Vaccine Nationalism?

Vaccines designed to deal with the Sars-CoV-2 pandemic are becoming political. This is, perhaps, best illustrated by the unedifying 3-way spat involving the EU, the UK and AstraZeneca (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/31/how-eus-floundering-vaccine-effort-hit-a-fresh-crisis-with-exports-row). Before we become too vaccine nationalistic ("my vaccine is better than your vaccine and my mass vaccination programme is going faster than your mass vaccination programme"), there are things we should all be aware of. Firstly, the plethora of vaccines (e.g. Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, Oxford/AstraZeneca, Novavax, Janssen et cetera, et cetera) have been developed (many with novel technologies) much more quickly than we had any right to expect. The vaccines have also been conceived, developed and evaluated by multinational teams. The sharing of scientific information (such as the genetic code for the virus) has also played a role. Secondly, it is clearly in our collective interest to rapidly reduce infections in all parts of the world. The more infections there are, the more opportunities the virus has to mutate, generating new (sometimes more problamatic) variants. The world is also, so interconnected (by air et cetera), that it is next to impossible (even with highly effective quarantine systems) to prevent the virus re-importing itself to countries striving to eliminate it. It may be a pessimistic view but there is a strong probability Sars-CoV-2, will become a bit like seasonal influenza, requiring tweaked vaccine injections on an annual basis. It seems unlikely that the world will be able to eliminate this virus in the way we did Smallpox and Polio (largely). Thirdly, it is highly likely that other pandemics will follow Sars-CoV-2. We need International cooperation to monitor such developments and to deal with the outbreaks and their consequences. A depressing feature of vaccine nationalism is that it plays very well amongst voters. A majority (forget the antivaxxers for the timebeing) of people would like to be protected from the effects of this virus (it causes death, ill-health, educational problems, economic turmoil, mental health issues et cetera, et cetera). There are political penalties for seeming to be too slow to obtain, validate and distribute the vaccines (hence the panic in the EU?). There are also cheap points to be gained, by appearing to have done well in the rolling out of the vaccines. Most people have not been too impressed by the UK government's overall performance in the pandemic (well over 100,000 deaths and rising) but their ratings have received a boost after 'getting on' with mass vaccination (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jan/31/success-of-vaccine-rollout-pushes-tories-ahead-of-labour-in-the-polls ).