Over 200 miliion doses of approved COVID-19 vaccines have been administered to date in the US. Many mass vaccination sites are closing and many counties are declining additional shipments of the vaccines in light of the reduced demand. Meanwhile, outbreaks are crushing India and the US is housing tens of millions of AstraZeneca vaccine, which is not approved for domestic use yet.

We should ship it. (Probably not all of it to India, but we should ship every dose, today, and keep making more)

The “it’s the right thing to do” argument is fairly self-evident, but I also wonder if political backlash from helping other (non-European) countries might animate the hesitant of the ‘merikkaFurst’ crowd to switch gears and seek vaccinations. I wonder specifically if political polarization caused increased vaccine access (under President Biden) to generate increased hesitancy from GOP aligned citizens. And I also wonder if a move by Biden to provide vaccine supply to other Out-Groups (as these vaccine hesitant folks see them) might result in increased demand, simply out of a sense of aggrievement.

Shipping vaccine to India and the rest of the world seems to me like a good move. There may be a political price to pay in the short term however the policy wins (Public and Global Health, Diplomacy) seem like they could be worth it, even in the crassest of analysis.

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