Could the new US-China Competition be the break we need from Covid 19?
Vaccine supply chains have quickly become the largest diplomatic frontier
The New Cold War
The words “Cold War” typically carry gravely negative connotations. It does, in all earnest, signify a situation of hair-trigger tensions, easily able to devolve into a full-blown conflict like during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. However, let me be the Devil’s Advocate here. The period of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, or rather the Capitalist and the Communist blocs, heralded an era of unprecedented social, technological, and scientific progress for the world. Living standards (mainly in Capitalist nations) improved dramatically, humans landed on the moon just 66 years after we first took to the skies (a remarkable achievement considering that for 3800 years, the main form of transportation was a horse), and we made ungodly advances in medicine, technology, physics, etc. All of this was made possible by the most fundamental tenet on which the modern capitalist economy is based - competition.
Now, as we move yet again into an era of Cold War between the United States and China, we see great competition, spurring advances in almost every field. The field of vaccines is just one of them. No one expected that a year into the pandemic, we would not have one but more than a dozen vaccines. And vaccines are one of the rarest investments available worldwide. Economists widely expect that for every vaccine administered, a country gets a net economic benefit ten times the cost of a vaccine dose. Keeping these facts in mind, it is perfectly understandable how vaccine supply chains have become the Great Power Competition1
RAND Corp report on Global Economic Cost of Vaccine Nationalism
Vaccine Diplomacy
Global Vaccine supplies have heavily been concentrated in high-income countries till now. Richer countries and countries with strong domestic pharmaceutical industries like the USA, UK, China, India, Israel, and the European Union have been able to access vaccine supplies relatively quickly due to their capacity for domestic manufacturing and signing deals with multiple pharmaceutical companies, backing unproven vaccine candidates in early 2020.
In the first half of 2021, we saw huge disparities in vaccination rates. The USA, UK, and Israel quickly vaccinated their vulnerable populations while other countries were just beginning their vaccination programs. Starting in April, China started vaccinating quickly and has now administered more than a billion doses through overbearing vaccine mandates, while India’s vaccination campaign started slowing at the same time due to strained and depleted vaccine supplies. Both countries had prioritised vaccine diplomacy, exporting millions of doses to gain diplomatic influence. However, unlike China which had largely kept COVID out of its borders, India fell to a devastating second wave, fueled by the UK variant and then the Indian variant, both being more lethal and transmissible than the original strain.
US-EU Vaccine Diplomacy
The United States quickly jumped into the game after having vaccinated almost all of its population willing to take a shot. President Biden made a bold pledge to donate half a billion doses of the Pfizer vaccine this year with additional supplies from its stockpiles being donated every day. The G7 hopped onto the bandwagon within the same day, announcing a pledge to donate a billion doses of vaccines this year.
President Biden has also pledged USD 4 billion to the COVAX vaccine program. The COVAX vaccine program aims to ensure a worldwide supply of coronavirus vaccines and deliver at least 2 billion vaccines by the end of 2021. The program is aimed to eradicate "vaccine deserts"- areas without vaccine coverage, especially as countries in Africa have barely vaccinated their populations. The COVAX plan aims to provide innovative and equitable access to COVID-19 diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines. Till now, more than 170 countries have signed up to COVAX. Member countries of COVAX are supposed to follow a plan for fairly distributing the vaccine to prevent self-interested hoarding at a national level, thus ensuring that even the most impoverished countries have access to vaccines.
The Quad (US-India-Australia-Japan) have also agreed to accelerate vaccine manufacturing to supply vaccines to the Asia Pacific.
Chinese and Russian Vaccine Diplomacy
China quickly realized that it could donate millions of doses of its locally developed vaccines - Sinopharm and Sinovac - to developing countries to garner influence that would be critical to any future tensions with the West. It sold and/or donated millions of doses to countries like Seychelles and Chile which quickly vaccinated their populations. As more and more countries used the Chinese vaccines and vaccinated broad swaths of their populations, China seemed to be winning the vaccine diplomacy race. However, as these countries soon found out after pre-emptively lifting COVID restrictions, the Chinese vaccines weren’t that effective at stopping transmission. The UAE even began recommending a third dose as a booster shot. As of today, five of the countries experiencing some of the biggest outbreaks have vaccinated large swaths of their populations with the Chinese vaccines. Although deaths have fallen, it still strikes a massive blow to Chinese dreams of leading vaccine diplomacy.
Similarly, Russia started donating and selling millions of doses of Sputnik V to countries around the world, including India. However, with great politicization around its vaccines, trust for Sputnik V remains low, as evidenced by the roughly 60% of adults in Russia who refuse to consider getting vaccinated. Sometimes too much selflessness hurts, eh?
Indian Vaccine Diplomacy
With leaders in India declaring that India had reached the endgame in the pandemic and projecting overly optimistic images of its pandemic preparedness, India, home to the largest vaccine manufacturer, became a huge exporter of the Oxford-Astrazenaca vaccines. The entire COVAX program depended on the Serum Insitute exporting millions of doses. However, calamity struck and India found itself under a devastating second wave with depleted vaccine supplies, quickly ending all exports and becoming a net importer of vaccines. This struck a huge blow to Indian vaccine diplomacy ambitions.
Could this new Great Power Competition be a turning point?
Although the prospect of another period of tensions between superpowers seems dangerous, it could be the silver lining the world needs to put this pandemic behind us. What if the race between the US-Europe-India bloc and the China-Russia bloc to gain diplomatic influence results in billions of doses being provided to developing countries, potentially saving millions of lives and livelihoods?
Vaccine Nationalism was always going to be a problem but what if it is also a solution to our problems? Only time will tell but it’s possible to be optimistic.
Hafner, Marco, Erez Yerushalmi, Clement Fays, Eliane Dufresne, and Christian Van Stolk, The global economic cost of COVID-19 vaccine nationalism, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, RB-A769-1, 2020. As of June 17, 2021: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RBA769-1.html
Very cogent insights
Informative article bro