At the end of last week’s post on booster shots, I wrote that these additional doses take up airtime in expert discussions and in the media, distracting from discussions of what it will take to vaccinate the world.
But these shots do more harm than just taking over the media cycle. When the U.S. and other wealthy nations decide to give many residents third doses, they jump the vaccine supply line again—leaving low-income nations to wait even longer for first doses.
I explained how this process works in a new article for Popular Science. Essentially, the big vaccine manufacturers (Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, etc.) have created artificial scarcity of vaccine doses, by insisting on controlling every single dose of their products—rather than sharing the vaccine technology with other manufacturers around the world.
Then, out of this limited supply of doses, the big companies sell to wealthy nations first. The wealthy nations are “easier markets to service,” WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris told me, since they can pay more money and have logistical systems in place already to deliver the vaccine doses.
If a wealthy nation wants boosters, it’s in the vaccine companies’ best interests to sell them boosters—before sending primary series doses to other parts of the world. Or, as South Africa-based vaccine advocate Fatima Hassan put it: “Supplies that are currently available are diverted” for boosters. “Just to serve preferred customers in the richer North.”
The FDA and CDC authorized booster shots for Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and mix-and-match regimens this week. Advisory committee discussions did not mention that, worldwide, three in five healthcare workers are not fully vaccinated.
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