On Thursday, Anthony Fauci informed the World Health Organization that the Biden administration will be involved in the WHO vaccine sharing project. This reverses President Donald Trump’s first American approach. Fauci says the goal is to ensure “equitable access” to vaccines for all countries in the world, both rich and poor.
Americans struggling to get vaccinated have a right to know how the dose with poor countries will affect their own ability to get vaccinated.
President Biden has been pressured by the public health community to share the supply of vaccines that the United States has previously purchased even before all Americans who want to receive shots receive them.
The vaccine sharing project, with the acronym COVAX, raises money to buy vaccines for poor countries, but also asks richer countries to give real doses. The principles for sharing doses of COVAX, published on December 18, are causing controversy in France, England, Canada and other countries struggling to vaccinate their own populations. COVAX wants countries to share their doses as they receive them, instead of waiting to see what’s left. So far, Norway has agreed.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says it is unfair for healthy, young adults in countries like the United States to be injected before the poor and needy. He calls it a “catastrophic moral failure.”
Similarly, Kate Elder, of Doctors Without Borders, opposes “whether a healthy 20-year-old boy in New Jersey gets vaccinated before a front-line health worker in South Sudan.”
Bruce Aylward, a WHO adviser, says it is unacceptable for a country to vaccinate its entire population before offering doses to the most at-risk people in the poorest countries.
Duke University public health experts also argue that high-risk groups in poor countries should receive the vaccine before the U.S. public. A report by the Duke Global Health Innovation Center denounces that rich countries monopolize initial supply.
Thursday’s White House statement on the distribution of vaccines says the United States will comply once there is “sufficient” supply. What does “enough” mean? When are only those most at risk vaccinated, as proposed by the globalists, or when shots have been offered to all Americans? The public needs a clear answer to this question.
There are powerful reasons to oppose COVAX’s vaccine sharing principles.
First, U.S. taxpayers poured billions into Operation Warp Speed to develop vaccines with the understanding that they would get much of the initial production. When Trump refused to join COVAX, the New York Times criticized the decision as “vaccine nationalism,” but it is likely that Americans desperate to get vaccinated are concerned about political correctness.
Second, the United States is struggling to achieve herd immunity in the summer, which scientists predict will require vaccinating about 70 percent of the population. Deviating part of the vaccine supply to COVAX would jeopardize this goal.
On Monday, the International Chamber of Commerce joined the call for an equitable distribution of vaccines, arguing that helping poor nations will benefit the economies of rich countries. It is true in the long run, but vaccinating a quarter of the population of all countries, as proposed by COVAX, would require the United States and other developed countries to return to normalcy this year.
Third, as new virus variants appear, vaccination becomes even more of a race against the clock. Otherwise, a variant that does not respond to the vaccine may appear. Moderna announced Monday that its vaccine is a little less effective against the newly identified South African variant. People may need annual reinforcements against emerging strains.
In the last two weeks, both the European Union and the United States have been hit by unexpected news about manufacturing setbacks. On Monday, the European Union threatened to ban AstraZeneca from exporting doses until it meets its contractual obligations. The EU puts its own people first.
This is a lesson for America. Vaccine delivery decisions should not be left in the hands of public health “experts” whose globalist views are ascendant in Washington, DC. Helping the world is important, but the United States must take care of its prime.
Betsy McCaughey is the author of “The Next Pandemic.”