The wealth of vaccinations   | TheArticle

One of the many lessons of Covid-19 is that humans today are not that different from our primitive ancestors. From stockpiling food and resources when lockdown was first announced, to waging

“vaccine wars”, it is clear that the Darwinian software we survived on in the savanna is still with us. Sales of The Plague by Albert Camus boomed when this pandemic began, but Lord of the

Flies by William Golding would have been more instructive.

Traditionally this idea that humans are fundamentally selfish, as opposed to altruistic, has been a conservative, or “realist”, one. Conservatism in turn has been heavily influenced by

Christian teachings on original sin and by the author of Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes. The His gloom-ridden description of life in a “state of nature” gave us our adjective “Hobbesian”, much

used in recent times.

But several events in recent weeks have demonstrated that even the world’s idealists conform to the realist creed. Take the WallStreetBets traders – the self-styled Robin Hoods taking on the

Sheriffs of Wall Street – who made millions of dollars in the process. Or Joe Biden’s climate envoy, John Kerry, who is traversing the world in a private jet. Or the SNP, whose fight to

reclaim power for Scotland is being hampered by their own leaders’ bitter power struggle. 

And, of course, there were the events of last week, when the European Union threatened a company, violated a treaty and spread misinformation, following their failure to secure enough

Covid-19 vaccines. An organisation established to preserve peace and encourage trade – a self-proclaimed bastion of internationalism and collective security – revealed itself to be just as

ruthless in its pursuit of self-interest as the rest of us.

It is widely accepted that the EU’s failure to procure enough vaccines is largely down to its insistence on “unanimity”, whereby all 27 members of the EU Council must agree for a proposal to

be adopted and which the EU adhered to for their vaccine procurement programme. Inevitably, this hindered them when competing against more “nimble” states like the UK. Ursula von der Leyen

even described the UK as a “speedboat”, racing ahead of the EU’s more unwieldy “ship”.

But while the EU’s emphasis on unanimity is understandable, given Europe’s fractured past, and cooperation between EU states has enabled it to become the world’s largest trading bloc,

arguably these principles have hampered it in the global race for a Covid-19 vaccine. With the historic rivalries between European countries, the EU would have probably been better off

making their vaccination programme an intra-European competition, like the Euros in football.

This is because competition is a far greater spur to innovation than cooperation – after all, it is wars that tend to produce the biggest technological advances. As Adam Smith, the father of

economics, wrote in The Wealth of Nations: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own

self-interest.” 

Indeed, the UK, China and Russia are now able to share millions of doses of their vaccines with the world, not because we are naturally benevolent, but because we were self-interested enough

to procure the vaccines for ourselves (not to mention the self-interest of Big Pharma). Would we be sharing our vaccines with other countries if we hadn’t procured enough for ourselves,

like the EU? Probably not – we’re too self-interested.

But Smith did not see self-interest as a bad thing, precisely because he saw it as the foundation of global peace and prosperity. His vision was one of global free trade, rather than a world

of mercantile trading blocs like the EU. Individual actors furthering their own interests can benefit the interests of the collective, as the UK and other countries are now doing. This is

“enlightened self-interest”.

As a result of the EU’s vaccine debacle, Brexit, which was in many ways the consequence of Britain realising that its self-interest would be better served outside the EU, has now been

vindicated for many – even those who supported Britain remaining in the EU. Indeed, in the past week a number of prominent Remainers and European politicians have admitted as much. 

But whether you agree with this or not, Covid-19 has demonstrated that, no matter whether we call ourselves liberals or conservatives, nationalists or internationalists, we are all

self-interested. In that sense, we are all vaccine nationalists. The only difference is that the powers now armed with vaccines were not in denial about this, and are now in a position to be

selfless as a result. 

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