Dear Colleagues,

The danger of vaccine nationalism is getting increasing attention, for obvious reasons. Things look rather gloomy on that front, even if Bill Gates sounded fairly optimistic a while ago (in spite of some worries he had as well in this regard), when addressing the International AIDS society. He emphasized “we’ve done this before” – obviously, he was referring to the Global Fund.  Yes, humanity came together, back then, but these are no MDG times anymore. Bill Gates (with an IQ at least twice mine, I’m guessing 😊) should know by now.  It’s thus likely other avenues and mechanisms (than sophisticated PPPs) will have to be explored to get to ‘global solidarity’. Both in what we used to call the ‘North’ and ‘South’.

Let’s start with countries in the ‘North’. With many citizens of former ‘rich’ countries feeling that social contracts in their countries are under great pressure or have been downright betrayed, due to austerity policies –  with the current massive...