THE NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT IDIOTS WANT THEIR TALKING POINTS BACK.

Anybody else remember the people who estimated how many times the nuclear powers were able to blow up the world?  I think there was enough megatonnage to do that seven or eight times back in the day; it's currently five.  It's kind of a stupid argument, but it appeals to the kind of person who writes for public radio.  "The U.S. will probably have enough doses to vaccinate their population two times over. And Canada will have enough for their population five times over."  See, I told you so.  On the one hand, the rich countries are privilege hoarders.

Should a nurse in Peru, who's at high risk of catching the virus, be immunized before a person with low risk in the U.S. receives the vaccine?

Niko Lusiani, a senior advisor with the global aid organization Oxfam, thinks that strategy makes sense both scientifically and morally.

"I work in front of a computer, right now, in the safety of my home," he says. "I would be happy to withhold taking a vaccine so that a granny with a medical condition in Kuala Lumpur or in Lima, Peru, can get access to the vaccine. I think a lot of people will feel that way."

But, he says, right now the opposite will likely occur: Low-risk people in the U.S. will likely be immunized before many high-risk people in poor countries.

"Part of the reason is that rich countries are hoarding the vaccine supply," Lusiani says. "It's understandable, to a certain extent that you want to protect your own people. That being said, it's leaving a lot of people out."

When the pandemic began, rich countries went on a buying spree. Some have even called it "panic buying." These countries started making agreements with pharmaceutical companies to purchase experimental COVID-19 vaccines, even before clinical trials had finished.

On the other hand, the sob-sisters of public radio can only raise the issue because the competition to develop vaccines was neither wasteful nor duplicative.

At the time, no one knew which experimental vaccine would work. So rich countries were hedging their bets. But now, it looks like many of the vaccines will be effective.

Vaccines from both Pfizer and Moderna appear to be more than 90% effective. Both companies have already asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to authorize emergency use of their COVID-19 vaccines. And AstraZeneca is likely not too far behind. Last week, the company said its vaccine was likely about 70% effective.

Watch for those companies to engage in highly-publicized operations to give the shots away to those Peruvian nurses, or for the foreign offices of the countries with large stockpiles to engage in displays of their generosity.

Which, for the short term, will be good for those nurses in Peru, and ultimately, for the populations of the countries that don't have domestic laboratories.  But in the long term, all that subsidized altruism (a realist would call it "dumping") is going to impede the development of those domestic laboratories.