Everyone should be given a Covid-19 vaccine

Not to be the harbinger of doom or Captain State the Obvious, but if the supposed first world doesn’t get off their complacent selfish haunches, we’re all going to start dying again.

This is the thing. The supposed first world has already managed to manufacture more than enough vaccines for the world over. The vaccines will contribute to stopping or slowing the spread of Covid-19.

There are so many vaccines that multiple countries are either hoarding them, or paying their citizens to compel them to get the vaccines, by paying them or scaring them.

There are still more than enough vaccines abounding, even with people who are anti vaxxers, or don’t buy the science, or feel reluctant, or have religious or biological reasons that they do not want to take the vaccine because of.

Even with all the people refusing to take the vaccines, there are still literally millions left over. But the supposed first world, like spoilt children in a playground, don’t want to share.

Developed countries

And this isn’t me, a Kenyan, asking for a handout. Oh, no. This is me, a Kenyan, talking about the fact that Kilifi, just over here, was one of the centres for research and distribution for this very vaccine. Not to say that no one who played a part should be given a vaccine – everyone who is human should be given a vaccine. But the irony that the people who helped significantly to get the vaccine to where it is now are being left in the lurch is not lost on me. Or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, if that press release was anything to go by.

It isn’t fair, and we do live in an unfair world. Unfortunately, for this particular brand of unfairness, a significant amount of human life will be lost (with many, really). And if we look at the numbers where they stand now, the people who stand to die the most…are those in those supposed first world countries.

Sure, you can get vaccinated – against this version – but as the virus mutates, as viruses are won’t to do, before booster shots are reshared and everyone once again has access – I shiver to think what will happen to a once again vulnerable population who thought they were safe.

The numbers just aren’t the same in Africa, and yet we’re the ones who are on the receiving end of a vaccine apartheid – even though we all know that this ridiculous vaccine nationalism can clearly lead to an all-out breakout of the pandemic once again. It only takes one strain. Meanwhile some countries have not a single vaccine!

Capitalism

It pains me to be given this stark reminder of capitalism even in the thick of a pandemic.

This is all about money and power, and not human life. Even when, in March 2020, we were shown the systems that we didn’t want to go back to – systems where healthcare was not accessible, where essential workers were treated like nonsense and they were the ones keeping the economy running, where governments don’t care about their citizens whether there was a crisis or not – we changed nothing, and we are back here once more.

For all the free visas we give out, we’re still not getting anything other than army bases and a road in the middle of a national park.

What is the point of loaning out Kenya for generations if we can’t even get a proper, demonstrable organised system of Corona vaccines, at a time where nothing in the world should be functioning the same?

Unless there’s something more sinister afoot. In which case, ignore everything I’ve just said…