The United States is making and distributing Covid-19 vaccines at a very high rate. Projections have shown that soon enough the production will outstrip demand. Many of the answers to the surplus question have focused on the home front.
A number of states are rapidly opening vaccination eligibility to all adults. President Biden has also doubled the speed of his initial rollout calendar. He is now calling for the vaccination of 200 million Americans by the end of April.
Meanwhile, as responses are heartening and America’s stockpile of vaccines is growing, there is another way to handle them; and it draws from a playbook the country used during WW II – give them away.
In the 1940s, America found itself giving away a huge amount of a new medicine they developed, Penicillin. At the time this drug could safely cure a slew of previously fatal bacterial diseases. On the other hand, they considered it a strategic war commodity.
This drug had been developed majorly for the US army, and at a very high price. At first, the US government availed it for only allied troops. With time, they fulfilled the needs of the allied troops. They were then left with only one option, just as the Biden Administration today, to export or not.
War leaders eventually decided to export and in June 1994, the first 10,000 vials of penicillin for civilians were exported. This in turn became a good bet, because exporting penicillin was a boon for both U.S. diplomatic and commercial interests.
It is possible that a similar diplomatic reaction could happen today. Covid-19 is still widely killing people in different parts of the world. Therefore exporting the surplus of those vaccines to trying nations would be better than the status quo.
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