Diplomats UN
© REUTERS/Mike Segar/File PhotoFILE PHOTO: Diplomats arrive through the delegates entrance at the 75th annual U.N. General Assembly at U.N. headquarters, which is being held mostly virtually due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in New York, U.S., September 22, 2020.
Next year is shaping up to be a humanitarian catastrophe and rich countries must not trample poor countries in a "stampede for vaccines" to combat the coronavirus pandemic, top U.N. officials told the 193-member U.N. General Assembly on Friday.


Comment: If the statistics are anything to go by, a significant number of citizens in Western nations do not want the vaccine and it's only due to government coercion that they will be forced to suffer it. Let's also not forget that Russia and China currently have vaccines with the best track record, and they're already in production, and yet the West tries to deny that they even exist.


World Food Programme (WFP) chief David Beasley and World Health Organization (WHO) head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus spoke during a special meeting on COVID-19, which emerged in China late last year and has so far infected 65 million globally.


Comment: The coronavirus did not originate in China: Lombardy Doctors Have Been Dealing With 'Strange Pneumonia' Since at Least NOVEMBER


The pandemic, measures taken by countries to try to stop its spread and the economic impact have fueled a 40% increase in the number of people needing humanitarian help, the United Nations said earlier this week. It has appealed for $35 billion in aid funding.

"2021 is literally going to be catastrophic based on what we're seeing at this stage of the game," said Beasley, adding that for a dozen countries, famine is "knocking on the door."

He said 2021 was likely to be "the worst humanitarian crisis year since the beginning of the United Nations" 75 years ago and "we're not going to be able to fund everything ... so we have to prioritize, as I say, the icebergs in front of the Titanic."

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and his top officials have also called for COVID-19 vaccines to be made available to all and for rich countries to help developing countries combat and recover from the pandemic.

Tedros appealed for an immediate injection of $4.3 billion into a world vaccine-sharing program.


Comment: A virus with a survival rate of at least 99.5%, that the vast majority don't even know they have and who suffer little to no symptoms, does not need a global vaccine program and emergency funding of billions of dollars.


"We simply cannot accept a world in which the poor and marginalized are trampled by the rich and powerful in the stampede for vaccines," Tedros told the General Assembly. "This is a global crisis and the solutions must be shared equitably as global public goods."