Vaccine nationalism poses a threat to millions

Brut America

“It’s insane that someone like me, who’s healthy, young and lives in a wealthy country will receive the Covid-19 vaccine before someone who’s at risk in less wealthy nations.”

Transcript

00:00A few countries have taken the majority of the vaccines.

00:03The world is on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure.

00:08Vaccine nationalism puts lives at risk.

00:30It's completely insane that in 2021, someone like myself, who's healthy, who's young,

00:36who lives in a wealthy country, will have access to the COVID-19 vaccine,

00:41will be safe before someone who's on the front line as a healthcare worker,

00:46before someone who's older, sick and at risk in less wealthy nations.

00:51There's no moral justification for this to happen. It's plainly wrong.

01:00It's the case of Canada that has more vaccines for its population than any other country,

01:05but also of other countries like the US or the UK.

01:21This means that poor countries will have access much, much later.

01:25So originally, it's true that countries who now don't have access to a vaccine

01:30were less touched by the pandemic.

01:33But with the second wave, it's changing.

01:34And we see it with the South African variant.

01:36South Africa in January 2021 is now the country in Africa with the highest number of cases

01:43and one of the highest in the world.

01:45So we see that countries who don't have access to vaccines are also extremely touched.

01:50It means that we won't reach global herd immunity,

01:53and that as a result, there's more risks of having genetic mutation of the virus,

01:57which in turn means that we are all at risk all over again.

02:09If we do the very stupid thing of not sticking together

02:12and leaving lower and lower middle income countries behind,

02:15those economies will suffer.

02:18They're at risk of losing decades of economic progress.

02:25It was the case in 2009 with H1N1,

02:28where a few wealthy nations basically monopolized the entire stock of vaccines.

02:34And it took years and many of the vaccines never actually reached

02:37most of the countries that needed it.

02:39And it's happening again.

02:41And the issue is, we don't have right now an intergovernmental organization

02:45like the WHO that has enough power, enough competencies,

02:49to be able to truly oversee the distribution process

02:53and make sure that not a few countries hold all doses.

02:56And so they tried to set up mechanisms such as COVAX

03:00to ensure that countries across the world would get access.

03:03But the truth is, we don't have that.

03:05Big pharma companies need to share the licensing and technology,

03:35with other companies who can manufacture the vaccine

03:38and get it out to more people faster.

03:40It's basically human lives over profit, and it needs to happen fast.

03:53With our campaign Vaccines Without Borders,

03:55we are basically pressuring the CEO of Pfizer by having you input your data

03:59and it will send him an automatic email,

04:02asking him to share the Pfizer vaccine and tech with companies across the world

04:07in low and middle income countries, so that they can produce the vaccines.

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