Want a Vaccine? Elect a Nationalist (opens in new tab)

The idea of it being wrong to have a "my country first" government is a pretty unusual one, because the alternative is having prosperity fleeced by rivals. It's like a tech company saying they aren't going to compete anymore and slowly give away assets while lowering employee salaries. Would love to move beyond nationalism but you simply can't when the world's second largest economy (perhaps first soon) is the most ethnic-nationalistic country in recent history.

How does Israel manage to be over 100 per 100 vaccinated?

Hardly surprising. Say what you will about the person elected to the office of POTUS but if their dominant attitude is "America First" then it shouldn't be a surprise if policies -- and the result of policies -- actually put America first or at the head of the line. I'm curious how Israel out-did us though. I have to imagine their massive brain trust of medical and biotech has something to do with it.

This glosses over the fact that it’s Biden who has actually executed on a vaccination plan. And he doesn’t fit with the articles overall premise. And Trump is the opposite of what this article is asserting - he’s me first conservative but he didn’t have any plan at all for vaccination, according to news reports.

I’m pretty sure the author is right that, in some kind of game-theoretical way, the ”artificial boundaries” and a healthy nationalist attitude is for sure beneficial. The problem is that I think social media turned us all into extremists. You can’t say the word ”nationalist” without being labeled a nazi, because the person labeling you a nazi is getting points with his/her crowd. On the other hand, you can’t say ”let’s not screw other countries over” without being labeled a communist or some such, because again, points are being won. Most of the discussion completely fails to capture the complex nuances of real politics, and passion, hate, and distress end up being used as an instrument for other, completely different means. So yeah... a bit of healthy me-first is not bad at all (as long as you’re not using it to disguise the fact that you are, indeed, a nazi).

Maybe there’s more to ending this pandemic than a vaccine.

I don't think this should be on HN as it's really not tech-related and will most likely lead to heated political discussion.

The US is a wealthy country that is directly producing an awful lot of vaccines, we'd likely be vaccinating a lot more people with Moderna than any other country even if there were not national control of the distribution.

In the medium term, vaccinating US people first and fast is a great way to sell them on building lots of production capacity.

Why not "Want a Vaccine? Elect a megalomaniacal warlord and plunder it from a less powerful nation"?