Even pro-EU, anti-conservative, ‘citizen of the world’ me was to some degree caught up in the success of the UK’s vaccine programme. Despite huge timing mistakes, cronyism and waste, it has taken us from our usual and now bitterly ironic ‘sick man of Europe’ status to that of world leader in the battle against the pandemic. There’s reasons to be reserved about the permanency of this hard-earned respite, but plenty of reasons for optimism too.
In January of course it seemed like we were the ones that most needed this success, with infection rates skyrocketing to new heights. Things have since become more stable. Our society has also adapted far better than anyone thought it could to the reality of life under lockdown.
I don’t mean to diminish the impact of this on millions of people that are far more intimately acquainted with hardship than myself in this country, nor the costs of the herculean bailout efforts that were required to keep the economy afloat. It has however for a little while felt like we’ve turned a corner on the worst of this nightmare.
Throughout these developments I’ve been counting the days till I can get a shot in the arm myself. Desperate to run off round the world on some free-wheeling adventure, I wanted my ticket to travel again so I could leave these shores and its politics behind.
Now infection rates are peaking in the developing world, in many places that I had aspirations to visit, the selfishness of this has very much hit home. A similar question can be posed on any number of matters that stem from the fortune of my birth relative to others in the world, but this crisis crystallises the urgency of this one in particular: Why should healthy 28 year old me in the UK be benefitting from the vaccine before the vulnerable in the developing world?
The core humanitarian goal of preserving life should be the only argument needed to completely reprioritise global vaccine distribution. It’s easy to disregard the horror of what’s going on abroad when it’s so far away and now that the pandemic is somewhat normalised. The sheer scale of what is really happening abroad though is beyond conception. I’ve seen first hand volunteering in Greece the gap between what reporters can ultimately surmise about a crisis and the depth of the depravity within it. This was a gap that existed in a developed EU country.
I’ve heard many reference the figures they see online arguing that ‘on a per population basis’ it really doesn’t look that bad in other countries, but there’s little appreciation for how distorted those figures are. The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimate India is accurately reporting as little as 3-4% of its actual daily infections. This amounts to a scaling up of true daily infections from 400,000 a day to over 10 million. 10 million new infections a day.
Local media in Gujarat reported that their tracking of daily COVID-19 deaths from 7 cities in the region left them with a body count of 689. That same day the entire state’s published death figures were recorded as 78 officially. Right now the real loss of life in India alone is equivalent to multiple 9/11s occurring every single day.
Much has been made of the foreign deployment of oxygen and other resources to completely overwhelmed hospitals in India. What’s going to ultimately save the most lives and get the pandemic under control around the world though is more equitable vaccine distribution. Take the vaccines currently due for those under 40 and give them to the most vulnerable abroad. Maddeningly, it has been reported by Vanity Fair that the terms of the vaccine deals signed by Trump in the US actively hinder the US’s ability to share their doses. To what extent this is simply being used as a scapegoat for the Biden administration’s own protectionism remains unclear.
Even if we forgo any inclination to re-engineer vaccine deployment on compassionate grounds, on a purely self-interested level it’s still the only obvious route to our own success.
For all the more optimistic chatter on global climate goals stimulated by a Democratic controlled White House, the world is not going to deliver on them if half of it is still fighting tooth and nail against the pandemic. As many have pointed out too, the more this virus circulates, the greater the risk that mutations push it beyond the reach of the vaccines we are gleefully stabbing ourselves with.
Furthermore, education delivery during this pandemic has been a gargantuan challenge even in the UK. Many of the school years lost to COVID-19 abroad are being lost forever. So much work in development economics has repeatedly underlined the benefits of each additional year of schooling a child receives. The challenges to education globally are only compounded in many countries that are also having to deal with a staggering reduction in aid from the UK.
The idea that such issues abroad remain the isolated concern of the countries they effect and do not in turn diminish us in the long run is fanciful. Whether it’s the climate, refugees or something else entirely, the seeds of further crises that will come knocking at our door are being sown right now.
When I am offered the vaccine I will of course take it. I am not sure any genuine good would come from me saying no. It doesn’t make it right that I should be having it before those in greater need though.
We’ve been guided by our principles within our borders, but the promise of ‘Global Britain’ continues to look a hollow one to the rest of the world.