As the U.S. covid vaccination campaign continues to accelerate, there are reports that the U.S. government is looking more comprehensively at sharing vaccines and vaccine technology with countries around the globe. This is good news from a public health perspective, and also good news for the United States’ moral and diplomatic standing in the world. Last week, we talked about resistance by the pharmaceutical industry and some government officials to making proprietary vaccine formulas available to poorer countries — such resistance itself being a formula for mass unnecessary suffering if there ever was one.
It appears, though, that progressive Democratic lawmakers (including, happily, The Hot Screen’s local representative Earl Blumenauer) have been trying to light a fire under the Biden administration to share patent technology on a temporary basis, and that the Biden team is considering such action. This would be tremendous news for global health, and a further sign that sanity has returned to the White House. As I argued last week, I don’t see a persuasive argument that corporate incentives to develop new vaccines will be harmed long-term by taking this special measure during an unprecedented global pandemic, particularly when big Pharma has profited, and will continue to profit, enormously from its research and production (this research and production, crucially, has been backstopped by the American taxpayer to the tune of billions of dollars).
As I also mentioned last week, people like historian Timothy Snyder have been making the case that a global vaccine initiative by the U.S. could reap enormous diplomatic benefits. Comments by a spokesman for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative suggest that this perspective is on the radar of American policymakers, as he remarked that, “As part of rebuilding our alliances, we are exploring every avenue to coordinate with our global partners and are evaluating the efficacy of this specific proposal by its true potential to save lives.” And Secretary of State Antony Blinken has also recently addressed criticism of the lackluster U.S. role in global vaccinations, saying that, “As we get more confident in our vaccine supply here at home, we are exploring options to share more with other countries going forward. We believe that we will be in a position to do much more on this front.” Notably, Blinken also remarked that the United States would not “trade shots in arm for political favors.” This seems to be both an acknowledgment that vaccine sharing needs to be fair, and a shot across the bow of countries like China and Russia that have thus far been more assertive in exporting doses of covid vaccines. But of course, the perceived fairness of U.S. vaccine distribution efforts has an inevitable diplomatic aspect. There is nothing inherently wrong with putting U.S. resources into a necessary global campaign while also embracing the windfall of goodwill and reinforced alliances that it would cultivate.
And reporting on France’s continuing difficulties in combatting the coronavirus offers more evidence that U.S. efforts shouldn’t be limited only to poorer nations. This New York Times article details a general malaise among the country’s populace at their country’s collective failure to get the pandemic under better control. Significantly, France is the only permanent member of the UN Security Council that has not yet developed and deployed its own vaccine, contributing to the country’s sense of failure. A U.S. relief effort that includes European allies like France would be the right thing to do on health grounds, but would also provide an inoculation against far-right political parties like France’s National Front that are sure to use this foundering government response as a cudgel against democracy and liberal society. The U.S. has every interest in vaccinating the world against incipient authoritarian movements as well as against the coronavirus.