Perhaps there is no better time for nations to act in a multilateral fashion than when tasked with tackling a global pandemic. This is the precise point that Forbes’ Christine Ro poses in her op-ed entitled “Vaccine Multilateralism is the Alternative to Vaccine Nationalism.” The “global effort” being called for comes in the form of the Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) Facility, which seeks to pool together the combined resources of participating countries to help further advance solutions to selecting and advancing vaccine candidates along with production and distribution.
Over 170 countries are at some stage of talks to join the conglomerate and this includes both the European Union and China. Some of the more notable absentees from COVAX are the United States and the Russian Federation. In the case of the U.S., the rejection of global cooperation appears to be an extension of the Trump Administration’s enduring hostility towards scientific consensus as well as the World Health Organization. The WHO represents the cornerstone of multilateralism in the global public health arena and the administration’s outspoken criticism of the organization is very much on-brand.
The article raises a critical point that I feel is relatively glazed-over in the media given that vaccine candidates themselves have been the primary focus of the news cycle. Distribution methods and mass-manufacturing of vaccines – which will require a monumental mobilization of global resources – are a primary focus of COVAX. Proponents of the “vaccine nationalism” exhibited by the U.S. and Russia argue that lack of cooperation can breed the same kind of innovation seen during the Space Race of the Cold War. However, this analogy is an apples-to-oranges comparison. Here we do not have a struggle based on a competition for global hegemony between two superpowers; instead, the situation is a global health catastrophe that requires a much larger mobilization of resources.
Thanks, Ron, for your blog post. It is extremely disappointing that the US (and Russia) have declined to participate in the COVAX initiative. In the US case, it certainly would seem to be part of the Trump administration’s severe allergy to anything multilateral. But in this case, while they are standing on (a ridiculous) principle, literally millions of lives are at stake. — Professor Wallerstein