaccine Nationalism” was coined by the World Health Organization in response to massive purchase orders placed by large nations and their own populations immediately following human trials.3 The distribution of vaccines has thus far been more on a basis of who can afford doses as opposed to who necessarily needs them. For example, The RAND Corporation, a nonprofit political and advocacy think tank, estimates that countries representing 16.5% of the world’s population have ordered 60% of available vaccine doses, while Latin America and the African Union, two bodies that contain about 17% of the world’s COVID cases, only account for about 1% of the world’s distribution forecast.4 With these troubling figures, the threat of COVID could persist in countries unable to access vaccines. At the same time, nations like the US could accept the false notion that the coronavirus is effectively eradicated, while poorer, less powerful countries are still ravaged by its effects. Even going beyond the health of citizens, the toll that the continued spread of the virus could have on global economies would be catastrophic. The global economic disparity present could not only spell disaster for lowincome nations but also for wealthy nations as well. The World Economic Forum estimates that wealthy countries will spend $1.2 trillion on dosage orders to vaccinate their respective populations, while the entire cost for supplying low-income nations is estimated to be only about 2% of that, around $25 billion.5 The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) reached a conclusion that the global economic loss (in terms of GDP) as a result of COVID-19 spread in low-income countries could come at a $132 billion per-year toll for countries across the globe like the US and UK, further incentivizing other economically stable countries and bodies like the EU to pay greater attention to this disastrous trend.6 Economics and politics are neither the sole issues present within the umbrella issue of
Vaccine Nationalism, nor are they potentially the most catastrophic. Biologically, the more time that it takes for the virus to be eradicated, the longer it has to mutate, which could impact the mRNA vaccine’s efficacy against variants, states the World Health Organization’s Dr. Tedros Adhanom. This cycle could repeat for decades, posing the question of why these individual countries neglected to take action for the sake of humanity and instead only acted on behalf of those living within their nation’s borders.7 Dr. Adhanom predicts variants will only get worse and will become increasingly vaccine-resistant in the future, and it could be as late as 2025 until third-world countries see any relief from the harsh effects of COVID-19.8 There are ways we could alter our current course of action regarding vaccine distribution, and could still turn the tide in the right direction for inoculation equity. The Center for International Governance Innovation, partnered with Foreign Affairs, laid out a vaccine rollout plan that overviews the process by which to send superfluous doses from wealthy countries that have overordered for their own populations to countries like Nigeria, which has 200 million people and not one dose of the mRNA vaccine.9 The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has also outlined the establishment of a similar vaccine distribution organization to the United Against AIDS initiative erected under the Bush administration.10 There are so many injustices throughout our world, and economic disparity is at the center of it all, especially considering the COVID-19 pandemic. These plans outlined above certainly will not eliminate the issue in its entirety. However, if countries around the world were able to contribute to the betterment of society rather than to their own citizens, the world will at least begin to shift towards becoming a better place. Nationalism is not new, nor will it go away any time soon. But hopefully it takes a worldwide pandemic for countries around the world to look beyond their domestic interests for the betterment of humanity.
1. Khan, Dr Amir. “What Is ‘Vaccine Nationalism’ and Why Is It so Harmful?” Coronavirus Pandemic News | Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera, 8 Feb. 2021, www.aljazeera.com/ features/2021/2/7/what-is-vaccine-nationalism-andwhy-is-it-so-harmful. 2. Ibid 3. De, Abhishek. “Explained: Vaccine Nationalism, and How It Impacts the Covid-19 Fight.” The Indian Express, 23 Aug. 2020, indianexpress.com/article/ explained/what-is-vaccine-nationalism-how-does-itimpact-the-fight-against-covid-19-6561236/. 4. Hafner, Marco, et al. “COVID-19 ‘Vaccine Nationalism’ Could Cost $1.2 Trillion a Year.” RAND, RAND Corporation, 28 Oct. 2020, www.rand.org/pubs/ research_reports/RRA769-1.html. 5. Kretchmer, Harry. “Vaccine Nationalism – and How It Could Affect Us All.” World Economic Forum, WEForum, 6 Jan. 2021, www.weforum. org/agenda/2021/01/what-is-vaccine-nationalismcoronavirus-its-affects-covid-19-pandemic/. 6. “The Many Guises of Vaccine Nationalism.” The Economist, The Economist Newspaper, 13 Mar. 2021, www.economist.com/finance-andeconomics/2021/03/13/the-many-guises-of-vaccinenationalism. 7. Eaton, Lynn. “Covid-19: WHO Warns against ‘Vaccine Nationalism’ or Face Further Virus Mutations.” The BMJ, British Medical Journal Publishing Group, 1 Feb. 2021, www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n292. 8. Ibid
