The global COVID-19 vaccine apartheid
ID: a breathtaking photo of a valley shrouded in mist, with a flowing river that reflects the mountains and trees above.
We are once again in the midst of a global COVID-19 vaccine apartheid and almost no one is talking about it.
This has been one of the most difficult things I've ever had to write, because it's so heartbreaking and enraging for me to talk about this. The greatly reduced access to survival and safety for people of the Global South and people in the Global North having disproportionate access to survival have become so normalised.
The newer COVID-19 vaccines released in Fall 2023 are not boosters. They are primary vaccines, as the older COVID vaccines do not protect against the new variants of the virus. COVID vaccines have been shown to significantly lower the risk of hospitalisation and of developing Long COVID, which has been associated with increased risk of stroke, heart disease, organ damage, cancer, autoimmune diseases and more. Just one infection is all it takes to develop Long COVID, but your risk is cumulative with each reinfection, and many infections are asymptomatic. COVID is already airborne and is now rapidly evolving to become even more contagious.
There is a resource that can help to significantly mitigate the risk of developing Long COVID, and not only is it being withheld from the vast majority of the world, out of greed and power hoarding, but almost no one with access to the vaccines is actually talking about this.
The people who are being deprived of these vaccines are also usually in places with poorer healthcare infrastructure and much lower disability benefits. The vaccines are being withheld from nations that are also under-resourced from COVID protection in other ways. For eg. the drug, Paxlovid, which has been shown to reduce severity of COVID and offer significant protection against Long COVID, remains much more freely accessible in places like the US and Europe, while places in the Global South remain deprived of access.
It’s impossible for me to take anyone seriously who claims to be in solidarity with any part of the Global South who refuses to wear a mask (if they can). This includes everyone attending Palestine solidarity protests without a mask, when Palestinians are not only dying from and becoming even further disabled by COVID, but many Palestinians have been doing whatever they can to find and wear masks themselves in the midst of a genocide.
COVID-19, much like every other global crisis we're facing, will not respect borders. As Palestinian psychiatrist, Dr. Jess Ghannam, says of the medical apartheid in Palestine, you can't make a virus respect a border or a checkpoint.
Vaccine apartheids will inevitably harm everyone.
I am tired of seeing COVID conscious community members constantly uplifting the importance of being vaccinated without ever considering the fact that the majority of the world does not have access to these vaccines, or joining in on the advocacy to make medical resources globally available. I am tired of seeing COVID conscious people advocating for nation-wide access to the vaccines across their own nations, without ever advocating for or even considering the people outside of their borders as well.
I really don't have the words to express how heartbroken and enraged I am about this. It is not normal that whole populations are left at disproportionate risk of death and disability, and we should not let this be normalised. There is no future for a world with borders.
Borders not only demarcate the limits of your compassion, they also determine who gets access to survival. There will be no Disability Justice without border abolition.
Links to further reading:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/feb/14/wto-fails-to-reach-agreement-on-providing-global-access-to-covid-treatments