OECD: Vaccinate The World. It’s A Lot Cheaper
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 W
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.