The OECD had a simple suggestion for advanced economies on Wednesday: Vaccinate the world. It’s a helluva lot cheaper than burning through trillions rescuing economies during and after every flare-up.
Chief Economist Laurence Boone described the Paris-based organization as “concerned that Omicron is further adding to high levels of uncertainty and risks and that could be a threat to recovery.”
The OECD didn’t incorporate the potential impact from the variant in its new forecasts, released on Wednesday, but during a presentation, Boone reiterated that mass vaccination “remains the most important priority for ending the pandemic and also for tackling the imbalances that are plaguing the recovery.”
Her remarks echoed similar comments from the IMF’s Gita Gopinath who, in October, lamented a fractured, stratified world. “Divergences are a consequence of the ‘great vaccine divide’ and large disparities in policy support,” she said, adding that although nearly two-thirds of the population in advanced economies is fully vaccinated, 96% of the population in low-income countries hasn’t been inoculated.
That disparity will continue to haunt the developed world. The OECD underscored as much on Wednesday.
“Countries with lower vaccination rates remain exposed to risks of further major outbreaks,” the new economic outlook said, cautioning that “in much of the rest of the world vaccination rates remain low.”
Boone called the OECD’s forecasts “cautiously optimistic,” but flagged “the unusual appearance of rising inflation pressures at an early stage of the recovery.”
In the group’s central scenario, monetary and fiscal policies remain “generally supportive” next year, helping global growth “move along at a brisk pace” of 4.5%.
Although Boone and the OECD addressed inflation, labor shortages and supply chain disruptions, they emphasized the absolute necessity of ameliorating vaccine disparities.
While rising prices and distortions “create uncertainty and more downside than upside risks,” Boone said the “primary concern is the global polarity in caseloads, hospital capacity and vaccination rates around the world.”
Analysts and some economists have a tendency to deride lockdowns and containment measures while simultaneously criticizing policy largesse, both fiscal and monetary. One solution, of course, is for rich nations to fund vaccinations for everyone else. For some, that’s a bitter pill to swallow (no medicinal pun intended) because it requires tacitly admitting that vaccination is the best tool we have.
But the inescapable reality is that vaccines work, and they’re relatively cheap. Boone on Wednesday put the cost of vaccinating the world at around $50 billion. For context, G-20 nations have spent ~$10 trillion (with a “t”) on economic mitigation efforts throughout the pandemic.
“The harshest scenario is that pockets of low vaccination end up as breeding grounds for deadlier strains of the virus, which go on to damage lives and livelihoods,” she went on to warn. “Even in more benign scenarios, ongoing outbreaks may continue to restrict mobility in some regions and across borders, with potential long-lasting consequences for labor markets and production capacity, as well as prices.”
If we’re talking vaccinating the world then we’re talking about forced vaccination. I’ve read/seen multiple reports that vaccine hesitancy/rejection is just as much of a problem in Africa as is access to supply. There are pockets of America that are the same as access is not a problem at all yet over 30% still are not vaccinated.
Forced vaccination is a challenging moral quandary. Then again vaccine rejection is also morally dubious.
No, it doesn’t mean forced vaccination, it means offering covid vaccines to anyone who will take them. But there is vaccine hesitancy in Africa, as there is in many/most parts of the world.
Good luck convincing the Republican base that is not only mostly anti-vaxxers but also against spending “their tax dollars” on anyone but themselves to go ahead and fund vaccinating 3rd world countries. T Carlson and the gang will obviously make this part of their anti-Biden nightly talking points if we try to go that direction.
First off- I have never had covid and I am triple vaccinated plus I have a flu vaccine.
However, I have no problem with people who have had covid, and now have natural immunity (possibly better immunity than I have), not getting vaccinated. An antibody test should be acceptable.
The most up to date science suggests that this view is not correct and that vaccines provide superior resistance to prior infections although prior infections do offer some protection….
The European Union allows an individual to travel within the Schengen area with a covid certificate (DCC).
Such covid certification can be based on a negative test, proof of vaccination or proof of recovery from Covid 19.
Whilst quite a few analysts are busy downplaying the economic impact of Omicron, old friend Delta appears to be making a post-Thanksgiving comeback here in the USA.
Watch the statistics in your state. They are not happy reading where I am.
Meanwhile, down in Washington DC:
“Conservative Republicans are privately plotting to force a partial government shutdown Friday in an effort to defund the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate on the private sector, Politico reported Wednesday, citing multiple GOP sources.”
It makes sense to vaccinate as many people as possible against COVID-19. But that won’t end the pandemic risk on its own. The current best theory as to the origin of the omicron strain is that it is the result of a chronic infection in an immunocompromised human. Since it seems to have come from southern Africa (an assumption at this point), the guess is that this immunocompromised person is someone suffering from untreated HIV. There are millions of HIV positive people in Africa who are either untreated or poorly treated. Simply vaccinating them against COVID-19 will not alone end this type of risk, even if you could vaccinate all of them. (Check out the recent NPR interview with Trevor Bedford from Fred Hutch cancer institute.) Another issue is that COVID-19 can infect species other than humans, so that it is possible for the virus to cross over to another species, evolve, and then jump back. Or for another coronavirus to jump across, just as COVID-19 did. Long-term, we really need to develop a system of coronavirus surveillance with accompanying ongoing mRNA vaccine development, along with an intensive drug development effort to come up with agents along the lines of the new Pfizer protease inhibitor, but with the intent to cover a broad spectrum of coronavirus proteases and other viral target proteins. Imagine twenty years from now another coronavirus crosses from bats to humans–but we have an efficacious antiviral cocktail sitting on the shelf, and a vaccine just a few months away from deployment. And yes, it will be a hell of a lot cheaper to do this, than to have the world’s economy taken down again by the next coronavirus pandemic.