Surveying the early responses to the Covid-19 pandemic among nation states, one finds a veritable babel of responses, some predictable and some not. Would these results have been different half a century or more ago, when smallpox was eradicated and hopes were high that international cooperation would yield similar results for other infectious diseases? Is this a story about the stability provided by the bipolar postwar world, juxtaposed with the complex geopolitical repositioning that finally followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, or is that too rich an irony? A multipolar world may indeed be less prepared to cope with an international health crisis than a bipolar one. In any case, the patterns of global response are not only reminiscent of the Cold War era itself but also suggestive of a new vaccination cold war.

中文翻译：

---

疫苗冷战

调查民族国家对 Covid-19 大流行的早期反应，人们发现了名副其实的反应混沌，有些可以预测，有些则不可预测。半个世纪或更久以前，当天花被根除并且人们对国际合作对其他传染病产生类似结果寄予厚望时，这些结果会有所不同吗？这是一个关于战后两极世界提供的稳定的故事，与苏联解体后最终复杂的地缘政治重新定位并列，还是过于讽刺？多极世界可能确实比两极世界更缺乏应对国际健康危机的准备。无论如何，全球反应的模式不仅让人想起冷战时代本身，而且暗示着新的疫苗接种冷战。