On Thursday, Anthony Fauci informed the World Health Organization that the Biden government will participate in the WHO vaccine sharing project. That reverses President Donald Trump’s America First approach. Fauci says the goal is to provide “equitable access” to vaccines for all countries in the world, both rich and poor.
Americans rushing to get vaccinated have a right to know how sharing doses with poor countries affects their own ability to get vaccinated.
President Biden is under pressure from the public health community to share the vaccine supply that the United States has pre-purchased, even before all Americans who want an injection receive them.
The vaccine-sharing project, with the acronym COVAX, is raising money to buy vaccines for poor countries, but also asking richer countries to donate actual doses. The COVAX Dose Sharing Principles, published Dec. 18, are causing controversy in France, England, Canada and other countries struggling to get their own populations vaccinated. COVAX wants countries to share their doses as soon as they get them, instead of waiting to see what’s left. Norway has so far agreed.
WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says it is unfair for younger, healthy adults in countries like the United States to get injections for the frail and elderly in poor countries. He calls it a “catastrophic moral failure.”
Likewise, Kate Elder of Doctors Without Borders objects to “if a healthy 20-year-old in New Jersey is vaccinated for a primary care provider in South Sudan.”
Bruce Aylward, a WHO adviser, argues that it is unacceptable for a country to vaccinate its entire population before offering doses to the most at risk residents of poorer countries.
Duke University public health experts also argue that high-risk groups in poor countries should get the vaccine for the American public. A report from the Duke Global Health Innovation Center complains that rich countries are monopolizing the initial supply.
Thursday’s White House statement on vaccine sharing says the United States will comply once there is “sufficient” supply here. What does “sufficient” mean? When only those at highest risk are vaccinated, as globalists suggest, or when all Americans have been shot? The public needs a clear answer to that question.
There are strong reasons to oppose COVAX’s vaccine sharing principles.
First, US taxpayers poured billions into Operation Warp Speed to develop the vaccines with the belief that they would get much of the initial production. When Trump refused to join COVAX, The New York Times dismissed the decision as “vaccine nationalism,” but Americans desperate to get vaccinated are unlikely to worry about political correctness.
Second, the US is aiming to achieve immunity to herds by the summer, which requires about 70 percent of the population to be vaccinated, according to scientists. Diverting some of the vaccine supply to COVAX would jeopardize that goal.
On Monday, the International Chamber of Commerce joined the call for a fair distribution of vaccines, arguing that helping poor countries will benefit the economies of rich countries. That’s right in the long run, but vaccinating a quarter of each country’s population, as COVAX proposes, would force the United States and other developed countries to give up returning to normal this year.
Third, as new virus variants emerge, vaccination is even more of a race against time. Otherwise, a variant could appear that does not respond to the vaccine. Moderna announced on Monday that its vaccine is slightly less effective against the recently identified South African variant. Humans may need annual boosters against emerging species.
Over the past two weeks, both the European Union and the United States have been hit by unexpected news of production setbacks. On Monday, the European Union effectively threatened to ban AstraZeneca from exporting doses until it meets its contractual obligations. The EU puts its own people first.
That’s a lesson for America. Vaccine sharing decisions should not be left to public health “experts” whose globalist views are now taking off in Washington, DC. Helping the world is important, but America must take care of its own country first.
Betsy McCaughey is the author of “The Next Pandemic.”