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COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) has brought so many new and difficult options into people’s lives, and now there is another one, particularly for affluent Americans: if a vaccine was not yet available in the US to another country to get it?
Now it is possible to get a decent idea of which nation is winning the vaccine race and not the United States. Now a Chinese vaccine is being distributed, and so far it appears to be safe and moderately effective. The data isn’t clear enough that you should get one now, but it’s easy to imagine that in another month or two the Chinese vaccine will be a plausible option.
And no, you probably don’t have to go to China for the jab. Chinese vaccines are being distributed globally and are already in extensive testing in the United Arab Emirates. The timing is uncertain, but with delays on the US side it is quite possible that in January he will be able to get a “good enough” vaccine in Dubai, but not in Dallas.
So would you get on that plane?
There is also talk that the UK and Germany will have some vaccines available before Christmas, with an increased supply soon after. The European Union has an explicit policy, by setting a lower effectiveness threshold, to approve some vaccines that the US Food and Drug Administration will not approve. The safety threshold in the EU should still be fine.
You might think that there will be complicated allocation rules that will limit your ability, as a foreigner, to have access to these vaccines. That is probably true, but there will also be a slippage. Let’s say you are a front line nurse abroad and you already had COVID-19 in March. The private clinic you work for will be able to order a vaccine on your behalf, but then turn around and sell it to a visiting foreigner for, say, $ 20,000.
The regulations on these vaccines will be so new that there are bound to be loopholes, so don’t think this is necessarily an illegal or black market transaction. It is more like a gray market. There may be some legal risk, of course, and the higher it is, the higher the price to induce some sellers to divert supply.
Or imagine that the Chinese encourage some countries to establish completely legal vaccine tourism programs for wealthy Americans, if only to win a propaganda victory and emphasize dependency. I heard that Cambodia is beautiful in winter.
The United States itself could agree to such an arrangement. If reasonable vaccines are approved in other countries first, American elites could start something of a riot. Rather than fix America’s cumbersome vaccine approval and distribution system, the federal government might find it easier to encourage one or two allied nations to offer its product to visiting Americans. It won’t be fair, but the US might find that creating such a system for the well-to-do shouts will ease its opposition to the status quo.
What would vaccine tourism be like? You’ll get multiple quick tests before boarding the plane and taking your business class seat. Upon landing in Dubai or Hong Kong, you will briefly self-quarantine, receive your jab, and then spend a few more days under hotel observation and quarantine. Then you will fly back home. As for the payment, maybe you sent bitcoin in advance. You are paying more for the reliability and reputation of the clinic than for the vaccine itself.
Is vaccine tourism unethical? This is hard to say. For one thing, you may be taking a vaccine from someone who needs it the most. On the other hand, there is a comparable and probably greater risk that any government-approved vaccine delivery method, whatever it may be, will be less than morally optimal.
Let’s say the government tries to be as objective as possible by using an algorithm to rank citizens based on their need for a vaccine. How many people would say that it is wrong to follow the algorithm? Would vaccine tourism and market forces be much more unfair? Wealthy foreigners fly to the United States all the time to receive better medical treatment without provoking widespread moral outrage.
Also, to put it bluntly, if you’re a very productive person who runs a business and creates a lot of jobs, it’s probably better for society if you get a vaccination early. And it’s not just to keep you healthy. It is also to reduce your perceived risk so that you can travel, go to meetings, and do your thing. Is it so wrong when selfishness and altruism coincide?
In this way, COVID-19 does not present a new option, but instead illuminates an old maxim: When profits can be made from trade, the safe bet is that they will be caught.
BLOOMBERG’S OPINION
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