Vaccine nationalism - we are not amused

Canadians and Americans are proudly saying how marvellous they are because both their governments are committing to sending vaccines to developing nations. “It’s the right thing to do”, said President Biden this past week.

It would have been, if you’d done it six months ago, Joe. Now? Not so much.

This is modern day colonialism and whiteness writ large.

America, Canada, UK and the EU all circumvented international agreements by ordering way more vaccine doses than they needed in order to ensure they could get to the front of the vaccine queue ahead of poor countries. The international rules were supposed to ensure that all countries received vaccine doses in proportion to their populations. Instead they were allocated according to their orders. Canada ordered TEN TIMES as many vaccines as they have people just to ensure they got what they needed first.

And now they want all the poor brown-people countries to be grateful when they give them their leftovers?!? They want pictures of sick Africans rushing their vaccine truck with brown arms outstretched in grateful thanks for the white saviours from the West coming to rescue them again?!? It’s called poverty porn.

If the white Western nations hadn’t been so selfish in the first place, the developing world wouldn’t be in desperate need of help now. There’s a history lesson of 5 centuries replayed for you in 5 months! We should be grateful, here in Africa?!? Like we should be grateful for colonialisation?!?

Here’s how those who think the Canadian and US government vaccine donations are wonderful actually sound:

We are rich and can afford to buy all the stuff we and our kids need. That’s the privilege of being rich.

When we’re done, we are so rich, we are going to buy more stuff and give it to poor people.

Those poor people were trying to buy this stuff for themselves and their kids, but we had emptied out the stores.

Even if they had some money (which many of them did) the shelves were bare.

But now we will send them our leftovers.

They’d better be grateful.

We are amazing. We are SO amazing.

Meanwhile, actual people in Africa have died waiting for you and your kids to sort yourselves out first. And the South African, Indian and other developing world governments have been arguing at the UN and international courts for the past six months to attempt to get access to vaccines that you’ve had an excess of all this time.

The Americans and Canadians are all congratulating themselves on how generous they are. That’s because they think it’s just about money. And that they’re the good guys because they’re rich.

It’s disgusting.

Of course it’s the right thing to do to ensure the whole world is vaccinated. Of course it’s the right thing to do to help countries that can’t afford to buy vaccines to access them anyway.

But that should have started in December last year. Not only now, when it’s really just leftovers and crumbs after you’ve all finished your banquet. Now, it might very literally be too little too late. Too many brown skinned people have died already, waiting for this vaccine, while America, Canada, UK and EU now open up for their summer holidays because you’re all ok.

If anyone from these rich countries reads this and feels the urge to comment below, saying something like “Why so angry, you should be grateful we are coming to rescue you”, so help me… I’ll come and rip your throat out myself.

If it wasn’t the most monstrous thought I could imagine, I’d almost wish that an Epsilon and Zeta variant of Covid-19 mutated in a way that nullified existing vaccinations so we can all start again at square one and see if we could do it right this time!

It is the right thing to do to ensure that everyone in the world who wants a vaccine is able to access one as soon as possible. But don’t expect those of us who live in developing nations to thank you for putting yourselves first, and leaving us to die while you did so - we see you. We really do see you.