EVEN before Covid-19, the world was a very unequal place.
What the pandemic has done, though, is to put the mirror to this inequality. Expectedly, the image is very ugly. Nowhere is this more visible than the access to Covid-19 vaccines.
Picture this. On Wednesday, the chief executive officer of Sanofi, the French pharmaceutical giant, told Bloomberg News that the Americans will get the Covid-19 vaccines before the rest of the world. This is like saying some lives matter more than others. His rationale?
The United States had invested in the development of the vaccines. In other words, let the free market decide. This rationale is flawed for at least three reasons.
Firstly, the market isn't free. Even under normal circumstances, the "free" market lets the one per cent of the world dictate how the 99 per cent should live.
Or die. Secondly, even if the market works wonders in normal times, it will wreck havoc during a pandemic. Italy provided an early example when some Covid-19 patients were just left to die because of lack of ventilators.
Thirdly, other countries in the world are also funding the World Health Organisation's efforts in making the world safe for all, not just Americans. They, too, deserve access. Understandably, the French are furious. So is the rest of the world.
Let's not forget that China, where the virus was first detected, shared the genetic makeup of Covid-19 with the rest of the world.
Without this, the vaccine race may not have begun. We can debate about China's delay in bringing the virus to WHO's attention and its lack of transparency, but it did make the anatomy of Covid-19 public on Jan 12.
There is no fury like a world scorned. A day after the Bloomberg News hit the streets, more than 140 current and former world leaders have signed an open letter datelined Geneva, Switzerland, calling on all governments to make available free Covid-19 vaccines, diagnostics, tests and treatment to everyone, everywhere.
Thus have they set in motion a movement called "The People's Vaccine". The timing is opportune, too. On Monday, the World Health Assembly (WHA), the WHO's decision-making body, is set to bring together health ministers around the globe in a virtual meeting. The world leaders want the people's vaccine to be on the agenda.
Cyril Ramaphosa, president of South Africa, put it eloquently: "As the countries of Africa, we are resolute that the Covid-19 vaccine must be patent-free, rapidly made and distributed, and free for all. All the science must be shared between governments. Nobody should be pushed to the back of the vaccine queue because of where they live or what they earn." We cannot agree more.
Covid-19 has come to us not only to tell us to rebuild the world but also how. The idea that inoculating only 330 million people will save the world of 7.7 billion must go down as the nastiest nationalism of all time. Let's be blunt. Vaccine nationalism is a virus as deadly as Covid-19.
As Helen Clark, the former premier of New Zealand, put it in the open letter, the health of each of us depends on the health of all of us.
We join the world leaders in hoping that the WHA will forge a global agreement on making free Covid-19 vaccines available to everyone, everywhere.