Let them eat cakes!

It has been a year and a half since the WHO declared the novel coronavirus is a global pandemic.  With the exception of a few experts, the rest of us had to hurriedly educate ourselves on what it meant.  Life as we knew it came to a standstill with lockdowns and closures. 

Vaccines will be the only way out, we were told.

"#Trump can stamp his foot all he likes, but Americans are unlikely to risk their lives absent a high degree of certainty they are not going to contract the disease before there is a #vaccine."https://t.co/JB6Q9BUq9a#Covid19 #Recession #unemployment

— Sriram K (@congoboy) April 7, 2020

I was not the only one who celebrated how vaccines were developed way quicker than was considered likely.  When I got the second shot of the vaccine, I felt like hugging the nurse and everybody at the vaccination site.

#Freedom!!!https://t.co/slBW4X8nka
Thank you, scientists, for the #vaccine.
Now, if only the US will work with the #WHO on #VaccineEquity and help lead the world out of this #pandemic

— Sriram K (@congoboy) June 1, 2021

Through those celebrations of the arrival of the vaccine, one fact worried me--vaccine inequity.

Without #VaccineEquity, "we risk a forever pandemic with long-term cycles of lockdowns, economic damage and constant fear.
We cannot just vaccinate rich countries and hope that we will be safe."https://t.co/szNzd72h0b#India #Covid19 #Vaccines

— Sriram K (@congoboy) April 30, 2021

Now, the US is considering booster shots for its people, even as a huge number of people in poorer countries have yet to receive even one dose!

This opinion essay argues that we need to vaccinate the world before starting COVID booster shots.

Of the more than 5.8 billion doses of COVID vaccines that have been administered across the world by mid-September, the vast majority (about 80 percent) have gone to people living in high- and upper-middle-income countries. Fewer than 0.5 percent of doses have gone to people in low-income countries.

How awful!

The richest countries in the world—those belonging to the G20—have failed to commit to equitable distribution of this global public health good, instead choosing to prioritize booster doses for those in their countries who are already fully vaccinated.

The authors conclude: "Countries that are rich in resources can swiftly bring an end to this deadly inequity—if only they have the moral backbone to do so."

Moral backbone we rarely have.  It is not news that we lack them.  I have always advocated for a broad and inclusive understanding of the world and caring for others.  I find it strange when people casually ignore anything that is not within their neighborhood.  In my professional and personal lives, I have tried my best to advocate for vastly enlarging the radius of our mental neighborhoods. 

In this post in October 2016, I asked "where does the neighborhood end?"  Covid shows, yet again, that the neighborhood stops with the country's border, even when we fully understand that the virus recognizes no such borders!