“It’s insane that someone like me, who’s healthy, young and lives in a wealthy country will receive the Covid-19 vaccine before someone who’s at risk in less wealthy nations.”
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00:00A few countries have taken the majority of the vaccines.
00:03The world is on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure.
00:08Vaccine nationalism puts lives at risk.
00:30It's completely insane that in 2021, someone like myself, who's healthy, who's young,
00:36who lives in a wealthy country, will have access to the COVID-19 vaccine,
00:41will be safe before someone who's on the front line as a healthcare worker,
00:46before someone who's older, sick and at risk in less wealthy nations.
00:51There's no moral justification for this to happen. It's plainly wrong.
01:00It's the case of Canada that has more vaccines for its population than any other country,
01:05but also of other countries like the US or the UK.
01:21This means that poor countries will have access much, much later.
01:25So originally, it's true that countries who now don't have access to a vaccine
01:30were less touched by the pandemic.
01:33But with the second wave, it's changing.
01:34And we see it with the South African variant.
01:36South Africa in January 2021 is now the country in Africa with the highest number of cases
01:43and one of the highest in the world.
01:45So we see that countries who don't have access to vaccines are also extremely touched.
01:50It means that we won't reach global herd immunity,
01:53and that as a result, there's more risks of having genetic mutation of the virus,
01:57which in turn means that we are all at risk all over again.
02:09If we do the very stupid thing of not sticking together
02:12and leaving lower and lower middle income countries behind,
02:15those economies will suffer.
02:18They're at risk of losing decades of economic progress.
02:25It was the case in 2009 with H1N1,
02:28where a few wealthy nations basically monopolized the entire stock of vaccines.
02:34And it took years and many of the vaccines never actually reached
02:37most of the countries that needed it.
02:39And it's happening again.
02:41And the issue is, we don't have right now an intergovernmental organization
02:45like the WHO that has enough power, enough competencies,
02:49to be able to truly oversee the distribution process
02:53and make sure that not a few countries hold all doses.
02:56And so they tried to set up mechanisms such as COVAX
03:00to ensure that countries across the world would get access.
03:03But the truth is, we don't have that.
03:05Big pharma companies need to share the licensing and technology,
03:35with other companies who can manufacture the vaccine
03:38and get it out to more people faster.
03:40It's basically human lives over profit, and it needs to happen fast.
03:53With our campaign Vaccines Without Borders,
03:55we are basically pressuring the CEO of Pfizer by having you input your data
03:59and it will send him an automatic email,
04:02asking him to share the Pfizer vaccine and tech with companies across the world
04:07in low and middle income countries, so that they can produce the vaccines.