Depending on the jurisdiction, you never had those rights. In Australia anyone is free to take your picture in (or from) a public space. The only issue is when that photo is used to damage the subject - and that is done under defamation laws. In the US the photographer owns the rights to a photograph unless there are other contractual stipulations - even if you are the subject of the photograph.
The ones you had to wait for in the west were mRNA vaccines. They are newer, more complicated, and in theory customisable to a wider range of infections. While I'd love to see these opened up and used for their full potential I can see why the pharma corps don't want that.
While I haven't looked, I'll bet that the Cuban ones were"simply" using a deactivated virus - which is less effective and especially less effective against mutated strains.
I really admire what Cuba has done in the last half century. They're a fairly resource poor island nation who were cut off suddenly from the trading partner who accounted for 85% of their trade. While they're constantly struggling financially, they have a huge rate of tertiary education, better female participation in the professional workforce than almost all nations, a decent happiness score and a now a better life expectancy than the richest nation in the world.
However, the creation of COVID vaccines was not difficult. COVID is not that dissimilar to a number of existing viruses which we already have vaccines for. The production of a simple vaccine is easy, but rounds of testing and approval take a long time. This is how come Cuba could create vaccines based on existing techniques with slight tweeks.
I personally only store things that are hard to get again. Things like obscure domestic TV and really old movies. If it's something I can get again easily then I watch and delete.
Depending on the jurisdiction, you never had those rights. In Australia anyone is free to take your picture in (or from) a public space. The only issue is when that photo is used to damage the subject - and that is done under defamation laws. In the US the photographer owns the rights to a photograph unless there are other contractual stipulations - even if you are the subject of the photograph.