Davos Man

by Peter S. Goodman

Covax had been launched by Gavi, an immunization alliance forged at Davos in 2000 along with the World Health Organization. It was supposed to function as a global clearinghouse for vaccines, a rational arbiter of the world’s needs, ensuring that the most critical populations in every country—the elderly, the infirm, frontline medical workers—received immunization first. It was engineered to prevent the very scenario that was unfolding: young, healthy people in the United States and Britain gaining full vaccination even as medical caregivers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia continued to treat COVID-19 patients without inoculation. Covax never had a chance. Governments from Washington to London to Tokyo bypassed the queue to buy doses for themselves directly, while American and European pharmaceutical companies cashed in on their creations by selling to the highest bidder. That reduced Covax to something smaller and less promising, though still vital—an essentially charitable operation that aimed to deliver vaccines to countries that could not afford to buy doses on the open market. Promised contributions from donor nations fell woefully short, even as Covax issued a flurry of announcements laying out impossible distribution targets. “Most people in the world live in countries where they rely on Covax for access to vaccines,”