Dire Diplomacy in Global “Race for Vaccine”: Wired

The US Naval Medical Research Center once had more than 12 labs around the world, developing foreign partnerships to identify emerging disease. A research team identified the avian flu in Indonesia in 2005, though the partnerships had been deteriorating in 1998 over concerns about vaccine sales, suspended aid and spying worries. The 9/11 attacks and the 2008 financial crisis then reduced budgets for health research. “As we confront a new pandemic that has been exacerbated by the grandstanding of our politicians, it is the open-data scientists and mission-driven doctors who may have the largest role in defusing the inevitable conflicts that lay ahead,” writes Brendan Borrell for Wired. “They know that the best way to erode global inequities is by setting aside concerns about intellectual property, sharing their data as widely as possible, and leveraging research collaborations....” The first nation to produce an effective vaccine will attract global influence. That could be China, which also expands its global health outreach in Africa, Asia and South America. The US, which elied on other nations for genetic sequencing of the virus and biological data for developing tests did not sign on to a World Health Organization initiative to ensure equitable distribution of vaccines and medicines. Borrell concludes, “Stopping this pandemic and preventing the next one depends on American scientists’ ability to forge durable partnerships with foreign scientists.” – YaleGlobal