Coronavirus/Covid-19 Discussion Thread

[DramatistDreamer]

Is the only a travel ban involving African countries? Or are Belgium, Hong Kong and Israel also included in this?

[DramatistDreamer]

This is an interesting thread, one perhaps worth reading.

[John]

That is a great thread. Thanks for sharing. I had forgotten the Lamda Variant was a thing. Hopefully Omicron will end up like that and the reason I feel it hot Africa so bad. There is only 6% fully vaccinated there. 

[Vee]

Always exciting to have what may be my first proper exposure to COVID over the holiday visiting family. Nephew's classmate got it. We're both double vaxxed (I haven't had a booster yet and neither has he, my last dose was in May) but I guess we'll see!

Edited November 28, 2021 by Vee

[DramatistDreamer]

May the odds ever be in your favor.

Seriously, hope everything turns out alright.

[janea4old]

Wealthy nations and corporations could have given the vaccine to less wealthy nations and peoples. But no. The wealthy nations and corporations hoard the vaccines.

Then a mutation surfaces in a less wealthy area, and that area gets blamed.

Edited November 28, 2021 by janea4old

[DramatistDreamer]

I am wondering when everyone will see that, in an interconnected, interdependent planet, we will never have any hope to diminish this pandemic, let alone get past it, when entire continents are still left unprotected. 

I have also been reading that it is unlikely that Omicron originated in South Africa, it was detected there due to advances in genomic sequencing that worked faster than European GC this time.

[DramatistDreamer]

More and more, people are taking Dr. Eric Ding to task for his tweets, which many regard as spreading alarm needlessly.

In any case, the doctor who saw and treated some of the first groups of patients diagnosed with the Omicron variant says that the patients have presented "unusual but mild" symptoms so far. Also, just about all were unvaccinated.

 

Edited November 30, 2021 by DramatistDreamer
Oops, I meant unvaccinated, not undiagnosed

[DramatistDreamer]

Pretty much what I suspected since I read about the emergence of Omicron, but since South Africa has only faced alienation for their efforts at early detection, I suspect other countries may not step up to warn the global community in the future.

 

[Juliajms]

I'm wishing you well Vee.  Get the booster as soon as you can. I know of so many breakthrough cases at this point.

[Vee]

My appointment is the 6th. Haven't heard back re: the nephew's test yet.

[teplin]

While this is largely true, the fact is that South Africa has all the vaccines it needs, and last week asked J&J and Pfizer to delay delivery of vaccines because it had too much stock (reported by Bloomberg and Reuters). The problem there is vaccine resistance, not lack of availability. 

[DramatistDreamer]

That's part of it, but not the full story.

South Africa, like quite a few countries that are so-called developing are having a hard time distributing the vaccine. You have to remember there are rural and economically depressed areas that are isolated, not in any close proximity to health centers where mass vaccinations are taking place and people don't have access to safe and reliable transportation and the roads are perilous. People may not have the opportunity to travel to these centers, those who can afford the journey. Americans take for granted that they can walk, bike, drive, take a bus to a neighborhood pharmacy to get vaccinated. I asked family overseas about this option and they practically laughed in my face. This is not the reality for everyone.

Yes, there is a deficit of trust between many South Africans and their government, but this is also a country where many people stepped up to test a still new vaccine before Americans did. Because they knew that this was likely the only way to get ready access to the vaccine.

South Africa is experiencing the logistic difficulty of getting shots in arms, even to those who desperately want them. The fact is, there are elderly, poor people in isolated, rural areas who cannot safely get to these mass vaccination clinics and these health authorities don't have the manpower to bring the vaccines to them. The concept of a visiting nurse does not exist for some populations.

The fact remains that Southern Africa alone was put on the banned list, when their countries weren't the only ones that had cases. South Africa, in particular found this variant before any other country (and it's pretty easy to see why, given their history of having to tackle viruses with little to no help from Western countries in the past), when it is unlikely that the variant even originates there.

I think people confuse Johannesburg for all of Southern Africa. There are cities and there are the rural areas and even in some cities, you have economically depressed areas that are cut off from the wealthy areas where the majority of the amenities happened to be located. I bet if you took a look at where vaccine uptake is lowest and where it is highest, it would be fairly simple to tell which areas are which and well as how this contributes to low vaccination rates.

Edited November 29, 2021 by DramatistDreamer

[DramatistDreamer]

Wealthy countries and citizens take it for granted that they can have mobile vaccination clinics and vaccination pop-ups, pharmacies and the like but for much of the world, this doesn't exist. Even if drones drop off vaccines to isolated areas (e.g. mountain villages, which South Africa has), you still need people who have the necessary training to administer them, and as I understand, South Africa doesn't have enough of those people and neither do many of their neighboring countries in Southern Africa.

Hell Europe and North America, with their much higher vaccination rates still got cases, but didn't get banned.

Also, a ban is unlikely to do much anyway.

[teplin]

Thank you for this. I just read a new NYT story that makes some of the same points you did – and reports that, for all this, South Africa is one of the most vaccinated countries on the African continent.