The Biden administration considers the coronavirus pandemic serious enough to keep tens of millions of children out of school and much of the world’s economic engine in an unprecedented shutdown. Yet evidently, the pandemic isn’t so dire that we can’t export millions of our lifesaving vaccine doses, even as we seem to have a hard time expediting their dissemination here at home.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki says that the president plans on shipping 4 million of our 7 million AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccines to Canada and Mexico. This comes as we’re in the race against the clock to achieve herd immunity before new mutations develop that can transcend the vaccine’s protection.
It’s bad enough that we’re sitting on enough AstraZeneca vaccines to provide effective immunity from the coronavirus to 3.5 million Americans, or more than 1% of the total population. AstraZeneca hasn’t been able to apply to the FDA for U.S. clearance because of our exceptional standards. We ought to be creating an exception for this vaccine and distributing it to the seniors most at risk for fatalities and complications.
But even worse, we’re distributing this vaccine to the same foreign neighbor from which we’re accepting COVID-positive migrants and releasing them within our own borders.
Although the U.S. does require negative coronavirus tests from travelers coming to the U.S. via plane, the Border Patrol is currently being inundated by migrants enthused by Biden’s reversal of Trump-era diplomacy. The Biden administration is now releasing migrants into the U.S. without even testing them for coronavirus.
It is in this context that we are sending our stockpile to other nations. Maybe that will prevent all the caravans we now refuse to stop or even test at the southern border from importing every new coronavirus variant into our country.
