ONE CAMPAIGN / VACCINE EQUITY / COVID-19
Pass the Mic: A Conversation with David Oyelowo and Gayle Smith.
Seven months ago, we launched the Pass the Mic campaign with our client ONE to increase awareness of the need for a coordinated response to COVID-19 and to demand action from our global leaders.
Today, we now have a light at the end of the tunnel. We have a vaccine. However, we face the simple and devastating fact that, if vaccination against COVID-19 is not made available equitably across the globe, the world has no chance of ending this current pandemic. Now more than ever we need global coordination.
As we allow ourselves some optimism at the reports of rich countries already distributing vaccination orders for millions of people this week, it’s disheartening to read that poor countries face long waits for the same vaccines.
We experienced this with the HIV/AIDS fight when therapeutics were available for decades in London but not Lagos, New York but not Nairobi, allowing a preventable and treatable disease to kill 32 million people.
So a reminder — in the form of a throwback to Pass the Mic on May 21st of this year — when 43 people with massive social media followings donated their platforms to experts, scientists, and political leaders to explain why none of us will be safe until all of us are safe.
Disclaimer: The following conversation between David Oyelowo and Gayle Smith took place in Spring of 2020.
Gayle Smith: David?
David Oyelowo: Hello.
GS: I want to say two things to you. First is heartfelt thanks for doing this, and second is that thing behind you is awesome. It’s perfect. I love it. And in addition to sharing your social media platform, if you want to send that, that would be good.
DO: [laughter] Okay, I’ll see how well this goes first. You are an expert, especially when it comes to us having a coordinated global response to COVID-19. That seems like a very difficult thing, a very unwieldy thing to do right now here in America where all sorts of states are doing different things, everyone has a different opinion about how to handle this. How important do you think it ultimately is going to have a coordinated global response to COVID-19?
GS: I think it’s going to be the thing that makes the difference. What a virus loves is fragmentation, gaps, distractions. It seeks any opening it can find to infect people. And the way you counter that is to organize systems, policies or responses in such a way that we’re tightening every one of the gaps possible. The other reason a global response is really important, think about something like vaccines. A vaccine is going to come on the market eventually, and it’s going to be absolutely critical that that vaccine is available to everybody, everywhere. Both because that’s the fair and right thing to do, but also because if we’re going to defeat the global pandemic, we’ve got to defeat it everywhere. You and I aren’t safe unless everybody, everywhere else is safe.
DO: Because we have a virus that is so far-reaching, and it seems like we don’t have systems in place to have a true global response, do you have optimism in terms of us as the human race to be able to pivot to do something essentially we have never done before?
GS: I do. The question is, “How do we get there in terms of a global response?” And what makes me optimistic and hopeful starts with a lot of what we do, which is if citizens are organized and demanding that of our leaders, I think we can influence them and gradually make that happen. That’s number one. Number two is that those who aren’t there yet are quickly going to learn that absence of a global response, we’re not going to succeed in any one country. We’ve seen in some countries already, they’ve got their numbers down, but then the virus has been re-imported. I think the most hopeful thing I’ve seen is a recent meeting hosted by the European Union, the vast majority of them made the statement that vaccines need to be available on an equitable basis because none of us are safe until all of us are safe. So the challenge now is to reinforce that fact. That’s not an aspiration, that’s true. And get more leaders around that table.
DO: Do you think there comes a point where it will tip from the amount of lives lost to the virus as opposed to lives lost to the effects of the economic decline?
GS: First, I think it’s a false choice, and we got to be careful of saying it’s either one or the other. A virus, by its nature, lends itself to science, data and knowledge, so we have actual facts that we can work with. In West Africa, in three countries that had been ravaged by decades of war during the Ebola epidemic, testing and contact tracing was the thing that ultimately turned that epidemic around. So it can be done. But I think there’s also evidence that when people come together, share information, collaborate, put that coordination in place, we can also see some of those solutions come in real time from what countries are actually doing. And I think we’ve just got to build on that combination of knowledge and collaboration.
DO: The world is looking for a vaccine, the world is looking for a solution. No one yet knows which country where that is going to come from. There are countries that are not going to cooperate with a global move to defeat this virus. What are the things we can be doing now?
GS: We need to have a world where something like a vaccine is seen as a global public good. Where once we’re out the other side, there’s a dead serious conversation about, “How do we make sure that when we face threats like this, we don’t all have to scramble to use scotch tape and chewing gum to knit something together that’s going to work?” There needs to be an agreement globally on how we’re going to deal with that in the future. So now is the time to prepare, as you suggest, for what the plan’s going to be when a vaccine becomes available and how, at a minimum, we avoid that vaccine being bought up by those who can afford it. This is a point of principle, it’s also good science, but it’s also in everybody’s self-interest. We really need lots and lots of voices making that clear. Wouldn’t it be great if we could come out the other side of this being healthier from a genuine health point of view, but also from the perspective of equity and fairness and everything that’s right?
DO: Yeah, that would be beautiful.
GS: Yeah. So let’s do it. We’re all locked up, let’s put our time to it, let’s go to the mat and let’s do it.
DO: Well, thank you, Gayle. That was a complete delight and I feel very informed.
GS: Thanks so much.
DO: Thank you.
