Patrick Carlyon: Now is the time for Australia to act for the greater good
If Australia withholds support for a vaccine patent waiver and backs the wrong team, history will be unkind to a nation which likes to pride itself on a fair go for all.
Patrick Carlyon
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It’s unusual for Australia to fall on the wrong side of history.
We call out bullies, not because it’s the easy thing to do but because it is right. We decry slights against humanity. The greater good, ordinarily, comes ahead of the commercial cost.
This pattern of virtue goes back to World War I. It’s needed now more than at any other time since 1945. The planet has gone to hell. Crises unforeseen will dictate the way of the world, and our way of life, in the years ahead.
Scenes in India are heart-rending. Stories multiply about under-equipped doctors who must choose who lives and who dies. COVID cases worldwide are at their highest levels so far, and you’d like to think the doctors’ urgings would galvanise action to universally vaccinate the planet.
A worldwide push to open vaccination distribution to lower and middle income countries has, understandably, surged in recent weeks. The idea, which is involved, would temporarily waive the intellectual property rights of COVID vaccines.
Countries deprived of dosages could produce and distribute vaccines, which would alleviate discrepancies of distribution. Africa, for example, has 16 per cent of the world’s population, yet has received less than 2 per cent of vaccine doses.
A patent waiver would cost pharmaceutical companies billions of dollars. But the upside is beyond measure: a world community no longer paralysed by the spread of disease.
More than 700 Australian experts have signed to the push, which is backed by the World Health Organisation. “What matters now is saving lives, not protecting systems,” says Prof Deborah Gleeson of the Public Health Association.
The cause is grander than just helping out others. The right choice is also the advantageous choice.
To work, the idea must be enacted fast. Suppressing the virus, whether it’s spreading here, Asia or America, is in every Australian’s interest. New variants of the virus, left unchecked, could mutate so that existing vaccines will prove ineffective against them.
Sound like a no-brainer? Put people ahead of profits?
Meghan and Harry, not always the best of judges, are part of the campaign, along with Jennifer Lopez, who will perform at “Vax Live: The Concert to Reunite the world” which airs on May 8. As Meghan and Harry said: “We can’t leave anyone behind. We will all benefit, we will all be safer, when everyone has equal access to the vaccine.”
About 100 Nobel Prize winners are pushing, along with an assortment of US politicians who are lobbying US President Joe Biden, who is yet to commit to waivers. “On this enormously important issue, this moral issue, the United States has to do the right thing,” says Senator Bernie Sanders.
Fashionable causes can sometimes overlook practical realities. They can smudge, or distort, so good deeds get misdirected. Yet this isn’t one of those times.
Crises demand unprecedented choices. And, really, what choice is there, unless standing idly by as death and misery engulfs countries is an option?
Australia, along with Europe and the US, has so far withheld support for the plan. Australia has not officially rejected it, but has helped bog the strategy in bureaucratic snafus.
Australia has argued that common law implications of a patent waiver need to be explored before we could offer support. To observers from Medecins Sans Frontieres, Australia is deliberately delaying any chance of prompt action. Pharmaceutical companies have warned that a waiver would slow vaccine research for future pandemics. They cite safety issues with production and distribution standards, and they warn that new production sites would slow the production of current sites.
There are also questions about Western technology being exposed to growing enemies, such as Russia and China.
At current rates, it will take another two or three years to vaccinate the world, in part because countries which boast the ability to manufacture vaccines are not allowed to. Until they can, people will die needlessly.
Australia’s obstinacy here is out of character. Our ambiguous posturing ought to be an international scandal.
We got plaudits for standing against China’s aggression and lack of transparency. We embraced the mantle of integrity and fairness.
But when we fail to side with humanity’s best interest, and instead couple ourselves to commercial agendas, we surrender the idealised version of ourselves.
Australia has picked the wrong team, the team of “vaccine apartheid” that no one barracks for. Unless we reverse our response, history will be unkind to a nation that likes to pride itself on fairness, kindness and a fair go for all.
Patrick Carlyon is a Herald Sun columnist
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