The Cuban vaccines

Omicron, vaccine apartheid, WTO TRIPS waivers and the false hope of viruses “gentling” themselves.

Are you low-key freaking out about omicron? Yeah, me too. Can’t we catch a break?

Maybe.

Step one to preventing new, scarier mutant strains is to reduce the number of infected people, which require a mix of ventilation, masking, distancing, and, of course, vaccinations.

These days, the “vaccine controversy” is primarily about vaccine-hesitancy and vaccine denial — that is, about people who can get the vaccine but choose not to. But if you cast your mind way, way, way back to last spring, you’ll remember that the big issue was vaccine equity — the maneuvering by the rich world to keep vaccines from the Global South until we’d all gotten our jabs.

This was and is a scandal. As a humanitarian matter, it’s a frank admission that the lives of people in poor countries are less important than the lives of people in rich countries. But even if you have the kind of howling void in your ethics that can wave that away, it’s also an epidemiological disaster.

Because vaccines don’t offer perfect protection, even vaccinated people are at risk of breakthrough infection. The more exposure, the higher the risk. Leaving the 125 poorest…