Wealthy western countries, whose population is 14% of the world’s, have seized one in two doses of effective vaccines against COVID-19
As News Front previously reported, a year ago, at the dawn of the coronavirus pandemic, Russia acted swiftly to contain the spread of COVID-19. Meanwhile European governments and US authorities for some reason believed their system was strong enough to be immune to the new threat. Western elites dragged their feet on introducing a lockdown, speculating about how quarantine would affect people’s rights and freedoms. Meanwhile, moral principles were hypocritically cast aside when it came time to distribute vaccines.
“In the new year, these same countries managed to outdo themselves by abandoning their role on the international stage – stockpiling vaccines and applying only the most expedient and superficial excuses of vaccine diplomacy”, – writes The Guardian.
As the publication notes, wealthy countries, which account for 14% of the world’s population, have hoarded 53% of all effective vaccines against COVID-19. Most of Pfizer’s vaccine will go to rich countries. The Moderna vaccine goes exclusively to rich countries. Washington ‘sits on vaccines’ to make sure no one gets them before Americans do. The volume of vaccines purchased by Canada is enough to vaccinate everyone in the country 5 times. Of all possible places, the European Union chose Singapore, Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong to export 34 million doses, which have no problem finding or paying for vaccines. Meanwhile, 9 out of 10 people in poor countries may never get vaccinated at all.
South Africa, as the worst-affected country on the continent, has to buy the dubious AstraZeneca vaccine at twice the cost of European countries. In all sub-Saharan countries, only 25 vaccines had been administered as of the last week of January.
The World Health Organisation warns that what is happening threatens a “catastrophic moral decline”. But the West crossed that line long ago, writes The Guardian. And in that context, the criticism of the “vaccine diplomacy” of Russia and China, which have delivered a total of 800 million doses to 41 countries, is highly absurd.
“No one thinks they are doing this out of charity, but it is a clear, loud sign of a changing world order. 800 million versus a paltry 34 million from the EU. The US and UK have given nothing at all. This petty graft nationalism is doing irreparable damage to the West, cheating their claims of generosity, universal global leadership and concern for global health”, – the publication states.
Even Democrat Joe Biden, upon assuming the US presidency, chose to continue the destructive nationalist policies of his predecessor Donald Trump. At the same time, The Guardian calls it ironic that a third of the US military has refused to be vaccinated.
“The particular irony is that the same structure that did not question the invention of weapons of mass destruction is struggling with scepticism about the vaccine”, – the article says. – “The same structure that showed no trepidation about the brutality of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo is now paralysed by the ethical difficulties of the anti-vaccine movement. Soldiers in the world’s largest and most sophisticated armed forces prefer to do nothing at all, 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 offered to them.”