But vaccines might be more expensive because you need to give them to everybody, not just to those who get sick. That is true.

The expense should not even be a factor. Whether it is $15 per dose or $150, it is trivial compared to the economic loss. The only factors are speed and efficiency.

I totally agree:
Once a pandemic has become so big, money should not be the first thing to think about.
That is why I said from the beginning that thanks to the first generation of vaccines, this problem will soon be solved, at least temporarily.
Finding antivirals will take a lot more time, if we find them.

Take a look at this map.
Please explain how it is financially viable to vaccinate the population of those countries marked with red color?

Please explain how it is financially viable to vaccinate the population of those countries marked with red color?

They will have to wait for the low-cost version. If you force the entire world to wait until a low-cost version is available, you won't have an economy left to do it.

By the way, it is standard practice that most pharmaceutical companies sell their drugs at a lower cost to the third-world countries anyway. They charge the most in the U.S., then Europe, and finally Africa for example. They may be able to offer their vaccines at lower cost first anyway.

EDIT: Europe may lose a year of economic growth in order to bargain Astra-Zeneca and Pfizer down to $15/dose, rather than simply asking them how much they needed to build more production capacity.

Please explain how it is financially viable to vaccinate the population of those countries marked with red color?

Or conversely, how is it financially viable not to? The Oxford AstraZenica vaccine is already $3 and there are numerous others in stage 3 trials that will also come in more cheaply (when sold in certain countries). Intuitively, this sounds much cheaper to me than prolonging all these lockdowns (and taking away things like tourism income).

The catchline "we're not safe until everybody is safe" is not just rhetoric. Even small amounts of travel between countries will keep the fire burning and reigniting new waves. Here's a nice (super-simplified) simulation that illustrates:

https://youtu.be/gxAaO2rsdIs?t=775

So it's in even the interests of each country to help the others.

The Covax initiative is a nice start. But of course, rich countries are dragging their heels with their commitments and hoarding for themselves instead (with some buying up well over > 5 doses per citizen!) Politics is a strong factor I guess - they don't want to lose public support, so will pander to their own voters first. This is totally natural of course, but once we start talking 5 doses per person they would actually help even their OWN country more by sending those excess doses abroad!

So I'm very thankful for organizations like the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation that help fill the gap left by political selfishness and corporate greed. They anticipated a pandemic coming, inevitably, and have invested hugely for over 10 years ago, e.g. helping setting up production facilities in India which will be key now in getting upcoming 1-dose vaccines (e.g. Johnson & Johnson and Novavax) out cheaply.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Grv1RJkdyqI

In an ideal world the rich world would donate enough vaccine for these very low income countries and maybe they will EVENTUALLY

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If you use HFM.net, they have a "Tools/Work Unit History Viewer". I don't use it myself and don't know how it compares to BOINC, but it might help. (I have HFM.net installed on a Win10 machine to monitor all my Linux machines over the LAN).

Thanks for that info, that's a really useful tool!
Here's a direct link to it, if someone else is interested downloading it:
https://github.com/harlam357/hfm-net/releases

They are stuck with their cache strategy by the type of work they do. They have to start up the next one right away, so can't keep much of a cache. In fact, that is the main reason they don't use BOINC I believe. I have learned to live with their limitations.

GPUGrid works pretty much the same way, so I'm ok with that caching strategy (I should have the choice to make it download the next wu a bit earlier though), but I still want to track my hosts. I have a failing GTX 1080Ti, which I accidentally noticed, as I couldn't see (until I've installed HFM.net) how many wus failed on that host.

World Community Grid is also offering GPU tasks to work against COVID-19 now.

Select Open Pandemics, and enable GPU use.

https://join.worldcommunitygrid.org?recruiterId=480838

They are currently doing a stress test to see if their servers and internet connections are adequate for this. They use BOINC.