Auctions and power in networks in relation to vaccine distribution
While the United States may be pushing to get its population fully vaccinated, there are many poorer countries like Guinea who have only vaccinated less than 1 percent of their population. According to Vox, “If these glaring inequities in vaccine access continue, it will take at least two years for the world’s poorest countries, which couldn’t afford to compete for early doses of vaccines, to immunize the majority of their populations”. The unequal distribution of vaccines can be attributed to bilateral deals made between rich countries and the pharmaceutical companies that developed the vaccines. Vox states that “the US government gave AstraZeneca $1.2 billion for 300 million doses” and “by January 2021, rich countries had already purchased 96 percent of the doses BioNTech/Pfizer was scheduled to make for the whole year, while 100 percent of Moderna’s supply was spoken for”.
These bilateral deals mirror the first price single-item auctions discussed in class with the bidders being countries around the world attempting to bid for the vaccines produced by a pharmaceutical company. Assuming that the countries will attempt to bid the highest value possible in order to reduce the death and economic damage caused by the virus, the richer countries will be able to have higher valuations than poorer countries due to their economic power. Thus, poorer countries will be unable to win any of the auctions led by these pharmaceutical companies and will not be able to procure any vaccines for their population. This situation is also related to power in social networks as if a pharmaceutical company is a node connected to a rich and poor country, due to the economic power of richer countries, the poorer countries will not receive any deals (or vaccines in this case) from the company.
Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ty2J0s2W0c
https://www.vox.com/2021/1/29/22253908/rich-countries-hoarding-covid-19-vaccines
https://www.vox.com/2021/4/28/22405279/covid-19-vaccine-india-covax