Opinion – Atila Iamarino: There is no shortage of vaccines, there is no shortage of vaccines

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With half the world’s population vaccinated against Covid-19 with at least one dose, we’ve reached a turning point. A colossal feat of science, which has already produced billions of doses of safe and effective vaccines. For the first time, our challenge in a pandemic has shifted from understanding what is going on, to acting as we understand. Our problem becomes the lack not of vaccines, but of vaccinated ones.

As highlighted by UNICEF, the G20 countries concentrate 15 times more vaccines per inhabitant than the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. But that inequality doesn’t explain Covid’s recent numbers. In September, while the US and Europe surpassed half of their population fully immunized, they concentrated around half of the world’s Covid cases. These are rich regions that have guaranteed several doses of vaccine per inhabitant. But the resistance of part of this population to get vaccinated keeps the virus circulating.

According to the UK Office for National Statistics, between January and September 2021, unvaccinated people had a 32 times greater risk of dying from Covid than those who were fully immunized. And according to the US Centers for Disease Control, those who caught the new coronavirus and were cured but not vaccinated were more than five times more likely to have Covid again than those who never caught the virus but took both doses of the vaccine. . In other words, even cured people are not as protected as those who were vaccinated and have more chances of having and passing Covid.

We are in a race for more universal vaccines against newer variants and other coronaviruses. Importantly, since there is no shortage of viruses similar to Sars-CoV-2 in bats across Asia, a great potential for future pandemics. But even if we had billions of these vaccines today, we might not reach the proportion of vaccinees needed to solve the problem.

Even in Zé Gotinha’s Brazil, while SP approaches 70% of the fully immunized population, RR and AP barely reached 30%. The lack of infrastructure and a more dispersed population in the Northern Region explain part of our disparity, but this adds to the “refusal of the vaccine due to religious and cultural ideology”, according to the BBC’s Mariana Alvim.

As with climate change, the solutions that science can provide also need action. Donald W. Braben serves as an unwitting example with his book “Scientific Freedom: The Elixir of Civilization.” In the work, he defends that the financing of scientific research with no practical purpose is fundamental for human advancement. On that, we agree.

He argues that if the Rapanui on Easter Island had scientists, they could understand and prevent the island’s ecosystem from collapsing and the resulting decline. But Braben himself — who coordinated a research center fueled by curiosity financed by an oil company — states in the book that it is not known whether global warming was caused by our carbon footprint. That much carbon produced by the oil industry. The author himself had access to solid scientific information showing that we are the cause of the greatest recent environmental catastrophe and we need to act to prevent the worst. And he doesn’t believe in the scientists who would enlighten the Rapanui.

Thanks to our deforestation, Brazil has increased its carbon footprint in recent years, contrary to the world and science. In managing the pandemic, idem. We don’t lack knowledge or solutions, we lack actions aligned with science.

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