Dr. Ayoade Alakija a special envoy to the WHO and co-chair of the African Vaccine Delivery Alliance, recently threw a wet blanket on my enthusiastic optimism that we are in the down stretch of Omicron. Christiane Amanpour asked Dr. Alakija if there was light at the end of the tunnel. Was the pandemic nearing the end? Dr. Alakija said, there was room for
“cautious optimism but it depends where in the world you are sitting and where in the world you live. Yes, there is potential optimism for those who are tripled vaxxed, who are getting booster doses like the US, UK, EU and other parts of the world, and maybe those people can call it a mild illness, but for those of us in Africa, and for those of us in the low income countries of the world it is absolutely not the beginning of the end, it is more the end of phase I than of Phase II I would say.”
By now it is sadly apparent that we actually are all of us in this together, though the richer part of the world has not been heeding this advice. In our haste to get our own populations vaccinated, we have largely forgotten that variants can be developed in the poor parts of the world where the vast majority of people are not fully vaccinated. We will never be safe, until everyone is safe. Dr. Alakija pointed out the current WHO figures for the beginning of the year 2022:
Americas–60% fully vaxxed
Europe–56% fully vaxxed
South East Asia–39% fully vaxxed
Africa–7% fully vaxxed
But things are more complicated than that. Now people in the west are saying fully vaccinated means 3 jabs. In Africa less than 1% are fully vaccinated on that definition. To make things even worse, some are even saying 4 jabs. As a result, she said,
“We could be breeding a super variant in a place like South Africa when the reality of fully vaccinated has now shifted from 2 doses to 3 doses, so Africa is not 7% fully vaccinated but rather less than1% fully vaccinated!”
Africa is a great place for a new variant to evolve! And by now we surely recognize that any new variant will never stay in Africa and we are entirely incapable of keeping it out of our country. In days it will travel from there to here (wherever “there” is ).
Western politicians, and their citizens have been loath to admit this, to the peril of those citizens. It is not enough to protect ourselves. We need to protect everyone to protect ourselves and our loved ones.
We have to remember that Omicron came from South Africa and Delta came from India. While we were scrambling to protect ourselves, we forgot that this would not be good enough. We don’t know where the next variant will come from and whether or not it will evade our natural protections for those who caught an early variant or whether or not it will evade our vaccines.
Dr. Ayoade Alakija also pointed out how the world’s public health infrastructure was shown to be woefully inadequate, not just in the poor parts of the world, but in places like the UK and US (and Canada) I would add, where we are struggling to provide enough test kits or N95 masks. Chris and I got 10 N95 masks, which are now recommended, this week. We have been told we should all have these. But all we got was 10 and now we are learning they have run out! The philosopher George Santayana once said something like, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. I guess that describes us. As Dr. Alakija said,
“Right now people are holding on to slim tiny threads of hope, because we want this to be over. It is not over. It is not over because we have not vaccinated the world. It is not over because people in Africa and Latin America and parts of Asia do not have tests, so they are unable to test and are unable to stay home when they are unwell because there are not economic mitigation measures. It is not over because life in Washington D.C. at the moment is worth far more than a life in Abuja or a life in Sao Paolo is worth less than a life in Brussels. It is not over because we have gross inequity all over the world in vaccines, treatments, and diagnostics…who will stand up? Who will take the wheel at this critical moment world history? President Biden has been trying to take some moral leadership but there hasn’t been enough crowding around. This is a global event of historical proportions that is going to define many of our lives for a long time to come. Public health plus global solidarity is the only way that we’re going to get out of it. We need to act with urgency. We need to act together and we need to act now.”
Until the west learns the truth of this, the coronavirus will stick around to pester us, and perhaps, stick around until it evolves into something much more deadly than we have seen so far. There is absolutely nothing to say this can’t happen. It can. Like everyone else, I want this to end soon, but I recognize that my hopes will not bring it about it. We need to act now.
What does fairness have to do with it? Everything.