Outrageous, overreaction and hypocritical, but hardly surprising and not unexpected – ask China. And this has to be confronted head-on!
The preceding passage aptly describes the unfolding global crisis – the war, foretold, between the rich and the poor around the pandemic.
As week ago, our – that is, South African – world-class scientists reported to their peers and appropriate world health authorities a new variant of the coronavirus pandemic that has caused havoc in the world’s economies, supply chains and near humanitarian disaster over the last 24 months, that they have detected (commonly known as Omicron).
This is a standard protocol across the world, more so during a pandemic – report, alert and share as much information as you have about the event as quickly as possible, as a preventive measure, with appropriate stakeholders and role players including, of course, the World Health Organisation (WHO), the global health watchdog.
By way of background, it has been a week now since Omicron, the new mutation, was detected and reported by SA scientists. Little is known about its severity, transmission and fatality.
Yet, in reaction, the rich world – the UK, parts of Western Europe and the US – and some parts of Africa (including Rwanda and Mauritius) imposed blanket travel bans on travellers from SA and other southern African countries.
Not only has this impulsive response caused so much inconvenience, hardship and costly changes to tourists and business travellers’ plans, caught in the geopolitical crosshairs, but it has also worsened the existing cleavages.
As this column has consistently warned, the world was teetering towards more inequality before this latest machination.
As an example, the rich world spent months hoarding life-saving vaccines during the past year. Africa and the developing world spent months waiting for these vaccines, and now that these are available, they have still not been administered to those who need them.
Put differently, in the rich world, the challenge is when – and how fast – to have the booster shots instead of the initial double or single shot, and whether to have vaccine mandates or not. In the developing world, we are still struggling with the initial doses to achieve population immunity (that is, the level where we are told we can protect each other with these vaccines).
But we are where we are because history tends to repeat itself or, as someone wiser said, that at some point it becomes a farce.
In late 2019, Chinese scientists and authorities detected what we know today as the novel coronavirus or Covid-19 (initially declared by WHO as an epidemic and then later pandemic). Initially, the world’s largest economy, the US, welcomed this Chinese disclosure and dismissed the virus as common flu.
When America’s response proved woefully inadequate, chaotic and late, it became convenient to make scapegoats of the Chinese and WHO authorities for all sorts of misdemeanours including withholding information and late disclosures on the rising fatalities in the US.
It should also be recalled that the pandemic breakout occurred at the same time as an election year in the US. When the blame game failed to achieve the results, desperate circumstances required desperate measures: the latter came in the form of a threat (and later real application) to withdraw the US's membership of the WHO.
Had Donald Trump won last year’s presidential election, this withdrawal would have materialised by now, with disastrous consequences for the world’s public health system. This, of course, is not to suggest the current system is perfect.
A WHO inquiry into the origins of the virus was inconclusive. Still, this hasn’t freed the Chinese of blame.
Enter SA.
First, we were blamed for another strain of the virus. We were found wanting in our response.
And now, having proactively shared information with partners and appropriate authorities, we are being made scapegoats. Bans have been imposed on travellers from the southern tip of the continent.
Worst, these bans are happening with insufficient information about this new variant. Quite rightly, our government is pushing back and calling this hypocrisy out.
Emerging evidence is suggesting the virus is raging like wild fire in the rich world, more than in the developing world.
The virus seeks to divide the world and its defeat will come through united action and solidarity. For this to happen, the hypocrisy, however, needs to stop now.
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