COVID-19 Vaccines Depend on Globalization (And, Therefore, So Does the Trump Administration)

Scott LincicomeLast week, theWall Street Journalexamined government efforts to secure early access to doses of the most advanced COVID-19 vaccines, and how this access could prove to be a game‐​changer for these economies in 2021. As shown in the following WSJ chart, many governments have contracted with multiple pharmaceutical companies in order to ensure that they have access to at least one vaccine that successfully completes “Phase III” trials, which are now underway for most of the listed drugs. Among these governments is the United States, which has thus far secured vaccine commitments from Oxford/​AstraZeneca (0.91 doses per capita); Novavax (0.3); Sanofi/​GSK (0.3); BioNTech/​Pfizer (1.83); J&J/Janssen (0.3); and Moderna/ ​NIAID (1.52). This puts the United States second, behind only the United Kingdom, in contracting for early vaccine doses and thereby potentially saving thousands of American lives and restarting the struggling domestic economy if one or more of those vaccines pans out.Beyond the sheer size and scope of the U.S. effort, what ’s perhaps most striking here is the extent to which the Trump administration jettisoned its economic nationalism in pursuit of a game‐​changing COVID-19 vaccine. Indeed, as shown in the chart below (based our own independent research), each of the vaccines that the United States has secured appears to be heavily reliant on globalization — of investment, manufacturing, testing, and research per...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs