After the Coronavirus Vaccine’s Discovery: Concerns Regarding a COVID-19 Vaccination’s Distribution

Abstract

The fervent global quest for the development of a vaccine against the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) begs the frightening questions: who will go first in receiving it? and will everyone get to receive it at all? This working paper seeks to highlight the risk that mercantilist market-logic approaches to hoard or overprice a future vaccine poses for human lives, and how it might reproduce global inequalities in a fatal manner. It draws upon the literature on socioeconomic disparities in vaccination to argue that the infrastructure for international dissemination of the vaccine must be built in advance and in a manner that forsakes the hostile mercantilism that has accompanied a shifting and combative international order.