Alongside the racial injustices, the cultural appropriation, and the breadth of harmful “isms” that plague our globe today, a novel issue has come to the limelight: vaccine nationalism.
The term vaccine nationalism came to headlines during the COVID-19 pandemic and was cited as a significant peril to successfully conducting an equitable allocation of shots globally. Vaccine nationalism is the concept of countries forging production deals to prioritize vaccine allocation for their own citizens, often neglecting the interests of other nations in doing so. Ever since the pandemic began unfolding in January 2020, countries across the globe have taken individualized measures toward alleviating the economic, social, and political impacts of the coronavirus on their citizens. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the necessity of national streamlined distribution policies while also stressing the urgency for a more assembled global health emergency response that persists beyond this pandemic. The World Health Organization attempted to roll out a more equitable distribution through the COVAX initiative, which is a worldwide movement to expedite the development, production, and distribution of vaccines by providing vaccine doses for 20% of every nation’s population. However, highly affluent countries like the United States and the United Kingdom began forming deals directly with vaccine providers like Moderna, Pfizer, and BioNTech — bypassing the initiative’s effort. It is this conflict between multilateral vaccination efforts and national governments acting unilaterally that drives the current shortcomings in campaigns aimed at increasing vaccine supply in different countries.
During the Ebola virus crisis, developing countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Guinea endured strains on their vaccination supplies due to issues such as under-resourced healthcare infrastructure, civilian unrest, nuanced social and political stratifications, and weak community involvement. Similar complexities exist within every individual nation — understanding these complexities is indispensable for the vaccination movement to tailor strategies that best accommodate citizens. With limited supply and high demand, dispersing vaccines among a global population of over 7.7 billion people is certainly no easy task. To this point, a Duke University study suggested that the most poverty-affected countries in the world would only be able to reach a 60% vaccination rate by 2023 at the earliest. Although distribution is certainly feasible, the process must be executed with intention and equity in mind, considering factors of health risk, socioeconomic background, and geographic access to vaccines, among others. Ensuring efficient allocation of these limited resources requires paying close attention to public trust, community dialogue surrounding the issue, and existing infrastructure within the healthcare industry. If one aspect of this complex allocation is disregarded, vaccine distribution can rapidly lag behind the intended timeline. With a delay in production, more time passes enabling more infectious spread and fewer shots in arms.
The United States, one of the most prosperous countries in the world, has struggled with historical trauma and citizen wariness surrounding vaccination, particularly in the southern states. This troubling history has left behind a gradually widening disparity between states like Massachusetts and Alabama, the former of which has 82% of its population fully vaccinated while the latter lags behind at 52%. In a global context, the vaccine disparity is even more polarized. As of December 2022, only 25.9% of people in low-income countries have received one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, while over 90% of doses were given to upper-middle and high-income nations. The contrast in the interstate vaccine disparity level versus the international vaccine disparity level highlights the important role that the United States should play in encouraging vaccination efforts abroad.
As a leading economic and political power in the world, the United States should and must strive to improve vaccination rates beyond our fifty states. Idly witnessing the same neighbors whose resources and labor we benefit from experience a difficult health position due to a virus that none of us could have anticipated is highly reprehensible. Our nation’s public safety, well-being, and overall health hinge on the same socioeconomic factors of the countries we negotiate diplomacy with on a daily basis. America’s relationships with other nations are tied by trade agreements, climate change pacts, and shared values, among other factors — neglecting these bonds within the context of global health is morally and bureaucratically unproductive.
Part of the agreement to engage in this global vaccination effort was established by the COVAX initiative, which, although noble in intention, demands reform. The initiative promised nations such as Uruguay and Libya vaccine deliveries, but many shipments failed to arrive. Moreover, COVAX failed in communication, as diplomats could not get in contact with COVAX officials with phone calls and emails left unanswered. Openly sharing contracts with vaccine manufacturers will help increase public transparency and maintain accountability throughout distribution. By releasing the costs of these contracts as well, COVAX remains accountable for its expenditures to the public, increasing trust and confidence in the vaccination movement. Moreover, COVAX was advertised as a global collaborative movement where international governments worked alongside one another to support solutions to easing the pandemic’s effects. Instead, COVAX is now viewed as an agency associated with providing vaccine supplies to individual nations, deviating from this original goal. Shifting the movement to offer nations potential partnerships with other countries could encourage a more humanizing approach to tackling future pandemics — one that is based less on how much wealth a country boasts but rather on its ability to cooperate in dispensing as many vaccines as possible.
The COVID-19 pandemic came to us as a significant surprise. It was a pandemic that overturned and churned our world, one that brought perpetual misery, death, and overwhelming sorrow. But this global health crisis has brought us one challenge that we do have control over — vaccinating the nearly eight billion individuals that coexist on this single planet. It is time for the United States to fortify the union between all of our people by serving as a stronghold for the vaccination effort ongoing in low and middle-income countries. This is important not only for the current COVID-19 pandemic but also for future health crises that might arise. We must continue forging a transoceanic, transcontinental union that draws us all together in the face of this unprecedented health crisis of the century. Let us finally build the bridge that will lead us back to the normalcy that we all so desperately desire.
Image by CDC licensed under the Unsplash License.
