Universal vaccination could have prevented the viral reproduction of COVID that generates such variations. Now, unless the world is vaccinated, the likelihood is there will be another variant that will be far more lethal.
It isn't certain--we are talking about probability. It isn't expensive to do our best to prevent it, if you measure the cost as a percentage of military expenditure. It isn't difficult and it does not need a telescope to see it makes sense.
Twenty years ago a group of editors and contributors cooperated to start openDemocracy in the belief that there was a need for a free and open space to discuss the globalisation of the world, in the face of the arrogance of the co-called Washington consensus. Today, after the financial crash, military disasters and the rise of authoritarianism, we have changed our tune and are committed to investigating what is going wrong and the corruptions that are driving the threats to democracy.
The most immediate threat of all is the possibility, however remote, of a more lethal variant of COVID. The obvious precautionary step is to vaccinate the world population in a single, cooperative effort. We are the editors who oversaw openDemocracy at its start and oversee it now. We call on every publication in the world to call on every government to do the obvious and work together to vaccinate us all now, in 2022.