April 3, 2021 ☼ vaccine ☼ pandemic ☼ inequity
Source: Science News - Link
“The world is on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure, and the price of this failure will be paid with lives and livelihoods in the world’s poorest countries,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, recently said.
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Extreme vaccine inequity could cost the global economy more than $9 trillion dollars in 2021, about half of which would come from rich nations, Demiralp and her colleagues reported January 25 in a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. In that scenario, wealthy nations largely vaccinate their populations by midyear, but leave poorer nations out completely.
Sharing a scarce resource goes against the “instincts” of every nation, even though it will save money and lives.