| When the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention paused use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine this week "out of an abundance of caution," many vaccination sites simply switched out J&J doses for those of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. For America, it was mostly just a speed bump in an accelerating vaccine rollout. The news hit harder in Africa, where a similar AstraZeneca scare over rare instances of blood clots has already stoked widespread vaccine hesitancy. "People, especially those who were vaccinated, felt like they had been tricked in a way: they were asking, 'How do we get rid of the vaccine in our body?'" Precious Makiyi, a doctor and behavioral scientist in Malawi, told The New York Times. "We fought so hard with vaccine messaging, but what has happened this past week has brought us back to square zero."  Boxes of the Moderna Inc. Covid-19 vaccine are moved in a freezer room at the Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. factory in Kfar-saba, Israel, on Jan. 13. Photographer: Kobi Wolf/Bloomberg This week in the New Economy The J&J episode speaks once more to the dramatically diverging fortunes of the world's poorest and richest countries. The latter are well on their way to "herd immunity," while emerging economies aren't expected to vaccinate much more than one-quarter of their populations by the end of this year. Several dozen of the poorest counties haven't even started. It doesn't help that the U.S, U.K, Canada and a handful of other rich countries have bought up almost half of all available vaccine supplies. But in a global world with porous borders, herd immunity only really matters when it's global. Inequality in access to vaccines has brought the world to "the brink of a catastrophic moral failure," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, warned in January. Former French President François Hollande this week called the inequity "an unbearable political and moral situation" as well as "economic nonsense." He was among a group of 175 former world leaders and Nobel laureates urging the U.S. to suspend intellectual property rights for Covid-19 vaccines to help boost global inoculation rates. Yes, governments everywhere have a duty to take care of their own populations. But as Bill Gates pointed out: "The self-interested thing and the altruistic thing–making sure poor nations have access to vaccines–are one and the same." A recent study commissioned by the International Chamber of Commerce concluded an unequal allocation of injections could deprive the world economy of as much as $9.2 trillion. Rich countries get hurt because the pandemic deprives them of demand for their goods and a supply of manufacturing parts. But their selfishness engenders a bigger risk: The longer the virus circulates, the more likely variants will evolve to overwhelm existing vaccines, rebooting the pandemic and triggering a new economic crisis. For now, there's some comfort to be had from the fact that the pandemic has spared large swaths of the emerging world its full destructive force. Early on, the head of the United Nations food agency, David Beasley, warned of "a hunger pandemic" leading to "multiple famines of biblical proportions." But although fresh waves of the virus are still ripping through certain countries—Brazil is a calamity with thousands dying daily—growth is returning to emerging economies as a whole.  A victim of the coronavirus is buried at the Nossa Senhora Aparecida cemetery in Manaus, Brazil, on Jan. 13. Photographer: Michael Dantas/AFP Still, it's an anemic recovery; Africa couldn't afford to "go big" with stimulus. And the bounce-back doesn't nearly make up for lost growth. Meanwhile, American Airlines is already flying at 80% capacity as the U.S. gets ready for a blowout summer (in the face of a deadly fourth wave). "People are literally talking about the roaring 20s and, you know, letting the doors fly off the U.S. economy," Geoffrey Okamoto, the International Monetary Fund's first deputy managing director told The Wall Street Journal. "But the harsh reality is for the poorest countries, they're not looking at vaccines being delivered to them until well into next year." A wildly imbalanced global recovery will prolong human suffering—and deepen long-term scarring in the world's most vulnerable economies. As money rushes to the U.S. in anticipation of a post-pandemic consumer boom, emerging countries are bracing for interest rate hikes. The world has entered a new era of pandemics, a bleak prospect surpassed only by the accelerating global climate crisis. If Covid-19 was a test for how the world will come together to deal with even greater threats, it's hopelessly failing. Among the most dispiriting sights today is that of J&J and AstraZeneca vaccines piling up on Africa pharmacy shelves, shunned by impoverished populations wary of another betrayal by the West. Meanwhile, Americans have their pick of Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna, cutting edge medicines based on new technology, largely out of reach for the world's poor.
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