 In the fight against COVID-19, the Holy Grail is an effective vaccine. This has sparked an unprecedented global race between scientific teams. But the challenge is not only to create a vaccine. It is to mass produce it for billions of people. Only a handful of pharmaceutical companies are able to do this. So along with the scientists, Big Pharma is also in the race. Faced with fearful citizens, so too are world governments. But what ultimately is the prize in this race? Is it to create a vaccine that will be made freely available to all? Or is it to control it for economic and political gain? Vaccines are unattractive to the pharmaceutical industry. They require vast funding before it is even known if a vaccine will work. So Big Pharma is not interested, unless there is public funding. Investigate Europe maps of the European public money that has been pledged to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. The European Commission and Member States have funded a new entity with hundreds of millions of euros. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation, or CEPI. CEPI was set up in 2017 as a partnership between government, industry and non-profits including the Gates Foundation, in order to develop an effective epidemic response. But in 2019, CEPI reversed its access for all policy, reducing it from 13 to just three pages. Its CEO admitted that this happened because multinational vaccine companies expressed serious concerns. Meanwhile, at a global level, the UN's World Health Organization launched a landmark collaboration between countries, seeking to raise $8 billion in order to develop a COVID-19 vaccine that would be available to all. But the United States abstained. The US went even further, pulling all funding from the WHO, a move that made the Gates Foundation the number one funder of the WHO. As the global crisis unfolds, a troubling new concept is emerging, vaccine nationalism. The UK has already indicated that for any vaccine created by its research teams, it will be Britain first, and many fear that President Trump and President Xi will exploit any vaccine they may control for their own political gain. Ultimately, the question is, what are we racing for? To beat the virus or each other?