All hat and no cattle

Monday 10th May, 2021

The global pandemic situation is far worse than it looks. The University of Washington estimates reveal that Covid-19 has snuffed out 6.9 million deaths across the globe, and this is more than double the officially reported number. Many countries are struggling to save lives, and shocking scenes of mass cremations in India and other such heartrending instances reported from Brazil, etc., must be weighing on the conscience of the global community heavily, but the response of the developed world to the pandemic has been appallingly slow and woefully inadequate. It is now engaged in a vaccine patent row to the neglect of what needs to be done urgently to save lives the world over. Pope Francis got it right, on Saturday, when he declared that the world was infected with the ‘virus of individualism’, and the ‘laws of intellectual property, etc., had taken precedence ‘over the laws of love and the health of humanity’. The world is facing a ‘catastrophic moral failure’ as Head of the World Health Organization (WHO) Dr. Tedros A. Ghebreyesus has said.

‘Vaccine nationalism’, which characterises the developed world’s pandemic response, is a major impediment to efforts being made to achieve global herd immunity against Covid-19 through vaccination, according to the WHO, which has called for the co-operation of the rich nations to carry out an equitable vaccine rollout across the globe. This fervent appeal has not yielded the desired results if the slow progress of COVAX (COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access) initiative is any indication. As vaccine donations have not reached a satisfactory level, the pandemic-hit countries have had to think of alternative ways of meeting their urgent vaccine needs. Hence their desperate call for lifting vaccine patents in the hope that such action will help boost the global jab production.

India and Brazil are among the nations that have urged the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to lift patents on the Covid-19 vaccines to boost the world’s fight against the virus. This proposal has struck a responsive chord with most countries, but some European nations are not favourably disposed towards it. They are reportedly in favour of a voluntary licensing system similar to the one between Oxford-AstraZeneca and the Serum Institute of India. The proponents of this method of boosting global vaccine production in the short-term point out that the rich countries could make the licensing system mandatory for their pharmaceutical companies, which, however, will have to be compensated; the WTO regulations permit this kind of arrangement.

Opinion is however divided on the effectiveness of the proposed patent waiver. The opponents thereof argue that patents are necessary as they provide incentives and encourages innovation; this is the reason why Covid-19 vaccines have been produced in record time, they maintain. It is also being argued in some quarters that even if the patents are lifted, it will take a long time to commence vaccine production elsewhere. This argument cannot be dismissed as baseless in that there is much more to vaccine production than recipes. Supply chains have to be established, personnel trained, facilities made available and necessary processes set up. All these could be time-consuming. The world cannot wait as the virus keeps mutating and destroying more and more lives, and the only way to neutralise it is to inoculate as many people as possible across the world so as to achieve global herd immunity.

French President Emmanuel Macron has exuded pragmatism in addressing the issue of vaccine nationalism. He has urged the US to abolish its bans on the export of vaccines and ingredients so that other nations can supercharge their production.

The US has, despite initial reluctance, agreed to the proposal for lifting vaccine patents temporarily, but there are better options, as President Macron has pointed out. Being a nation that never misses an opportunity to take moral high ground, the US should put an end to its vaccine nationalism and part with some of its huge vaccine stockpiles, especially the AstraZeneca jab, which it does not use. It does not have to do so as charity; it can make available those vaccine stocks to other nations at reasonable prices. Sadly, it has so far been all mouth and no action; assistance in other forms in dribs and drabs is of little use in a pandemic situation.

The world is not short of crusaders for human rights, and they, led by the US, even ignore the concept of national sovereignty (of other countries) when they want to make interventions purportedly in keeping with the much-vaunted global political commitments such as R2P (Responsibility to Protect). But they stand accused of abusing these universal commitments to advance their geo-political and economic agendas. Nothing is more valuable to humans or any other species for that matter, than the right to life, and the current pandemic has provided the self-proclaimed defenders of human rights with an opportunity to save hundreds of thousands of lives by making Covid-19 vaccines available, and, thereby establish their liberal bona fides, if any.

The developed world is labouring under the delusion that the safety of its people can be ensured through efficient vaccine rollouts at the expense of others, but there is no guarantee that immunity so gained will last for more than one year, according to international medical experts; nobody will be safe unless the virus is beaten, once and for all, through a truly global vaccination drive. The only way out is to follow the motto—unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno (‘one for all, all for one’).