We in rich western countries are truly blessed and too often forget our good fortune to be living where are, when we are. As we spend ever-increasing amounts of our time on social media, arguing over comparatively trivial first world problems—the rest of the world is surely looking at us aghast. Think about this:

(i) For most of human history, average life expectancy hovered in the 20s to 40s. It’s only in the last hundred years, that more of us started to live longer lives—freed from the ravages of disease, poverty, exposure to the elements, and constant wars (actually widespread wars were still a regular feature of life until more recently). Our historical ancestors would do anything to be in our position—at least in the west. Unfortunately, too much of the world remains afflicted with many of these things still today. The average life expectancy across swathes of Africa, for example, is under 55 years.

(ii) As of 2021, over 1 billion people live on less than 2 dollars a day, and half the world on less than 5 dollars a day. Meanwhile, a quarter of the entire planet’s population lack access to clean drinking water—a very basic thing needed to ensure baseline health.

One of the great things about worldwide travel, which I’ve been fortunate enough to do over the years—is that it gives you that sense of perspective of your own good fortune. Especially when you visit poorer countries. I can say with certainty that the vast majority of the earth would do anything to move to a country like the United States or United Kingdom, and would pack up and leave in a heartbeat if given the opportunity. People who haven’t left the comfort of their rich countries, have no idea how the rest of the world lives.

Nothing underlies this global inequality more than how we’ve approached COVID vaccination programs over the last several months. Currently, it’s estimated that only a handful of rich western countries are hoarding most of the global vaccine supplies, and it may even be years before the shots reach some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world. This represents hundreds of millions of people who will have to wait.

COVID-19 has swept the earth, and what happens in one part of the world will quickly reach another. We’ve seen this time and again since December 2020 with repeated waves of the illness. Anyone who cannot see this yet is deluded. The Delta wave for example, started in south Asia, and rapidly spread outwards. If ever there was a truly global problem, COVID-19 is it. Who is more likely to be a “variant factory”? The poor elderly person in Africa or Asia living in overcrowded conditions, who gets very sick from the illness with a high viral load, or the healthy 5-year old in a rich western suburb who, according to all the data so far, may have minimal or no symptoms?

It’s ironic too, because many of the people who spend the most time otherwise beating the drum about inequality, are also the ones who are responsible for this hoarding of vaccines by a handful of richer nations.

Our COVID-19 vaccination strategy is not only flawed from the point of view of reducing the global burden of illness, but is morally wrong too. As vulnerable people in poor countries are losing their lives, the west is keeping all the COVID-19 vaccines for themselves. What we should be doing is getting all the vaccines out to where they will help the most people, the fastest.

Suneel Dhand is a physician, writer, and YouTuber. He is Founder at MedStoic Lifestyle Medicine and DocsDox . Follow him on YouTube and Facebook.