“Think it over thoroughly.”

The world is engaging in fierce competition to secure covid-19 vaccines. The spread in Korea is not as fast as in the U.S. or Europe. But some are concerned that Korea is falling behind in the competition.

△“No one wants to put their eggs in one basket.”

Many countries try to secure enough vaccines through pre-purchase contracts. And they try to distribute risks by securing various types of vaccines rather than depending on just one type. It is the basic principle of investment: No one wants to put their eggs in one basket. Suerie Moon, the co-director at the Global Health Centre, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, said that the investment principle is applied to the vaccine competition as well.

△“Just doing the maths, you can see it’s not enough to go around.”

The U.S., European countries, Japan, and other advanced countries already preoccupied some half of the supply from major vaccine producers such as Pfizer until next year. These countries take up as little as 10 to 15 percent of the world’s population but took half of the vaccines. “Just doing the maths, you can see it’s not enough to go around,” said Executive Director Sidney Wong of Medecins Sans Frontieres. ‘Do the match’ means to ‘calculate’ or ‘think logically.’ Americans say ‘math’ while Europeans say ‘maths.’ The expression‎ ‘go around’ is used when medicines, daily necessities and goods, should be shared with others.

△“The biopharmaceutical industry has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reset its reputation.”

Major pharmaceutical companies used to have a bad reputation. But now is their chance to ‘upgrade’ the image as they successfully commercialized vaccines based on accumulated prowess. “The biopharmaceutical industry has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reset its reputation,” said David Ricks, the CEO of Eli Lilly and Company. ‘Once-in-a-lifetime’ and ‘once-in-a-generation’ are used interchangeably. But the former is used more often with the word ‘opportunity’ due to its meaning.


Mi-Kyung Jung mickey@donga.com