THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC has claimed more than 3 million lives around the world and left tens of millions more with insidious aftereffects. It is reversing decades of progress in reducing child mortality, health inequity, poverty, gender inequality, illiteracy, and hunger. Immunization against COVID-19 is the single most powerful weapon we have to end the pandemic and reclaim lost ground.
More than a dozen safe, effective vaccines are now in use worldwide. The Global Health Innovation Center at Duke University estimates global production capacity to be 12 billion doses for 2021. This is sufficient to immunize 70 percent of the world’s population and achieve “herd immunity”—the level of protection sufficient to stop community spread and eliminate surges. Through the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) program, more than 190 countries made a joint commitment to secure enough vaccines by the end of 2021 to immunize 20 percent of the population in lower-income countries.
Despite these remarkable successes, the world is headed toward two parallel realities: By late 2021 or early 2022 most high-income countries will have achieved herd immunity and made significant progress toward a new normal. In contrast, lower-income countries are not yet on track to even reach the 20 percent vaccination target. Despite $400 million in public and private pledges in April, COVAX is short more than $22 billion for this year’s budget. Rich countries have made purchase agreements with vaccine manufacturers that far outweigh the needs of their own populations. Based on the current trajectory, it will take several years to immunize enough people in lower-income countries to stop the pandemic.
The case is compelling for Christians everywhere to reject the prospect of two parallel worlds and demand global vaccination equity. In matters of both personal action and public policy a tension exists within Christianity between communitarianism and individualism. One values the community above all. The other values the self above all. The balance between the two has varied over time, among denominations, and across national cultures. Western Christianity, exemplified by the United States, emphasizes individualism. Asian, African, and Latin American Christianity is traditionally more communitarian.
Jesus’ parables as well as Paul’s letters provide examples demonstrating the value of communitarianism as well as individualism, depending on circumstance. Infection with a pandemic virus is a threat to individual life that requires care of the whole person (cura personalis). A pandemic is also a collective threat that requires care of the whole community (cura communitas). Jesus’ commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself,” his parable of the good Samaritan, Paul’s description of the church as one body, and his statement in Galatians that across ethnicities, genders, and economic status we are “all one in Christ Jesus” all speak to our Christian obligation.
Christian leaders have spoken unequivocally on the imperative of a cura communitas approach to global vaccination equity. More than 30 Christian health networks, whose teams have been in frontline combat with the coronavirus around the world, have appealed to “all leaders of governments to do everything in their power to make COVID-19 vaccines a global public good—accessible, available, and equitably distributed.” Widespread vaccination is the only way to stop the emergence of mutations. Delayed vaccination deployment in developing countries will prolong the pandemic, with an estimated loss of $9.2 trillion dollars in economic recovery needed to restore livelihoods and repair the damage to families and communities.
Through the God-given gift of modern science, the world now has the tools to end COVID-19. At present, however, there is no plan to do so. Even worse, the international community is not adhering to existing agreements.
Christians in the U.S.—indeed Christians everywhere—should demand global vaccination equity. We will stop the current pandemic and make the world safer from future pandemics only when we truly live by the Golden Rule.
Jonathan D. Quick, author of The End of Epidemics, is managing director of pandemic preparedness at The Rockefeller Foundation. The Rockefeller Foundation is a financial donor to Sojourners.
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