How Biden Saves the World: He Must Start by Returning a Favor

My take is that U.S. President Joe Biden has hit the ground running. Still, this brief note comes bearing a modest suggestion for an even greater effort. Specifically, the world's dangerous coronavirus pandemic offers President Biden a golden opportunity to rally and lead a worldwide initiative to bring the COVID-19 virus to its knees, globally and swiftly. Undoubtedly, this would be a difficult mission — complex, multi-faceted, multi-step, and of significant duration.

But precisely for this reason, the first step is all-important. I humbly suggest that as this vital first step, President Biden should send ex-Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama on a global mission. For history buffs, this would be something of returning a favor on Obama's part. President Obama had sent then-Vice President Biden on an early mission abroad. Upon arrival in Kenya (the birthplace of Obama's father), Mr. Biden had his hosts at his first sentence: "My name is Joe Biden and I work for Barack Obama." The reactive roar of the Kenyan crowd attested to a continent bursting with pride. Being African, I break it down thusly: Africa, convinced that Biden loved and respected Obama, therefore loved Biden.

So now, more than ten years later, my suggestion is that Biden sends Obama and two other former presidents on a global errand. This new mission would be rather different from Biden's a decade ago; it would be much bigger and less celebratory, for instance. Its overall purpose: that the three former presidents work as emissaries to help persuade several leading world powers to take an unusual step, one that is nonetheless in their own interest and that of the entire world, Africa very much included.

COVID-19 vaccines to date have been produced by firms in the U.S. and four other countries: China, India, Russia, and the United Kingdom. The presidential trio's mission would be to go to Beijing, New Delhi, Moscow, and London and seek to do the impossible: persuade the political leadership of these countries to follow the Biden example and twist the arms of their own vaccine patent holders to take the unusual step of ceding the patents.

This patent-ceding would constitute the vital heart of this entire undertaking: to allow qualified manufacturers in every capable firm to produce vaccines. There would need to be vigilant monitoring to ensure all vaccines were safe and effective. But the key point is that vaccines would be produced nearly simultaneously in every capable firm. That would be a giant step forward in beating back the pandemic. Once the critical issues of funding and affordable pricing were settled, the whole world would be poised to vaccinate nearly every willing person around the globe.

Call this the "no country left unvaccinated" strategy. It could not be more important, particularly given the COVID-19 virus's relentless mutations. Countries left unvaccinated could quickly brim with new variants, a few of which could be deadlier and more resistant to current vaccines. As we are seeing with the British COVID-19 variant, a single variant is quite capable of spreading to the U.S. and other countries rather quickly. The solution calls for near-simultaneous mass vaccination, globally. Doing so would require mass vaccine production in every capable firm. This, in turn, would require the release of all COVID-19 vaccine patents by their holders.

The legal mechanism for releasing patents involves intellectual property rights. That could be handled by the World Trade Organization (WTO), with involvement by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations as well.

To pull this off, the three American presidential envoys would have to closely consult with and listen to their global interlocutors in Africa and the rest of the world. This and countless other moves would be needed to ensure success and determine whether mankind's struggle against COVID-19 is won or lost.

Clearly, what I am proposing is a complex and difficult long shot, perhaps a mission impossible. The overwhelming odds are that it would never even be considered, let alone be attempted or successfully undertaken. What would happen in that case? Our current status quo would continue. Rich countries will hurt themselves and everyone else by clinging to short-sighted vaccine nationalism while COVID-19 mutates profusely elsewhere. Economies will continue to sink. And with millions already dead from COVID-19, hundreds of thousands more will die around the world.

On the other hand, miracles can occur. Some seemingly impossible missions have been known to succeed. So what would happen if the Biden Administration did lead a global effort of the kind suggested here — and it achieved significant success? In that happy case, the COVID-19 virus would be brought to its knees, and driven into a status, not unlike the seasonal flu. Death and sickness rates would plummet, and humanity would exhale, with livelihoods recovering and grandparents once again hugging their grandkids. Moreover, future historians would not be wrong to write that Joseph R. Biden led in saving the world, and not just the United States, from COVID-19.

Nii Akuetteh is a democracy activist who has worked in the U.S. anti-apartheid movement, headed 5 NGOs, and taught at two universities in Washington, D.C

Photo credit: President-elect Joe Biden delivers remarks on COVID-19 at The Queen Theater in Wilmington on 11/09/2020. Credit: Stratos Brilakis/Shutterstock. Source: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/11092020usapresidentelect-joe-biden-delivers-remarks-on-1850466253.