Between the Virus and Vaccine : Immediate is the Future

Vaccine is back with a vengeance in 2021, this time as a vital critical resource. Admittedly, the normal and familiar ways of the world and human civilisation is not secure anymore. Returning back to old and familiar ways of being, with and after this pandemic now is a promise. This promise fills the immediate future. Vaccine would realise this promise, we are told. Future is reverting back to yesterday to the days before pandemic ran amok.

Vaccines were and are part of health programs of poor and developing countries to safeguard safety of children. Epidemics were confined to history, vaccines and research about them was relegated to remote labs, a topic for obscure academic discussions or subject matter for those who would debate anything or confined to those who are opinionated.

Vaccine wasn't cutting edge science, or vital or mainstream technology, business or a need across developed and other worlds. Things can and do change drastically and what is a remote concern can take central stage. This single aspect is the 'change' that we are hearing so much about? Undeniably, disruptions galore. Disruptions accompany change, they do not guarantee it. Uncountable people lost whatever control they had over their lives, across the globe, but that isn't the change, we wished for or need.

The dominant talk already is how to go back, revert to the familiar and normal ways, restore small and little worlds to common folks, while the big world remains intact, unchanged. Retain the major and adjust some minor connections that connects and binds the small and little worlds, people have for themselves, that they can lend to each other, is this the deal, again? These little worlds and their interrelations constitutes that elusive 'big' world.

Today when one thinks about writing and thinking one has to anticipate and imagine what might be flooding ones and readers consciousness, which failure, this need or that urgency. Meanwhile, administered doses and stocks and advancements in vaccine technology have aligned along all too familiar divide between the developed and other worlds.

More than 40% of human population still lives in China and India and if one says south asia and not India, half the human population is found in these parts. If this newfound zeal about vaccine is to sell a product, whatever version, most of the the bulk buyers and end users reside in these parts of world. If the humanity is in danger, half of the danger literally lies here. USA and Europe has choices about vaccines, data about efficacy, more accurate information about number of infections how the virus spreads. Developed and advance humans have options and choices, others have shortages and we are in 2021! China is part of the talk about virus not about vaccine. The Chinese vaccine and its pace of administrating doses is under-reported

Goods, products and services are available, when they are produced and distributed, unless they are natural. Production and distribution in their turn rely on market and state and other institutions. Vaccines broke the established consensus on global product license regime; it hasn’t yet, translated into availability across the world. IPR waiver shows that a product whose time has come can shake barriers or a critical resource, even urgency can change partly the ways of the world?

The available manufactured vaccines were limited, so stocking up made sense, but they apparently had a short shelf life; so stocking up would not work, unless you are ready to waste a resource. Issues related to production are still unsolved, if one were to factor the global scale. Initially vaccine and its availability resembled the logic of pandemic; one has to deal with dead ends, not breakthroughs. mRNA is a scientific and technological breakthrough, but what about vaccine availability? Distribution has plagued us before and continues to do so, vaccine is no exception.

When shortage, failures, fatigue, tiredness, frustration, brain fog, infection, mass suffering, deaths, distance and remoteness rules and reigns, why this writer should admit that scientific aspect of vaccines and virus are not his expertise?

In this Virus to vaccine( V-to-V) story human beings are not the prime movers, central agents, merely a location, a temporary address, an address that threatens its own existence. Neither the immediate origin not its immediate end is sourced from human beings. Virus mutated from the bats and vaccines were taken or modeled on chimpanzees. The immediate and immediacy, though has taken hold of human beings. Immediate and immediacy usually indicates the basic and essential. With respect to coronavirus induced crisis the immediate and immediacy is the key to the future, it could as well be fatal and final. As the world painfully transits from being infected by the coronavirus to where it is vaccine compliant, one must guard against a watered-down and thin version of what is essential for humans as this crisis prolongs.

Virus and vaccine has thrown up large issues. Large as they mimic, mirror and reflect how humans are distributed and the adopted mechanism of distribution among humans.

Apart from single doses, there are double doses and possibly booster shots every year in the future, the future of vaccine as a good and resource, appears brighter than that of its recipients and beneficiaries. Apart from the lab related testing and compilation of variants of virus against the available vaccines, the real test would be when coronavirus and its variants move among and within populations. Efficacy registers how vaccines fared against virus in selected bodies, not how and why the virus mutates and what form it would take. Yearly booster shots would depend on this outcome? Dangers of pandemic is clear and real to many, not the delay and unavailability of the vaccine.

If vaccine was a consumer good, that could be consumed again and again, would  we witness unavailability, shortage and delays? What does it says about market and capitalism, the dominant mode for production and distribution of goods and services? A public good, howsoever important cannot be a priority? Booster shots an attempt to indicate reallocation of resources to create a market for vaccines?

Virus is re-enacting injustices old and new. Virus realises, what was and is held out as a moral and ethical principle: a danger to anyone, anywhere is a danger to everyone. Which principle vaccine should bear and enshrine?

There are calls already about resigning and adjusting to a permanent pandemic, how about some other changes? Changes that are unlike, yearly incremental booster shots, and are more like breakthroughs!