“No country will be safe until all are safe. “

Josep Borrell

There is no choice between economy or health or morality or efficiency, Europe or Africa, the United Kingdom or the European Union, there is an absolute necessity to all cooperate. If the Titanic sinks, the passengers locked in their comfortable first class cabin will sink with the others.

In such a context, vaccine nationalism is as irrational and ineffective as the belief that the Chernobyl cloud will stop at the border after the power station explodes. Vaccine nationalism drives up prices and pressure on laboratories, which are encouraged to rush tests and studies in defiance of scientific rigour in order to catch up with the competition. It is not in the interest of governments, which risk paying very high prices for botched vaccines, nor in the interest of the laboratories that risk damaging their reputation, nor in the interest of the people who will ultimately pay the price for costly health inefficiencies.

The European Union has committed itself to a reasonable policy of pooling research and access to vaccines. Instead of criticising it out of populism, States would do better to rally behind it because it is the only way to avoid competition and haste that is harmful to all parties.

Moreover, if we collectively know how to manage the pandemic, we will also collectively know how to manage the other pressing problems that await us, such as global warming.

Our only priority is now organising international cooperation if we really want to get rid of the COVID crisis.