Firstly, you're right. There are lots of things that went wrong in India, and I wrote a whole article on it in The Washington Post. For sure, there were missteps, but when the delta wave emerged in India, only 10% of India was vaccinated. Essentially, this deadly little strain of the virus ripped through the whole country, and that led to the carnage. Yes, India could have done many things to limit the spread of the virus.
The TRIPS waiver may not necessarily help a country like India, China or Russia. The big BRIC countries are not what we are really worried about. We are worried about many other countries, especially on the African continent, where after all of these decades and centuries, they do not have the ability to manufacture their own vaccines. It's not just for COVID. They can't even make a malaria rapid test on the continent, despite having the most malaria anywhere in the world.
My plea is to have domestic manufacturing on the African continent, which is the best way to prepare the continent for whatever is coming next.