 | By Max Strasser Assistant Editor, Opinion |
Nothing boggles my mind — and makes me feel a combination of anger and guilt — quite like thinking about the global distribution of Covid vaccines. |
In Britain, where I live, there are plenty of jabs to go around. In the United States, where I'm from, overabundance and lack of demand are leading to some doses ending up in the trash. People in the U.S., Germany, France and some other rich countries are lining up for booster shots to prevent people who are unlikely to be hospitalized from getting sick at all. (I've even heard stories of healthy young Americans getting boosters just for their own peace of mind!) |
Meanwhile, the citizens of poor countries are being forgotten. Covax, the global distribution program, is, as my colleagues Rebecca Robbins and Benjamin Mueller have reported, underfunded and ineffective. In much of South Asia and the Middle East, vaccination rates are near or even below the low double digits. In Africa, only about 2 percent of the population is fully vaccinated. In many countries, even medical workers are waiting to receive vaccines. |
Here's the thing: This isn't just moral indifference; it's also myopia. |
It's become something of a Covid cliché, but it remains a truism: None of us is safe until we all are. The Delta variant was first identified in India (which, as of now, has administered about 47 vaccine doses per 100 people, compared to 136 doses per 100 people in Britain). There's every reason to think that the next variant will come from one of many places where vaccines are in short supply. I find it all-too plausible to imagine American teenagers in 2023 receiving yet another booster to prevent them from being sickened by an Omega variant that came from, say, Sierra Leone, where, as of now, just 0.4 percent of the population is fully vaccinated. |
How is it possible we are getting this so totally wrong? |
Well, if you agree with Adam Tooze, the answer is the main lesson of the entire pandemic response so far. Tooze, an economic historian at Columbia and, I think, one of the smartest analysts of global affairs around, sums it up well at the start of his recent guest essay: "The world's decision makers have given us a staggering demonstration of their collective inability to grasp what it would actually mean to govern the deeply globalized and interconnected world they have created." |
This has been the story of the pandemic all along, Tooze writes. It's hard to disagree: A universal threat — sped up by globalization — was met by nationalistic squabbling. From the unseemly P.P.E. grabs in the spring of 2020 to the vaccines today, it's been not just "America first," but every country for itself. |
Except, that is, when it came to propping up the global financial system. In that case, Tooze writes, central banks coordinated their policies, and governments agreed to engage in unprecedented spending. It worked — at least for some. |
The global financial system didn't collapse under the weight of the shutdowns, but some people benefited more than others: "When liquidity is flushed indiscriminately into the financial system, it inflates bubbles, generating new risks and outsize gains for those with substantial portfolios," Tooze writes. "While tens of millions struggled through the crisis, trillions of dollars piled up in the balance sheets of the wealthy." |
Tooze is a major thinker, and this is a major essay. It sums up the biggest political and economic lessons of this ongoing crisis. The conclusions aren't encouraging. |
The worst part? The coronavirus pandemic isn't, in the scheme of global disasters, all that bad. Worse pandemics are imaginable. The effects of climate change are already horrifically visible, but greater destruction and disruption are in store. If the past 18 months are any guide, it's easy to envision how our systems, and our leaders, will respond. It's also easy to envision who the winners and the losers will be. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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