Thread by @hmryder

THREAD 🧵: Why is the world failing on #vaccines, despite ideals of charity, solidarity, or even self-interest - when no-one is safe until everyone is safe? Are new plans for local manufacturing and IP waivers enough?

In a new #OpEd for @SCMPNews, I set out to explain.
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To work out what is needed on #vaccines we need to go back 40 years ago to a key issue pointed out by the Nobel Prize winning Amartya Sen: That when people are hungry - in famine - that is not necessarily imply there is a food shortage. It's most often because of distribution. 2/

Right now, most countries in the world are facing a "vaccine famine". Just look at data for #Africa's 55 countries - current vaccines delivered can protect 2% of the population, at best.
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developmentreimagined.com/2021/06/07/chi…

Yet, there is not a global shortage of vaccines. WHO has said 11 billion doses is enough to achieve herd immunity, and 12 billion doses can be produced by the end of 2021. So what is the problem?
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inews.co.uk/news/world/cov…

As many of us realise, the problem is distribution. To bring the point home, G7 countries are in a relative feast of vaccines - 33% of their populations on average are already vaccinated.
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ig.ft.com/coronavirus-va…

So why such bad distribution? Two reasons.

1⃣ Production - manufacturing - of #vaccines is heavily skewed towards G7 and other high vaccine consuming countries. It means #vaccine nationalism can be confined to just a few countries.
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aljazeera.com/features/2021/…

This is what the new #localmanufacturing agenda and #IP waiver agenda is focused on undoing. So that every country or region can potentially practice #vaccine nationalism...
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africacdc.org/news-item/mast…

2⃣ This second reason for the famine from poor distribution is more fundamental - relating to #COVAX. While COVAX was always meant to distribute "equitably", it enabled several richer countries to "opt-out" of being subject to that distribution.
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thelancet.com/journals/lance…

Why was this so dangerous? Effectively, it put the richer, manufacturing countries (incl. the #G7, #China and #India) at the front of the queue. It enabled hoarding. Thus, the conditions for famine were created, over a year ago.
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bbc.com/news/health-55…

The analogy I use (and others have used it) are the hoarding of toilet paper seen in early lockdowns.
scmp.com/news/world/uni…

This analogy is important to extend. What we seem to be asking hoarders now is to a) hand out their leftover rolls as charity and b) let others manufacture and sell more rolls. Yet, that's not what stopped hoarding!
Regulation stopped it.
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scmp.com/news/asia/aust…

The big question is why is the multilateral system not designed to or helping to regulate right now. Why isn't #COVAX distributing literally globally, step-by-step, equitably across #Kenya, the #UK, #China, #Jamaica, the #US, #Brazil?
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It's been a problem for a long time: the conflation of providing funding with being exempt from the implications of multilateralism. Donors donate, so they are never targetted or "allocated"to. Yet, this circumvention distorts. It creates famine.
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ethicsandinternationalaffairs.org/2015/idea-univ…

In sum - while we need to keep working on #localmanufacturing and #IPwaivers, we should also reform the multilateral system. We have to separate funding, production and allocation. Otherwise, as Sen showed in 1981, vaccine famines will continue.
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oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/0…

The good news is that ideas for this kind of reform are being discussed worldwide - such as @GlobalPubInvt, spurred by @jonathanglennie (in fact there is a meeting tomorrow which readers of this 🧵are welcome to join!)
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https://twitter.com/jonathanglennie/status/1406957094583033856

But we have a chance to go beyond words to put this into action now, with #COVAX #vaccines. Not because of charity, solidarity or self-interest. But because it's a global problem, meaning the solution has to be truly global. It's urgent. /END
scmp.com/comment/opinio…