Publications /
Opinion

Back
A New Evil is Bringing Down the World
March 24, 2021

It was an illusion. A dream or wishful thinking—and some fake news. Scientists would develop a vaccine at break-neck speed. It would be available for all, wealthy nations sharing with the poor. But unfortunately the COVID-19 deaths continue to mount. The world is facing a maddening bottleneck, predicted in October 2020 by the Policy Center for the New South on its opinion page, quoting scientists calculations that twelve to fifteen billion vaccine shots were needed, but glass manufacturers would be unable to deliver the needed vials in time, and the distribution process would be extremely difficult and slow for the first generation of vaccines.

Some nations are on schedule, the United Kingdom, for example, Morocco, Israel, Monaco. But Europe suffers, not at least because the European Union roll out has been lackluster, forcing European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen to admit: “Of course, a country on its own can be a speedboat, the EU is more like a tanker”. Slow to maneuver, difficult to accelerate. “The west should pay attention to Russia and China’s vaccine diplomacy”, warned the Financial Times in February. Its writer, Anne-Sylvaine Chassany, noted that “since the start of the pandemic China and Russia have used medical supplies to pursue foreign policy gains”. Both sent masks and protective gear to hard-hit countries last spring. “Now they are promising their vaccines-with some success. With richer nations grapping the bulk of the authorized shots from western companies, low to middle class countries from Brazil and Nigeria to Algeria and Egypt are looking to Moscow and Beijing for doses”. China pledged half a billion doses to 45 nations, including buyers in Latin America and the Middle East. Vaccines from state-owned Sinopharme, reported the Financial Times, are distributed in the United Arab Emirates and the Balkans. Sinovac received orders from Turkey and Brazil. Hungary has bought two million doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, rolling it out in February. It also granted approval to a Chinese vaccine, with Prime Minister Victor Orban receiving one of the first jabs. Beijing, wrote the Financial Times“has made a lasting impression by being the first provider of aid to many countries outside the EU, in particular in some of the poorest African nations”.

As wealthy countries inoculate millions of their citizens against COVID-19, noted Foreign Policy (March 1, 2021) and other countries wait to even begin the roll out, “G-7 leaders are increasingly struggling to address geopolitically charged vaccine inequities”. French President Emmanuel Macron recently noted his fear that countries would turn to China and Russia for vaccines and “the power of the west will … not be a reality”.

In her recent Policy Brief (Nationalisme Vaccinal a l’ere de la Covid 19: un frein a l’endiguement de la pandémie), Salma Daoudi of the Policy Center for the New South concluded that “a new evil is bringing down the world—vaccine nationalism”. This race against time, against others and against nature, Daoudi wrote, has not only given birth to a new form of nationalism, but “this geopolitical competition also bears the seal of a deep-rooted cold war logic, still resisting the test of time, the fruits of a historic rivalry dividing the world into distant blocks. Although the western powers are clearly in competition in developing a vaccine, they are still open to a certain level of cooperation as demonstrated by various agreements between the EU, the U.S. and the United Kingdom”. Rather, the real geopolitical antagonism positions them against Russia and China, she wrote. Russian and Chinese success is perceived, particularly by the United States, “as an existential threat to the hegemonic domination of the Western world, given the economic and diplomatic gains intrinsically linked to the discovery of a vaccine”.

A number of cyberattacks have been registered, for which China, Iran, Russia, and North Korea have been blamed. Iran has been named as the perpetrator of an attack against Gilead, the American pharmaceutical laboratory, whose Remdesivir was cleared as a treatment for certain severe COVID-19 cases. Ironically, stated Daoudi, the arms race is turning into a vaccine race. This new cold war will hardly promise a better world. Whatever the result, argues the scholar, who studied international relations and politics at Cambridge University, “like any conflict, it will cause collateral damage, and like any other race, it will leave some on the sidelines, breathless, unable to compete with American, European, Chinese, and Russian machines”.

Although about 50 vaccine candidates were in work last fall in countries including India, Turkey, Thailand, and even Brazil (which has one of the world’s worst death tolls from the virus), other emerging economies, severely suffocating through the health and political economic crises, do not have sufficient means to pay for access rights or the infrastructure necessary for mass production of pharmaceutical products. These countries may find themselves deprived of vaccines that can relieve the pressure on health systems that are increasingly weakened. Lack of vaccine access could also undermine those countries’ long-term economic, diplomatic, and strategic interests. Author Salma Daoudi: “Inequitable access to the vaccine against the virus would perpetuate the inequalities and jeopardize the health security of millions of people around the world”.

 

The opinions expressed in this article belong to the author.

RELATED CONTENT

  • Authors
    May 19, 2020
    The merciless COVID-19 disease threatens economic misery, with people around the world touched by anxiety and unemployment. In this context, never in recent history has so much hope centered on scientists and the studious brilliance of academic institutions. Media headlines tell the story, with newspapers around the world speaking of beacons of hope in the form of potential cures, vaccines, immune therapies, and clinical trials. Without the solutions of science, nations face long-te ...
  • May 19, 2020
    المسيرة: إيمان لهريش، مسؤولة عن البرامج، مركز السياسات من أجل الجنوب الجديد المتدخلون: المصطفى الرزرازي، باحث بارز، مركز السياسات من أجل الجنوب الجديد العربي الجعيدي، باحث بارز، مركز السياسات من أجل الجنوب الجديد محمد لوليشكي، باحث بارز، مركز السياسات من أجل الجنوب الجديد ...
  • Authors
    May 18, 2020
    Alors que commence le déconfinement de l'économie française, la grande inquiétude est de savoir comment éviter une « seconde vague » de l'épidémie. Parmi les nombreuses précautions et mesures à prendre, l’augmentation du nombre de tests et le traçage systématique des contacts sont les plus souvent mis en avant par les épidémiologistes. L'idéal serait de tester fréquemment tous les habitants du pays et ses visiteurs étrangers. Pour cela, il faudrait effectuer bien au-delà de 60 milli ...
  • Authors
    Benjamin Augé
    May 17, 2020
    The coronavirus epidemic is weakening even further the economies of the Gulf of Guinea, which have already been particularly undermined by an oil sector that has been in crisis for several years. The rapid fall in oil prices will once again put a strain on systems that fail to reinvent and diversify themselves in order to protect themselves from the shortcomings often seen in windfall economies. In addition to the economic impact, it is likely to see the potential security and polit ...
  • Authors
    عبد القادر كعيوا
    May 15, 2020
    فرضت جائحة فيروس كورونا المستجد سلوكات جديدة على عادات الناس سواء في المغرب أو على الصعيد العالمي، وذلك حماية للنفس وللآخرين من انتقال العدوى. ومنذ بداية انتشار هذا الوباء، تعبأت السلطات العمومية من أجل فرض ومراقبة وتأطير هذه السلوكات قصد إنجاح عملية الحجر الصحي، أي البقاء في البيوت وعدم مغادرتها إلا للضرورة القصوى ووفق شروط محددة.  وهكذا أغلقت مؤسسات التكوين وأماكن العبادات ووحدات الإنتاج والمقاهي والمطاعم ومؤسسات الترفيه، ووضعت ضوابط لفتح الأسواق الأسبوعية ومؤسسات التجارة الغذائي ...
  • May 14, 2020
    La propagation planétaire de la pandémie Covid-19 a eu un impact humain élevé, principalement aux Etats-Unis et en Europe. Pour le moment, l’Afrique semble relativement moins affectée, à en juger par le nombre relativement réduit des personnes contaminées et des décès. A l’appui de ce constat, plusieurs explications ont été avancées, allant du climat chaud à une immunité acquise des épreuves sanitaires antérieures, en passant par des traitements miracles traditionnels. Dans leur ges ...
  • Authors
    May 14, 2020
    Confronted with surging unemployment and miles long lines at food banks across the United States, most states have begun reopening the economy. Many of these states are seeing rising numbers of new cases and face a real risk of relapsing into an uncontrolled pandemic. To avoid this outcome, they must adopt a strategy that entails testing, tracing, and isolation of the infected, with priority given to groups and places where the medical impact – reducing infections and saving lives – ...
  • Authors
    Pierre Jacquemot
    May 12, 2020
    It is still too early to assess the extent of the Coronavirus pandemic in Africa, but everything seems to suggest that it will have a major impact on already vulnerable health systems – from prevention to the management of patients. Various forms of resilience are being tested with pejorative effects, especially against the very poor, who are less prepared to observe the protection measures and more exposed in their daily lives. However, lessons can be learned from past epidemic exp ...
  • Authors
    Mouhamadou Moustapha Ly
    Meriem Oudmane
    May 12, 2020
    In the field of health, important results have been achieved on the African continent as shown by recent data in terms of life expectancy and the availability of treatment for the major causes of morbidity. In spite of this, the recent episode of the Ebola epidemic, which required the mobilization of substantial human and financial resources, but above all international aid, shows that health systems remain vulnerable to major shocks. The current context of the Covid-19 pandemic poi ...