EDITORIAL - Many gray areas

During his pre-recorded speech before the 76th United Nations General Assembly, President Rodrigo Duterte criticized nations that planned to give their citizens booster vaccine shots even as some countries still struggled to get their vaccine supply.

“Rich countries hoard life-saving vaccines, while poor nations wait for trickles. They now talk of booster shots, while developing countries consider half-doses just to get by... This is shocking beyond belief and must be condemned for what it is --a selfish act that can neither be justified rationally nor morally,” President Duterte said.

President Duterte has a point, a point also shared by many of us, as well as many international bodies that are calling for richer nations to help poorer nations with their vaccine supply.

However, we wish it was that simple, because in truth there are a lot of gray areas regarding this issue. It’s a complicated one.

Yes, it is true that some nations have too few of the vaccines while others, especially the rich ones, have enough or even more than they need.

However, asking those rich countries to fork over what they have to give to poorer nations instead of using them as booster shots is also being a bit presumptuous.

The government of any nation has the responsibility to safeguard the health of its own people and to further its own economic interests, using whatever tools or means they have at their disposal, as long as these are legal.

If those tools happen to be vaccines, which they can get using legal means, then they have every right to do so, and no foreign nation has the right tell them that they are wrong in doing so.

And while richer nations do have a responsibility to help poorer ones, their bigger responsibility, of course, lies in protecting their own. They cannot be expected to prioritize foreigners before their own citizens.

While some nations do need to have first doses and second doses, other nations also need to further protect their citizens and get their economy going.

So who gets to decide what is more important and who is in the wrong?

This is not an easy issue to resolve. Because while it is right for some countries to help other countries, it is also right for any country to put the needs of its own constituents first over foreigners.