Politicizing the vaccine

The announcement of a vaccine against the coronavirus by Russia should have created a ripple of excitement in Western capitals. But it seems this major achievement has been turned into a controversy, with many in the advanced capitalist world casting doubts on the efficacy of the vaccine besides politicizing an important health challenge that has brought the world on the verge of economic collapse.

Moscow says it has accorded a regulatory approval to the vaccine which was developed locally after it was tested on humans. Russian President Vladimir Putin claims the vaccine had gone through all required checks and that it had been given to one of his daughters. Moscow plans to launch mass vaccination in October.

Putin asserts that the vaccine, developed by Moscow's Gamaleya Institute, offers "sustainable immunity" against the coronavirus and that it is quite effective. Russian scientists have corroborated what their boss has said, saying the early stage trials of the vaccine named Sputnik V – have been completed, and describing the results as a success. Sputnik V is not among the six vaccines that have been on the list of the WHO and are in phase three clinical trials. The global health body has urged Moscow to follow international guidelines for producing the vaccine, and is reportedly in talks with Russian authorities about carrying out a review of Sputnik V.

News of the vaccine has created consternation in Western capitals, which have always been skeptical towards anything coming from Russia. The Russians stunned the world by announcing their own vaccine at a time when more than 100 vaccines around the world are in early development and some of these are being tested on humans in clinical trials. Experts have estimated that, despite the hectic efforts of scientists, a vaccine will not be widely available until the mid of 2021 – but it seems that ambitious Putin has proved them wrong.

Critics in the Western world have taken this claim of Moscow with a pinch of salt, raising a number of questions regarding the efficacy of the vaccine and safety procedures. Moscow worked quickly with its vaccine, starting the first clinical trials on June 17, months after the teams of China, the US and Europe undertook efforts to find the vaccine. This alacrity is now a subject of criticism. Critics say that, unlike other groups, the Gamaleya Institute did not release any safety or immunity data from its studies.

America is leading the criticism with its prominent infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci expressing doubts about the rigour of the testing process in Russia and China. The spokesman for the WHO, Christian Lindmeier, also does not seem to be fully satisfied, telling reporters on August 4, “Sometimes individual researchers claim they have found something, which is of course, as such, great news. But between finding or having a clue of maybe having a vaccine that works, and having gone through all the stages, is a big difference."

It is important that Moscow addresses these reservations instead of dismissing them as an anti-Russian propaganda because it is not only the West or international bodies that are raising pertinent questions but some inside the giant country are also concerned about the haste with which the vaccine was granted approval.

According to BBC, the Moscow-based Association of Clinical Trials Organizations (Acto), which represents the world's top drug companies in Russia, has urged the health ministry to postpone approval until after phase-three trials. Acto Executive Director Svetlana Zavidova told the Russian MedPortal site that a decision on mass vaccination had been carried out after combined first- and second-phase tests on 76 people, and that it was impossible to confirm the efficacy of a drug on this basis. So, it is important the Russian authorities take scientific objections to the vaccine seriously, inviting the WHO and other reliable global health associations to see for themselves the efficacy of the vaccine.

It is true that the Western world harbors grudges against China and Russia. It is also a fact that they tend to repose less trust in any invention coming from non-western world. Some of them seem to believe only they can come up with miraculous scientific inventions. Such an attitude was demonstrated by the West when China came up with 5G technology.

The West fears that China is all set to challenge western hegemony in science and technology. This fear blinded the Western capitalist countries to the fact that scientific knowledge is a common heritage of mankind and that it should be shared and all of humanity should benefit from it. Shrouded in this criticism of Russian vaccine is a deeper anti-Moscow sentiment that reflects anti-Russia bias, a legacy of the cold war. Even before the news of the vaccine, the US and Europe accused Moscow of stealing research related to Covid-19. Moscow retorts to this criticism by saying that the West harbors grudges against Russia and its competitive advantage.

The world has suffered a lot because of the pandemic that has claimed more than 774,000 lives besides affecting over 21.6 million people. The global economy is reeling under the effects of the contagion. According to Michael Roberts, around 2.7 billion workers worldwide have been affected by full or partial lockdown measures to combat the coronavirus pandemic; that’s around 81percent of the world’s 3.3 billion workforce. “The world economy has seen nothing like this. Nearly all economic forecasts for global gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020 are for a contraction much worse than in the Great Recession of 2008-9. During the lockdowns, output in most economies will be found to have fallen by a quarter with the effects felt in sectors amounting to a third of GDP in the major economies.

“The short-term collapse in global output is likely to rival or exceed any recession in the past 150 years. Over 170 countries will experience negative per capita income growth this year. The pandemic will cost the world at least $5.5 trillion in lost output over the next two years, greater than the annual output of Japan. And that would be lost forever.”

This gloomy outlook could be reversed with a vaccine that might put an end to the economic devastation caused by the contagion. Therefore, it is important that the world should start benefiting from the vaccine after satisfying that it meets all the requirement safety measures without bothering about the place of the vaccine. Too much scepticism about the Russian claim is unjustified. After all, the country used to have one of the highest per capita scientists and still retains that position. Russia wasted the immense talent of its people by inventing lethal agents of death and destruction during the cold war. If now Moscow is interested in contributing towards the betterment of world health, the international community should encourage it instead of leaving it isolated.

If Moscow has invested its energies in coming up with a vaccine, it should not be hesitant in satisfying the WHO and other global bodies about the efficacy of the vaccine. We must stop politicizing the greatest health challenge of our age, and move forward by extending cooperation over the vaccine.

The writer is a freelancejournalist.

Email: egalitarianism444@gmail.com