Replace "paid for" with "bought" and the connotation changes entirely.
Would you rather buy groceries, or find that the shelves are empty and go to the food bank for the things the rich people in the next neighborhood donated because they couldn't use?
This is horribly misleading. The US isn't donating its leftover vaccine stock, it's paying to have vaccines manufactured and delivered to poorer countries and working out the logistic hurdles to make sure the pledged vaccines are actually delivered. To that end, the US has already delivered more doses than the entire rest of the world combined (hundreds of millions of doses total), and they've pledged about a billion more doses.
A much more apt analogy would be: "would you rather not be able to afford groceries, or would you rather have a rich person buy your groceries and deliver them to you?"
The US is actually donating leftover orders. The reason why it's donating is because the US banned export of doses, so there is no way for other countries to buy them.
The US has not exported more doses than anyone else - China alone has exported more than a billion vaccines, and the US between 100-200 million. Even the EU is ahead.
If the choice is wait one and a half years for groceries I need now or pay less than it costs me to actually cook them into food to get them now, I'll choose the later 100% of the time.
> The reason why it's donating is because the US banned export of doses, so there is no way for other countries to buy them.
This is blatant misinformation. The US never banned export of doses.
> The US has not exported more doses than anyone else - China alone has exported more than a billion vaccines, and the US between 100-200 million. Even the EU is ahead.
This is also blatant misinformation. You're comparing foreign exports to US donations. The US has donated more doses than all other countries combined.
I'm comparing doses supplied to doses supplied. It matters very little if the dose was paid or not when the issue isn't lack of money but lack of supply. Hell, the costs to administer the dose is higher than the cost of the actual vaccine.
> I'm comparing doses supplied to doses supplied. It matters very little if the dose was paid or not when the issue isn't lack of money but lack of supply. Hell, the costs to administer the dose is higher than the cost of the actual vaccine.
Not at all. There's nothing impressive about Europe allowing its Pharma companies to sell vaccines to rich countries while allowing poor countries to fend for themselves. The poor countries are the ones with ~1% vaccination rates, so what matters are donations.
> Hell, the costs to administer the dose is higher than the cost of the actual vaccine.
Not in third world countries, but yes, the cost of the logistics is immense and the US is footing both the cost of the vaccine and the logistics.
I've written a longer reply elsewhere explaining to sudosysgen explaining why you are correct and there was never a US vaccine export ban, despite widespread claims otherwise. (I have to post it every couple of weeks on Hacker News.)
Would you rather buy groceries, or find that the shelves are empty and go to the food bank for the things the rich people in the next neighborhood donated because they couldn't use?