Are COVID-19 boosters ethical, with half the world waiting for a first shot?

Completely bare of logic…instead of p.c. some more logical and pragmatic thinking and honesty please. If the first world gets too sick or even widely dies from no further vaccinations or boosting , they have no chances anymore there to get any vaccines, this one, amended ones or other vaccines for other diseases. So the ethical solution would be to first and only vaccinate the developing and producing first world countries and then the rest. Or do you think, they will invent and produce vaccines themselves in the jungles or Sahel zone if we all have died? Come on and stop kidding us.

The industrialized countries are in the process of donating billions of doses of vaccines. The USA alone is donating over a billion doses.

Given the number of doses that the US is giving away, free of charge, is it so wrong for our most vulnerable to be offered a booster shot?

"Whatever India is doing, the rest of the world needs to follow."

Yes just fudge the numbers and deny that millions of Indians died during the second wave. Why follow Indian then, China is the better model to follow.

Ethics are a hugely difficult thing to decide, specially on world scale problems, but nobody can negate that vaccines being used for minimum gains as boosters instead of giving immunity to those that need them is wrong, not to mention that those countries can become nests for new variants.

The developed world provided the funds, the scientists and the knowledge; it's only fair that such countries take care of their populations first.

Why does the developed world have to support and give aid of every kind to poor countries when the governments of those places always keep whatever is given to them for the local elite?

It has nothing to do with ethics.

Corrected post:

[C]ritics argue that vaccines are not owned by anyone, even by the pharmaceutical companies that develop them. Instead, they represent the final part of product development that is years in the making and the result of many people’s labors.

By that logic, Dr. Jecker, your shiny expensive Subaru (just a guess) should probably not be considered your property. It would be best given to someone living on the streets of Seattle. Or Johannesburg. Best that you are not one of the "critics," isn't it?

Moreover, most COVID-19 vaccines were publicly funded, principally by governments using taxpayer dollars.

So taxpayers own the stuff?

US taxpayers own the vaccine? I haven't followed the question over whether the U.S. Congress agreed to hand over the rights of ownership on behalf of citizens. I haven't heard of anything being duly passed and sent to the president for signature.

EU citizens own the vaccine? From what is evident coming from the EU, lawmakers uniformly appear not to agree with handing over the IP rights owned by European corporations on behalf of their own taxpaying citizens.

In fact, hasn't the WHO actually endorsed manufacturing the vaccines under license by the rights holders, in manufacturing facilities in multiple countries around the globe?

[C]ritics argue that vaccines are not owned by anyone, even by the pharmaceutical companies that develop them. Instead, they represent the final part of product development that is years in the making and the result of many people’s labors.

By that logic, Dr. Jecker, your shiny expensive Subaru should probably not be considered your property. It would be best given to someone living on the streets of Seattle. Or Johannesburg. Best that you are nnot one of the "critics," isn't it?

Moreover, most COVID-19 vaccines were publicly funded, principally by governments using taxpayer dollars.

So taxpayers own the stuff?

US taxpayers own the vaccine? I haven't followed the question over whether the U.S. Congress agrees to hand over the rights of ownership on behalf of citizens. I haven't heard of anything being duly passed and sent to the president for signature.

EU citizens own the vaccine? From what is evident coming from the EU, lawmakers uniformly appear not to agree with handing over the IP rights owned by European corporations on behalf of their own taxpaying citizens.

In fact, hasn't the WHO actually endorsed manufacturing the vaccines under license by the rights holders, in manufacturing facilities in multiple countries around the globe?