The US President Joe Biden said he wants local governments to pay $100 to the unvaccinated for getting a job. Though seems a great strategy to vaccinate those who are not willing to get a jab, this teases people in the developing countries, who are in desperate need of a jab.

The United States is at the top among the vaccine hoarders. Almost half of the country has been fully vaccinated and almost two-third have been vaccinated by at least one dose. And people are ready to get a booster dose, those who have not got vaccinated are mostly those who are choosing to not.

The US is oversupplied with the vaccines, millions of doses have expired and millions of them are about to expire. The “America First” approach that everyone criticized during the Trump is clearly being seen in the current Biden administration and this is even stronger and hurting the people more.

According to an estimate by the Kaiser Family Foundation, there are over 26 million excess doses in state reserves, many of which are set to expire this summer or early fall.

Despite 100,000 shots set to expire at the end of July, the federal government hasn’t been able to reallocate them, citing logistical issues.

 Other states are facing similar problems: Delaware has 25,768 shots expiring in August, Colorado has 352,533 doses expiring this summer, and North Carolina has 119,756 doses expiring in July and another 854,548 expiring in August.

While the Biden administration pledged last month to donate 500 million vaccines throughout the world — a significant gift, but far short of the 11 billion estimated by the World Health Organization required to end the pandemic — the bulk of these shots have not yet been produced. 

The vaccine mandates issued by the US federal government, the big techs like Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook, etc, are subtly laughing at the people who are willing to get vaccinated and have poorer access to health care after they got infected.

Of course, the US is not the only one to blame here, the profit motives of the vaccine manufacturers have played a major role in this uneven distribution of the vaccines. Other richer countries also have been happy to hoard the vaccines.

While some countries are throwing the vaccines, some are dying to get a shot. Many Central African nations have rarely been vaccinated. The vaccine waste in the US which is below 1% as of now is higher than the total vaccinated people in many countries. Of course, as more vaccines start to expire the number of expired doses will rise higher and will be teasing many more countries.