We are vaccinating people who have almost no risk of serious illness or death while there are hundreds of millions of people who are highly vulnerable who have had no access to vaccines. The top tow thirds of countries have consumed 50 times more vaccines than the bottom one third. It's like giving life jackets to people who can swim and are still on the boat rather than people who can't swim are in the water.
Where would working people be if employers didn't give them jobs. Where would the poor be if the rich didn't pay taxes? Where would the old be if the young didn't pay their pensions and fund their healthcare?
Would the rich countries be as rich if they were exploiting the resources of poor countries quite as much?
We've consumed billions of vaccines and COVAX has given out 550 million, a pittance. COVAX also relies on charitable donations to fund much of their work.
So what?
I think every life is of equal value.
Not to let them catch up, just to vaccinate their over 65's and vulnerable. It's in our interest unless we want constant waves of variants.
This is as basic as abolishing slavery even though it had economic consequences for rich countries. I'm sure the same arguments were made then.
Why? The outcome is the same.
They are using them on citizens who are at almost zero risk of serious illness or death while healthcare systems in under developed countries are being overwhelmed. There is no moral justification for it. None. It is shameful and despicable and I'm surprised and disappointed that you're defending it.
The EU has 800 million doses delivered, the US 550 million doses delivered. Who is this 'we' exactly?
550 million COVAX doses does not seem like a pittance to me.
If every life is of equal value, on what moral grounds do you justify that the EU \ US should have vaccinated any of their citizens first ahead of someone elsewhere in a worse clinical condition? Should there have been a WHO master list of cohorts globally?
Every life is of equal value, right, but what does that mean exactly?
If every life is of equal value, on what moral grounds can Ireland justify spending X on an expensive cancer treatment for 1 person when the same money in the Third World could save 10 (younger) lives?
Or spending money on flood defence to protect properties and businesses, while other countries face floods that kill thousands?
How can we spend money on sending more Irish kids to college, when some kids somewhere in the world don't even get to secondary school?
Countries have duties and responsibilities to their own citizens.
To compare this with slavery, where countries deliberately went to less developed countries and took away people TO not giving out vaccines in a pandemic not of our making ... is intellectually and morally without foundation. It's so far from reality it actually diminishes and underplays what slavery was.
Given that some European countries are going into lockdown, curfew etc to protect their healthcare systems from being overwhelmed, and here in Ireland we are on the edge ... this is not a cost free decision.
Also, the argument that if we boost in the EU \ US there won't be enough vaccines elsewhere in the next months for the vulnerable - considering the upscale in vaccine capacity - isn't a slam dunk either.
It's not just about the vaccines, it is also about the delivery capacity and uptake in those countries.
So I reject the argument on moral grounds, and as can be seen with reference to South Africa, on practical grounds it is not as persuasive as it appears. It's not the case that if we give the booster vaccines to COVAX, there won't be VOCs. There may be less VOCs but our population will be less protected to those that do emerge.
