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Covid 19: Lessons and Missed Opportunities

15 décembre 2021, 15:44

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Covid 19: Lessons and Missed Opportunities

The COVID 19 pandemic has been quite devastating to the World. It has ravaged economies, societies, and caused untold hardships to families around the World. The human casualty has been phenomenal, far more than what the combined World wars of the 20th century imposed.

Yet, it also provides new opportunities to the World. It reminds us once again of our common humanity, common agenda, common cause, and common destiny. The reality is that we are not only weathering the same storm together; we are indeed in the same ship, with the turbulence of the storm affecting us slightly differently. The ship we are all in has different classes and compartments; some are in the privileged priority class; while others are at the back of the ship. But whether the ship survives or not, is one of a common cause. The destiny of all the passengers is inextricably linked together.

The World is missing or has missed a wonder opportunity to re-direct the ship, close the gaps that make us different, bridge our differences and re-claim our common humanity.  COVID 19 confirms the reality of globalization. What presumably started in Wuhan- a city in Central China soon engulfed the whole World. Like a wildfire, hurricane COVID spread with lightning speed touching different parts of the World even the remotest of villages.  The wall of borders could not contain it; the closure of national spaces was in vain, and the sophisticated armaments built by the most powerful in the World became useless in the invisible rampaging wildfire of COVID 19. The World was caught napping and helpless. The most powerful were as vulnerable and feeble just like the weakest of us all. The unmistakable lesson of COVID is that our fate and future are bounded together; we are a common humanity and those who are presumably the strongest should walk the same walk with the weakest of the World.

But the lessons of COVID 19 seem to have been lost on us, even as the pandemic stubbornly refuses to go, mutating and changing its form and shape and infection rates increasing in some regions of the World. First, our responses to COVID 19 were quite antithetical to the logic of the disease. We chose to close our national borders, labelled some countries as “high risks” and allowed political expediency rather than science to drive our policy interventions. We did not see that COVID 19 never needed visas to spread; it neither respected national borders nor the positions, power, social status and wealth of individuals, groups and nations. The logic and dynamics of the disease require a global collective response; of pulling resources, scientific, medical and epidemiological knowledge, expertise, and capacity together to defeat the disease. Our response was more of fragmentation, bifurcation, name calling, and creating space for the disease to defeat our atomized efforts.

When progress came in tackling the pandemic through the discovery of vaccines, our divisions and differences further deepened rather than ameliorate.  The production, distribution and access to vaccines assumed the same old fault lines of the weak and the strong, the rich and the poor, the powerful and the helpless.  The call for waivers to patent rights on vaccines to allow for mass production in meeting global needs, especially of the developing countries fell on deaf ears. Some powerful countries initially acquiesced to it, but sooner, their support for the initiative waned and fizzled out.

The pharmaceutical industry is a very powerful cartel, with tremendous lobby power and influence that could be deployed to shape policy and scuttle the idea of waiver for patent rights. The argument would likely be that invention requires reward and those companies that ploughed resources into science, research and development to discover the vaccines need to make handsome financial rewards in return. Vaccine production is now big business, which those who made the invention will not let go. Again, profit has trumped human needs, human welfare and our collective survival.

There is a paradox in the World of vaccines presently. The countries and regions that have ready excess to vaccines and seem to have stockpiled them in abundance, have their citizens resisting its use.  There is vaccine phobia in those countries. Their citizens are demonstrating and fighting their governments on not wanting to take the vaccines. Whereas in other parts of the World, the citizens are willing, able and longing to have the vaccines, yet their countries have limited supply of it. There is a wide margin between demand and supply. The vaccine market is a distorted one in which demand is not driving supply; extra-market forces are determining which countries have vaccines and which do not.

Perhaps, if those who needed the vaccines got them and the virus is effectively controlled in those countries, this could have served as practical demonstration and reinforce the narrative that vaccines work and provided good example and incentive to those resisting to take the vaccines in other parts of the World. Equitable vaccine access could have been a win-win situation for all countries and peoples of the World.

Stimulating economic recovery from COVID 19 has also been uneven and skewed. While some countries have pumped trillions of dollars into their local economies given the convertible nature of their currencies and size of their economies, others are struggling to stay afloat. The stimulus packages in the latter countries remain small as they struggle to cope with the fallout of the pandemic.  The Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) of the IMF to cope with situations of global economic crisis and disaster like COVID 19 has also seen those who least need it, getting the lion share. Of the $650 billion to be released, high income countries were to receive about $400 billion, middle income countries $230 billion and low-income countries- $20 billion.  Africa was to be allocated about $33 billion, with uneven distribution amongst countries. 

A major lesson that the pandemic has taught us is that no one is safe until all of us are safe. This requires global solidarity, collective action and togetherness not only in fighting the pandemic or other diseases that may afflict the World, but in building back stronger, better and more resilient.

Drawing a metaphor from what someone once described as the dilemma between the rich and the poor in his country. He noted that the poor cannot sleep because they are hungry, while the rich cannot sleep because the poor are awake. Poverty breeds discomfort for both the poor and rich in different ways. The same thing is applicable to the global arena. The problem of migration, for example, is not disconnected from the issues of poverty and deprivation in the developing World, and the desperate search for a better life elsewhere. The antidote will not be in closing borders or tightening border patrols, the solution is in supporting the source or countries of emigration to stabilize and grow their economies so that their citizens can stay, live and work in their countries. No citizen of the World wants to be an unwelcomed migrant; circumstances mostly economic, force people to. 

Labelling, name calling, and putting some countries on the “red”, “yellow” and “green” list will not solve the problem of COVID-19. The disease needs no passport or visa to fly. Recent global experience clearly confirms that what the World needs is collective action, solidarity, support and concerted efforts in banishing the scourge that threatens human existence in the 21st Century. Our mantra on COVID 19 should be “those who are more fortunate than others should build a longer table for all to dine, and not a taller fence”.

  • Prof. Adejumobi wrote from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in his personal capacity.