Vaccines. The vaccines are coming, and we all are joining a collective sight of relief. The vaccines. The vaccines are really around the corner... and coming fast. But where to, precisely? which corner is that? Let us not think about to whom, let us for a moment of innocence agree that the vaccines will go to whom needs them more. Old people or first line fighters, it doesn’t matter. They will get it first, because we will make this decision fairly. But where? Let’s just wonder with me, where are the vaccines ready to be given?
Our glorious days of globalization open many question on where. Think in Astra-Zeneca... where does such firm exist? Is it that their Oxford campus invented this vaccine, and that’s why the name Oxford-AstraZeneca? Is it a british vaccine then? Is the Moderna vaccine an Italian one, luckily enough developed by the country that is affected the worse? Those are meaningless questions, and we know it. Science and technology today are enterprises spread between many actors in many countries. Nobody invented those vaccines, since they were developed on platforms created by many people in many different places, some private and some public ones. And they cost, they cost lots and lots of money, that many governments put up. So here are the vaccines, coming fast. To where?
Allow me a second moment of innocence. Let’s believe that our governments, that after all are reasonably capable to track their expenses, will figure out to whom they paid what, and the vaccines will be delivered accordingly. If we pay attention and we think that our particular government screwed up, we can always elect their opponents next elections. So this one will be solved, eventually. So ponder yet another question with me. What about the COVID19 strains, the upcoming variants. Where are they coming from? Given that we are in globalized times, read with me the press from as many countries as you want, and wonder with me. After the clumsy yet toxic Trump attempts of mainstreaming the “chinese fever” moniker, why is it that most of the european newspapers that I read are concerned with the “english variant”? And how comes that nothing like that is mentioned in the english newspapers, where we can read all about the “south african” one? Read a bit more and realize with me that the attempt at geolocalize this strains is as stupid, and toxic, as Trump. You will see in every other news item that those strains, independent of their country names, have appeared long ago in many different places. So why to name them after a country then? why another country?
So yes, we do live times of unthinkable globalization. Without globalization, those vaccines would have taken years to be created. Yet globalization, just like democracy, is fragile. It takes one capable demagogue to rally the masses of the disenfranchised and incite them to invade, by first time since the republic was funded, Capitol Hill. Europe, ravaged by centuries of racist and chauvinist destruction, has come together at last, yet our own demagogues tell us that the others are the ones to blame.
Let’s not. Let’s just not.