In an August 2021 press conference, Mike Ryan, the director of the World Health Organization's (WHO) Health Emergencies Program, likened COVID-19 vaccinations to life vests one straps on in a sinking ship. He criticized high-income countries for stockpiling their third doses before parts of the rest of the world got their first.
"We're planning to hand out extra life jackets to people who already have life jackets while we're leaving other people to drown without a single life jacket," Politico reported him saying in a press conference. "That is the reality."
