Who Will Answer for Vaccine Nationalism and the Miscalculations that were Made?

  Valery Kulikov

According to data published by the World Health Organization, the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus infections in the world has exceeded 108 million, increasing by more than 300,000 every day, and the number of fatalities has increased by more than 7,700 in the last 24 hours, now exceeding 2.38 million.

In the United States alone, according to data published on the website of Johns Hopkins University, which does its calculations based on information from federal and local authorities, the average daily number of infections is 100,000 since November last year, and the total number of fatalities is almost 500 thousand!

These figures are horrifying – and not only by the number of deaths from the coronavirus pandemic, but also by the fact that many thousands of these victims’ deaths could have been avoided if the powers that be in the West had not made such glaringly obvious mistakes in their fight against COVID-19, and had not been engaged, instead of providing efficient help to those suffering, in politicizing this very help, and in artificially containing the Russian vaccine in particular, which could already have saved many lives!

What is terrifying against this backdrop is the recent statement made by the director of the WHO, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and the executive director of UNICEF, Henrietta H. Fore, that about 130 countries around the world with a population of 2.5 billion people have not yet received the drugs for primary vaccinations for COVID-19, and have not begun vaccinating their citizens against the coronavirus. According to the statement, 128 million doses of the vaccine used so far (more than three-quarters of the vaccinations) are being administered in just ten countries that account for 60% of global GDP. So what should the poorest countries do in that case?

On the pages of the medical journal The Lancet, a group of scientists issued a warning about the factors that prevent the world from effectively fighting the coronavirus pandemic. Among those, they point to vaccine nationalism above all others, with some rich countries buying excessive amounts of drugs to help combat COVID-19, thereby putting everyone else in danger.

French media outlets note that Europe’s vaccination policy is not aimed toward protecting the population from COVID-19, but to a greater extent toward putting its political goals in place: the EU took advantage of the crisis to strengthen its sovereignty, and promote the idea of a federal Europe. By concentrating the logistics component of the vaccination campaign in its hands, the European Commission has reserved a prerogative for itself that is usually one that sovereign states have – but this strategy has proven counterproductive compared to other countries that have signed vaccine procurement contracts directly. Ignoring genuine opportunities, and forcing all the EU member states to wait under far-fetched pretexts, the European Union lost its way in the global vaccination strategy, insisting on caution in respect to “non-European vaccines”, primarily meaning the Russian one.

But even in a country like Canada, which is considered to be an exemplary one because it ordered the most vaccine doses per person back in 2020, only 1.5% of the country’s population had been vaccinated by February. This is largely due to the fact that the United States is forcing its partners to wait for the vaccine: under Donald Trump, they stopped exporting the vaccine, and the new president, Joe Biden, is not giving Trudeau any hope that the situation will change soon. Now the Canadian prime minister fears that the EU may set up similar arrangements, since it has enough problems on its own with the vaccines, says the German TV channel Das Erste. Because of that, Canada “is now hooked on an European Union IV,” waiting to import a vaccine that BioNTech / Pfizer produces in Belgium. Due to problems with shipments, and its own supply shortages, the EU imposed export controls two weeks ago, and Trudeau is now warning that if Europe blocks deliveries then the situation will become worrisome. Now the Canadian government has signed a new agreement with the US vaccine producer Novavax.

As soon as the coronavirus pandemic broke out, and the world realized how in danger it was, billions of people pinned their hopes on the vaccine, and were desperately waiting for it to be delivered. Governments in many developed countries channeled billions of dollars into vaccine development, making it a political race in which a number of pharmaceutical executives and scientists became billionaires, with breaking news of “successes” and “successful trials”. Meanwhile, due to these actions a number of “advanced” vaccines turned out to be, in fact, ineffective – or even harmful to the health of those vaccinated, as evidenced in particular by recurring publications about people dying who have been administered various vaccines, and specifically the American vaccine made by Pfizer. For example, in January in Norway alone, 23 deaths were recorded after vaccinations of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine were administered, and recently there were another 82 deaths, reported by the Norwegian Medicines Agency. One issue of the South Korean publication JoongAng Ilbo reports in detail that Pfizer has failed in its vaccination program in South Korea, and the authorities of this country are urgently scrambling for other vaccines, the Russian-produced Sputnik V stands out among the primary candidates.

Another publication – and namely The Washington Post – let it be known that South African researchers evaluated the efficacy of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine at ten percent. Just think about that: the vaccine has a 10% efficacy! And this is probably still exaggerated, since all the parties involved are trying to “save face”, and not say that besides the absence of practical protection any vaccine can also still potentially lead to some severe side effects for which it has not been properly tested. It is therefore not surprising that South Africa has suspended the use of the coronavirus vaccine being developed jointly by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca. And the information presented above exposes, according to the publication, a gigantic fraud that was committed against humanity in the name of COVID-19 – although that should not surprise anyone, since the failure of this vaccine was completely predictable and inevitable.

“As a constituent component of the establishment, vaccine producers are not subject to any criticism; and no one will punish them for their misdeeds,” The Washington Post pointed out. “They will save face (and their business model). Data showing how their products are not efficacious will be tweaked, and presented in a favorable light. Then they will propose developing boosters for different options of the vaccine – which will be as ineffective in combating COVID-19 as their original vaccine”.

All these, and similar examples, once again verify how pernicious it was – primarily for the lives of the inhabitants of this planet – to politicize the issue and urgently flood the international market with similar vaccines; the failure of this is evident from the numerous publications appearing in various media outlets. Therefore, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Rochelle Walensky, may be right when she recommended that Americans wear two masks at the same time for better protection against COVID-19. At least two or three masks worn at the same time will not cause any damage to human life.

In recent months, Western countries have faced a series of crises that have called into question the adequacy of their leadership. Things are so bad that some high-ranking officials are being called upon to resign. In particular, serious complaints are being lodged with the EU’s executive body, the European Commission, because of its failure in combatting the coronavirus. The president of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, was even summoned to the European Parliament, which demanded that she explain her actions and resign.

And here it should be noted that criticism had been leveled at Ursula von der Leyen several times before. In particular, this occurred when, in 2016, the Hanover Medical Institute, after checking for plagiarism in her doctoral thesis, noted her “obvious shortcomings”. Or when the tabloid Bild, citing a report from the German Federal Audit Office, accused the then-defense minister Ursula von der Leyen of covering up military hardware failures, “embellishing statistics,” and hiding the deplorably tragic state of the German army, for which she was personally responsible at that time. Therefore, it should come as no surprise both that her “secret” nomination in 2019 as head of the European Commission was perceived with great criticism by political circles in Germany and the expert community, and that her appointment sparked an uptick in public protests.

Valery Kulikov, political expert, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.