In discussion today about Canada accessing its COVAX vaccine allotment, I've seen COVAX incorrectly framed as a mechanism entirely for the poor. A food bank for vaccines. This isn't a helpful way of understanding it

I'm very sensitive to the ethics of Canada accessing its COVAX allotment now, and this thread is my position. But it doesn't help us to misconceive COVAX either https://twitter.com/ldobsonhughes/status/1356982505044279297

COVAX is explicitly not a food bank as this asserts https://theline.substack.com/p/kareem-shaheen-were-taking-from-the
It was established as more a 'universal' scheme, like childcare or healthcare, where everyone pays in according to income, but can also pull out

Universal healthcare scheme is an imperfect analogy, because HIC's (rich countries) can only pull out 20% of their needs from the pool. But COVAX was deliberately established to ensure HICs could access too. That was the whole point

WHO, Gates, Gavi and others established COVAX with exactly a mixed model, to ensure rich countries could pull out of it too. First, they wanted rich countries to front the capital for poor country purchases, so they created an incentive for rich countries

Secondly, COVAX was also trying to dismantle the HIC-LIC divide. It explicitly didn't want yet another fund for poor countries. It wanted to be THE single vehicle for everyone's vaccine purchases, to avoid the free-for-all, free market chaos we see now

COVAX repeatedly warned countries about doing bilateral deals which undermined collective purchasing power. In bringing high and low income countries together, the goal was to prevent countries being pitted against each other, and all-out vaccine chaos

I'm uneasy about rich countries drawing COVAX allotments right now. I'd rather they focus on their bilat deals. But their allotments are not merely entitlements. They're integral to how COVAX works. The fund wouldn't work if HICs weren't also getting vaccines from it

We can't say we're setting up this amazing, unique universal scheme, to ensure vaccine equity and prevent chaos, then say we secretly don't actually want some participants to ever benefit from it. That's just charity, which COVAX was explicitly not