“Vaccine Apartheid”: Africans Tell UN They Need Vaccines (Sydney Dryier)
Sadly, more than 2 years later the Covid-19 pandemic still rages through many parts of the world and while many developed nations (mostly the US let’s be honest here) have trouble making people get their vaccines there are many African nations with numbers as low as only 3% of adult citizens being vaccinated against Covid-19. There have been an estimated 5.8 billion vaccine doses made since 2021 but only 10 countries have enough to safely vaccinate their whole adult population, yet due to the western phenomenon of “anti vaxxers” and the popularity of pseudoscience has meant that the United States especially is sitting on millions of unused vaccines. Local communities have tried to use raffles and other incentives to try and increase vaccination rates but at the end of the day you can’t argue with willing ignorance and stupidity so the vaccination rate hasn’t increased much in the United States since May 2021, there have been some spikes but for the most part, anyone who is eligible and wants the vaccine in the US probably already has it, with that in mind African countries are pleading to the UN to make the United States and other developed countries to send over some unused stock they’re just sitting on.
Nothing has been done or said yet as to if anything will be done, the UN gave an answer of “we’re working on it”. The fact that so few vaccines have gone to underdeveloped nations is just disgusting. We act like white/western lives matter so much more than the lives of those overseas to the point that we sit on unused life saving vaccines for the sake of “people might want them later” which is just dumb. I understand wanting to keep some around and hoping some anti vaxxers will later come around, but let’s be honest. These people have made their choice and they need to be held responsible. What I think should happen is at least 80% of unused vaccines in the United States should be sent around the world to underdeveloped nations and to ease the load for healthcare workers in the United States I would simply not waste private and state resources taking care of willingly unvaccinated Covid patients. I understand Americans wanting to do all they can to protect fellow Americans, even if it means hoarding resources as death rates rise every day. But we can’t sacrifice the rest of the world, we can’t let the ignorant and the stupid be the thing that prevents others who need help from getting it. Also, America kills fellow Americans everyday, through wealth disparity, racism, infrastructure and climate change. All things that could be fixed if we really wanted to improve the lives of people, so when officials try to say we need these vaccines to save lives it’s just a lie. America never cared about people or lives, just money and hoarding of resources, despite us having all the resources we need.
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