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VACCINE DIPLOMACY: TO BE CONTINUED?
In the past year 4.25 mln people died of coronavirus. One would expect that the pandemic of such significance should have mobilized nations as if they united to fight an alien invasion. However, there was almost no cooperation, especially between the US and Russia. The two nations collaborated over vaccine development at the height of the Cold War, but why they don't do this now?
In the 1950s polio became a serious problem in both the United States and the Soviet Union. In the United States, the polio pandemic broke out in 1952 and took lives of 3,000 children, more than 20,000 kids became disabled. The number of polio cases also grew in the Soviet Union. In 1954-1955, around 20 thousand Soviet children were disabled, 7-8 thousand people died. The vaccine was so needed that resulted in a collaboration between American epidemiologist of Russian origin, Albert Sabin, and Soviet scientist Mikhail Chumakov. They developed an oral polio vaccine that was tested in 10 million children in the Soviet Union in 1959. This vaccine ended the polio pandemic forever.
Polio cases in the USSR
If cooperation over polio vaccine would be the only case, one might call it an exception. However, the US-Soviet joint effort has also ended up the small pox pandemic. In the 1950s, over 2 mln people died of smallpox annually. The USSR offered the WHO to start a smallpox eradication campaign and received strong support of the US. The two countries combined their financial and technological capacities to distribute over 3 bln doses of vaccine around the globe. As the result, by 1986 the smallpox stocks were present only in the US and Soviet laboratories and became a form of a biological weapon. The humanity has forgotten about the decease that existed since at least 3rd century BCE.
How is it possible that the two rivals cooperated in the 1950s and hesitate to deal with each other today? We have three assumptions that might help to understand the lack of cooperation.
1. There might be a death threshold that encourages to cooperate ignoring political antagonisms. One can assume that certain circumstances, such as extreme death rates, can devalue political obstacles to cooperation. Both polio and smallpox pandemics were more contagious then COVID. If those pandemics truly spread globally, they would take hundreds of millions of lives. In addition, they were primarily dangerous to children, which also influenced political imagination. Although so far COVID takes more lives than polio and smallpox annually, lower mortality rates might keep "the plague alarm" off, allowing politicians to play their own games.
Polio: 5,5% death rate/25% paralysis
Smallpox: 30% death rate
COVID-19: 2,1% death rate
2. Institutional links in the 1950s might have been stronger than in the 2020s. After WWII, the US and USSR had rather developed institutions of communication at ministerial level. The post-war political debacle did not vanish all institutional links. Moreover, in the late 1950s two countries concluded a cultural and scientific exchange agreement, which spurred cooperation on other levels. Although in the 1990s – 2010s the US and Russia had created many institutional links, such as the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission,they all have collapsed after 2014.
3. In the 1950s, there were two major players - American and Soviet states. The was no such thing as "global pharma" yet. In the 2020s, global pharmaceutical companies became the third actor in healthcare cooperation. While there are many cases of successful international cooperation initiated by global pharma, pharmaceutical corporations are the major obstacle to releasing patents on COVID vaccines and making research available to others.
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1. There might be a death threshold that encourages to cooperate ignoring political antagonisms. One can assume that certain circumstances, such as extreme death rates, can devalue political obstacles to cooperation. Both polio and smallpox pandemics were more contagious then COVID. If those pandemics truly spread globally, they would take hundreds of millions of lives. In addition, they were primarily dangerous to children, which also influenced political imagination. Although so far COVID takes more lives than polio and smallpox annually, lower mortality rates might keep "the plague alarm" off, allowing politicians to play their own games.
Polio: 5,5% death rate/25% paralysis
Smallpox: 30% death rate
COVID-19: 2,1% death rate
2. Institutional links in the 1950s might have been stronger than in the 2020s. After WWII, the US and USSR had rather developed institutions of communication at ministerial level. The post-war political debacle did not vanish all institutional links. Moreover, in the late 1950s two countries concluded a cultural and scientific exchange agreement, which spurred cooperation on other levels. Although in the 1990s – 2010s the US and Russia had created many institutional links, such as the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission,they all have collapsed after 2014.
3. In the 1950s, there were two major players - American and Soviet states. The was no such thing as "global pharma" yet. In the 2020s, global pharmaceutical companies became the third actor in healthcare cooperation. While there are many cases of successful international cooperation initiated by global pharma, pharmaceutical corporations are the major obstacle to releasing patents on COVID vaccines and making research available to others.
Feel free to leave your thoughts on our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/TheBridgeResearchNetwork
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