The United States should donate vaccine doses to India and other countries. Now. – EzAnime.net

The contrast is increasingly irritating.

In the US, more than half of adults have received at least one dose of vaccine, transmission of Covid-19 is the lowest in 11 months, and many Americans are partying, traveling and delighting in their new vaccination status.

Meanwhile, thousands of unvaccinated people in less affluent countries, from India to Brazil, die every day amidst overwhelming waves of Covid-19. Delhi crematoria have run out of space. Sao Paolo has resorted to the exhumation of old graves to make room for new bodies.

“We have a split screen. America looks great – everyone can get vaccinated! At the same time, in India, Southeast Asia, everywhere, I have healthcare worker friends who may not see a vaccine until 2022 or 2023, ”said Craig Spencer, professor of emergency medicine at Columbia University. Nearly a dozen countries are “vaccine deserts” where no one, not even doctors treating Covid-19 patients, has received a single injection.

Visitors wait in line at a bar in front of the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas on May 1. More than half of the adult population in the US has received at least one dose of vaccine. Roger Kisby / Bloomberg via.

Relatives of someone who died of Covid-19 perform the last rites at a crematorium on May 9 in New Delhi. Many countries, such as India, have had difficulty vaccinating their medical personnel, much less their entire population.Anindito Mukherjee /.

It is in this context that the US decision arises to begin offering vaccines to children between the ages of 12 and 15. For some experts, many of whom have been asking the Biden administration to send doses overseas for weeks, this latest development it’s almost unbearable to watch. It’s not that they think teens shouldn’t get the vaccine. It’s just that they think it shouldn’t be the priority right now.

Instead, they say, the United States should donate doses to countries where the need is greatest, immediately.

“Compared to children ages 5 to 17, people ages 75 to 84 have 3,200 times the risk of dying from COVID-19,” wrote three experts in an article in the Atlantic. “For children, the risk of illness is not zero, but the risk of mortality is comparable to that of seasonal influenza, and hospitalizations occur in only about 0.008 percent of diagnosed infections.”

Vinay Prasad, one of the authors of the article, told me that given these odds, it makes no sense to vaccinate American children before vaccinating adults in India, where only 1 in 10 adults have received a dose. (The exception is American children with medical conditions that put them at risk.) “It will certainly save many more lives by diverting supply to older people around the world.”

Our world in data

It is also in the best interests of the United States to vaccinate the world quickly, because the longer Covid-19 runs rampant, the greater the risk of new variants emerging, some of which may partially bypass the protection of the vaccine.

As pediatricians argued in a Washington Post op-ed, “Ethical arguments aside, the fact remains that the greatest threat to children in countries with highly advanced vaccine programs comes from areas where Covid remains highly prevalent.”

Although there is still significant work to be done to vaccinate Americans, we have now reached a point where vaccination is slowing as supply exceeds demand. The excess doses, combined with the fact that the remaining unvaccinated population is less at risk, means that shipping doses from the United States abroad makes perfect sense in the world.

What the Biden administration has done and still needs to do

The Biden administration has already sent some aid abroad, including shipments of oxygen cylinders, rapid tests, treatments and personal protective equipment to India.

He also made headlines recently for agreeing to give up vaccine patents. But even with the prescription freely available, Covid-19 vaccines are incredibly complicated to manufacture, requiring deep technical knowledge and scarce raw materials. So while giving up patents can be helpful in the long run, it doesn’t help people who are getting sick and dying right now.

What is most helpful in the short term is simply to donate doses.

Biden has promised to do that. In April, it pledged to ship 60 million doses of AstraZeneca to countries ravaged by the virus. But now it is the middle of May and the doses are still in storage. Although they have to pass a federal safety review before being exported, and ensuring safety is obviously crucial, experts still say that Biden’s plan to donate these doses over the next several months will be too small and too late.

America can afford to give much more, much faster. After all, roughly 73 million doses are already stored in US stocks, according to CDC data. By July, Duke University researchers estimate, the US is likely to have at least 300 million excess doses, and that estimate assumes that the US will retain enough doses to vaccinate the vast majority of the population. kids. In other words, all eligible or soon-to-be-eligible Americans could get vaccinated, and there would still be 300 million doses left, practically enough to give an additional dose to every person in the country.

A surplus of that magnitude is so staggering that not sharing it with the world begins to seem morally unjustifiable.

Our world in data

William Moss, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, said it would be “a very obvious decision” for the United States to donate all of its doses of AstraZeneca, since that vaccine is not even licensed for use in the United States. . Another promising option would be to donate Johnson & Johnson doses in abundance. “The advantage of getting that to countries like India is that it is a single dose and the cold chain requirement is less stringent,” he said.

Moss, Prasad and Spencer argued that the US should also ship doses of Pfizer and Moderna to countries like India, even if the contractual language says US-made doses must be delivered to Americans. They want the Biden administration to ignore that language, given the scale of the humanitarian crisis we are witnessing.

“Sometimes you don’t ask for permission; you ask for forgiveness, ”said Prasad, adding that Pfizer or Moderna’s approach to suing the US government for such a measure would be so horrible that it would be unthinkable. “No one will ever dare to question this. I don’t think companies will fight it in court, and I don’t think anyone will seek retaliation after the fact.

Arguably the biggest challenge for Biden would be justifying the dose donations to the American people. A recent poll found that 48 percent of Americans surveyed believe the government should not donate vaccines at all. It’s worth noting that more middle-aged and older Americans opposed donations, compared to Gen Z members and millennials. And more Republicans than Democrats believed the US should keep a reserve rather than donate, although half of the Republicans surveyed said they are hesitant or do not plan to get the vaccine.

The emotional logic and moral limits of vaccine nationalism

Every expert I spoke to said the United States is clearly committed to “vaccine nationalism,” where each nation only takes care of itself, prioritizing its citizens regardless of what happens to the citizens of others. countries, especially low-income countries that may not let me buy dosages.

“We are focusing on America First,” Spencer said. When it comes to Covid-19, Biden still hasn’t completely broken with that Trumpian approach.

Of course, Biden was elected president of the United States, not the world. It is your responsibility to take care of American citizens first. And he is doing that. But now we’ve reached a point where the US has gotten millions more doses than it needs to vaccinate Americans.

Experts acknowledge that it is a totally natural impulse for American parents to want to protect their own children and alleviate the emotional toll that pandemic restrictions have taken on them. “Some people say, ‘I want my 12-year-old son to come back to life.’ And I think: ‘Of course, who wouldn’t! I think that’s correct too! ‘”Prasad said.

But he wants parents to remember that many of the restrictions we put on children had less to do with protecting them (they are low risk) and more about protecting older adults. With 72 percent of Americans 65 and older now fully vaccinated and case rates declining, he believes we can allow children to resume most of their normal activities, without vaccinating. (However, different experts express different levels of caution about various activities.)

In moral philosophy, there is a classic dilemma known as the streetcar problem: Should I make the active decision to divert a runaway streetcar to kill one person if by doing so I can prevent five people by a different path from being killed? ?

An aerial view of the open graves at the Vila Formosa cemetery in Sao Paulo on March 12. Vila Formosa, the largest cemetery in Latin America, has seen burials increase due to the increase in deaths related to the coronavirus.Alexandre Schneider /.

Prasad pointed out that in this classic formulation, we are asked to put one life versus five lives. But our current global situation is a streetcar problem of a different order of magnitude. Any death in the pandemic is tragic. But on stage, on a track, there are a small number of American children who could get sick or die if they don’t get vaccinated in the next few months; on the other, tens of thousands of Indians and Brazilians and others who are at increased risk of serious diseases, many of whom will surely die without the vaccine.

In the coming months, the US will look to vaccinate children ages 2 to 11. Parents have a chance to weigh in on that, and in Prasad’s mind, the question they should be asking is this: Are we really willing to sit on millions of doses and prioritize Americans with much lower risk instead of stopping the wave of devastation and death that we are seeing in other countries?

“If you are one of the many people who opposed blind American nationalism and America First policy under Trump, this is the time to put your words into practice,” he said. Now is your chance to really challenge Trump’s worldview. Stick to what he represented and what he represents.

–