IT’S a potential election winner and certainly a big money-maker. It has the capacity to help keep autocratic leaders in power and provide economic and geopolitical leverage for rich nations over those less well off.

Oh yes, and it might just rid us of the scourge of a pandemic that has transformed the world and cost the lives of so many people.

That all-important latter consideration however seems to have been lost along the way amidst the selfish frenzy of “vaccine nationalism” and the “my nation first” approach towards obtaining a drug to combat Covid-19.

Just these past days as First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced new restrictions and a reminder that the virus remains potentially deadly, the World Health Organisation (WHO) was facing new woes of its own.

These came as the health body had to rethink its worldwide Covid-19 vaccine procurement programme after rich nations slowed in signing up and seemed more interested in seeking bilateral deals instead.

It was back in June that the WHO initiative, known as the COVAX programme, was set up with the aim of creating equitable distribution of an effective vaccine by the end of 2021.

This was a vaccination scheme that ensured equal access for everyone, everywhere – one not determined by nationality or the ability to pay. That, I’m sure any reasonable thinking person would agree, is how things should be. But that’s not how things are playing out as COVAX stalls, falling foul of that “my nation first” mindset.

For some time now the telltale signs of such a myopic approach have been there, threatening to undermine the global response.

There was, for example, the decision by the US, Russia and India not to participate in the Access to Covid-19 Tools (ACT) programme to which a number of European nations, as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust, committed more than $8 billion in order to finance.

Then there were those remarks made by the likes of Paul Hudson, the CEO of French multinational pharmaceutical company Sanofi, who said that the US was first in line for the vaccine because it signed an investment partnership with the company.

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Others were even more openly “my nation first”, such as the CEO of the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest producer of vaccine doses, who said most of its vaccine “would have to go to our countrymen before it goes abroad”.

US president Donald Trump likewise underscored his determination for America to be first in line with Operation Warp Speed, a public-private partnership with AstraZeneca worth $1.2bn to the Big Pharma company.

Doubtless that if America was to secure the first large-scale doses of the vaccine, Trump would tell the world how he was its personal saviour. He would likely do so while using it as a re-election mantra and ensuring vast profits went to America’s wealthiest while the poorest were last in line to benefit.

As world leaders go, Trump is far from alone in seeing narrow nationalist opportunity in securing the political Holy Grail that is a Covid-19 vaccine. In some ways it was no surprise last month when Russian president Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin announced it had created a vaccine, called Sputnik V, a clear reference to the halcyon days of the Soviet Union’s space programme.

It cast Putin in a “good light”, showing once again that Russia was a science powerhouse.

The sorry inescapable fact here is that as time and the pandemic have marched on, platitudes towards equitable access have been replaced with rich countries fully embracing an “I’m all right Jack” approach. The UK, Japan, Canada and some countries in the EU are among them.

As Michael Sheldrick, a co-founder of the global advocacy group Global Citizen, highlighted this week, all these nations have redoubled their efforts in obtaining all available doses of the vaccine once it exists.

In certain cases they are going further, sometimes securing up to four, or even five, times as many doses compared to their total populations.

As Sheldrick says: “ ... Realpolitik is alive and well, even if it means we may all pay more for it in the long run.”

And make no mistake about it, the poorest and most vulnerable will pay the most. As history sadly tells us, there is nothing new in the world’s poor being at the end of the queue when it comes to life-saving medicine.

VACCINE nationalism makes no sense on another level. For the simple fact is that no-one is safe unless everyone is safe. This virus being transnational means no simplistic nationalistic pulling up of the drawbridge will make any difference in stopping a contagion that moves across borders and stays present in our global supply chains and immune systems.

So what then needs to be done to counter these ineffective nationalist responses? Well, to begin with, it’s vital that a centralised and trusted global health governance system that ensures the correct flow of money, data and supplies leads the way in obtaining a safe, effective, affordable vaccine. Put another way, the COVAX programme must be given a chance to do what it was set up to do. As Mariangela Simao, the WHO’s assistant director-general for access to medicines, succinctly pointed out this week, there are two choices here.

One is vaccine nationalism, where a lot of people are vaccinated in a handful of countries, leaving the world’s majority unprotected. The other is vaccine multilateralism, where we protect at-risk populations in all countries and keep our economies working.

Given that the latter is the only real way forward, it was encouraging this week to see the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announce the EU’s support of COVAX to the tune of a €400 million contribution to pre-purchase future vaccines to the benefit of developing countries.

Such a collective act of leadership is to be welcomed and now needs to be built on and supported at every level.

Some, of course, will insist that this is just wishful thinking, a scepticism encapsulated by Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson, who wrote a few months ago that it was naive to expect total adherence to a global Golden Rule when it comes to vaccine distribution. As it happens,

I agree with his assertion. But so too do I agree with Gerson’s alternative and perfectly realistic proposal of perhaps honouring a “Bronze suggestion”, putting the most urgent needs of poor nations somewhere above the least urgent needs of wealthy ones.