Still indulging in vaccine supremacy, U.S. now itches for vaccine diplomacy

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By Qing Ming (People's Daily Online) 10:33, May 09, 2021

Four months ago, the coronavirus situations in the U.S. and India were worlds apart, with America’s daily COVID-19 cases soaring to between 150 and 250 thousand while India’s single-day case numbers had just touched down to their lowest point at 8,635. Four months later, the contrast remains, but just in the opposite direction: now the U.S. is in a much better off position with 46% of its citizens having gotten at least one dose of the vaccine, while India is meanwhile heading straight down a slippery slope, shattering world records for daily case counts one day after another.

What is even more striking than the two nations’ intersecting fates, however, is that India, which is one of the world's largest vaccine producers, is struggling to mass-produce enough doses even for its own citizens, with America’s disappointing delays in lifting exports bans on raw materials having played no small role in this debacle.

Despite US President Joe Biden’s promise to share AstraZeneca doses and his support for waiving COVID-19 vaccine patents, he can’t wipe away the gritty truth that America and its G7 allies went about hoarding a sizable share of worldwide vaccine stocks, swaying the international vaccine distribution and supply chain first and foremost in favor of themselves. Yes, they haven’t blocked the poor countries of the world from accessing COVID-19 vaccines, but they have nevertheless purchased available vaccines in bulk through bilateral deals; nor have they barred poor countries from directly producing vaccines, yet they instead acted simply to cut off the export of key raw materials.

Representatives pose for a group photo during the meeting of the Group of Seven (G7) foreign and development ministers at Lancaster House in London, Britain, on May 4, 2021. (Andrew Parsons/No 10 Downing Street/Handout via Xinhua)

On May 5, at the G7 Foreign and Development Ministers’ Meeting, a joint statement imbued with privilege, conceits and clichés was issued, blathering on about other countries’ internal affairs while conjuring up solutions to issues the group failed to address from the get-go (if not having contributed to making these issues even worse). But the ministers clearly forgot to comment on what the clique had done from the outset to aggravate an unfair situation of vaccine distribution that had been one of their own making (that is, by signing self-serving bilateral deals with pharmaceutical companies reserving orders for billions of doses), nor did they comment on why the U.S. had thwarted others’ attempts to acquire raw materials even with its millions of as-yet-unused doses sitting in storage.

America and some of its allies’ vaccine supremacy lies in the fact that they deploy their authority willy-nilly and abuse their dominant position on what at first appears a seemingly understandable basis – namely, that their citizens (many of whom are reluctant to wear masks or loath to engage in social distancing) should have privileges to get the shot first. Even though the clique would go to every length to slam Trump’s “America First” policy, in practice, they’ve never completely forgone the same insular mindset. That’s no less shocking and immoral than rounding up and stockpiling all the bottled water from the shelves for one’s own personal use during a water crisis as workers elsewhere are dying of thirst in front of the bottled water assembly lines.

A doctor shows a box of China's Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine in Varoslod, Hungary, Feb. 24, 2021. (Tamas Vasvari/MTI via Xinhua)

On May 7, 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) listed the Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, alongside previously authorized Pfizer-BioNTech, Astrazeneca/SK Bio, Serum Institute of India, Janssen, and Moderna vaccines, highlighting that its “efficacy for symptomatic and hospitalized disease was estimated to be 79%, all age groups combined.”

Following WHO’s go-ahead for the Sinopharm vaccine, a WHO official acknowledged China’s efforts to provide and donate vaccines to vulnerable countries, according to Reuters, especially nations in Africa, Latin America, and Asia who have found it exceptionally difficult to request access to doses from the rich world, noting that China has offered support to the COVAX program by providing COVID-19 vaccines mainly to poor countries.

The U.S. has not shown the slightest hint of appreciation towards China in its efforts to help ameliorate a crisis we are all facing together, instead having continued to smear China from the very beginning: questioning the efficacy of the Chinese vaccines, disputing the transparency of the WHO expert team’s Wuhan trip, and labeling China’s donations and exports of vaccines as vaccine diplomacy, a mere drive to secure geopolitical influence.

Photo taken on Feb. 9, 2021 shows a scene of the WHO-China joint study press conference in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province. (Xinhua/Cheng Min)