A stupid but justifiable policy from the past 2 weeks cannot be a good example of why South Africa is spiraling the toilet. Sorry. Pick better examples. South Africa has been spiraling the toilet way before COVID.
> Secondly, damn are we really gonna blame colonized countries on low vaccination rates when vaccine access is still being hoarded, it’s production still close sourced, and antivax movement is still strong in western nations?
Who exactly is South Africa colonized by currently? And further:
- EXCLUSIVE South Africa delays COVID vaccine deliveries as inoculations slow ( https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/exclusive-south-africa-... )
- South Africa Asks J&J, Pfizer to Stop Sending Vaccines “It is entirely owing to hesitancy,” Crisp said. “We have plenty vaccine and capacity but hesitancy is a challenge. Unfortunately it means that many unvaccinated people may have an unhappy festive season and will possibly result in hospitals being congested.” (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-24/s-africa-...)
- South Africa's low vaccination rate is NOT a supply problem and vaccine hesitancy is stifling demand so much that it had to delay delivery of doses, say experts - but the rest of Africa still needs more doses ( https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10248699/Low-vaccin... )
Let's not pretend like South Africa has a vaccine supply shortage, because that would be a lie.
My understanding is the only reason SA even sounded the alarm was that they were smart enough to proactively be scanning for variants aggressively. They frankly did the world a favor and the world responded by assuming those poor African fucks are gonna dirty everyone with their disease.
Do you not get how viruses work? Many western nations has or had travel restrictions from other western nations.
I’m not from Africa nor am I from America so I don’t think I have a horse in this race but I think this is the sort of rhetoric that the guy is critiquing. It has a clearly skewed understanding of the power differentials of the pandemic and then blames the nations with less power for being able to pull less strings.
Firstly, it makes total sense to me that preventing travel from a region just because it discovered a variant, when that region is apparently world reknowned in its ability to study infectious disease, is a policy born out of ignorant xenophobia. There’s no evidence that this thing started in the regions that were banned or that omicron hasn’t already spread internationally at that point, only that one of the nations with a world class variant detection system sounded the alarm.
Secondly, damn are we really gonna blame colonized countries on low vaccination rates when vaccine access is still being hoarded, it’s production still close sourced, and antivax movement is still strong in western nations?