South Africa punished for scientific Discovery
bbc.com
bbc.com
For an action to be a punishment there would have to be an intent to punish - and of course there isn't.
This is, quite simply, a very rationale response to a potential threat; if this new variant had been discovered elsewhere, presumably South Africa would ban flights from that country, because it's a sensible, low-impact action that helps safeguard South Africans. Indeed, it's such an obvious response that to not take it would invite some serious political and media criticism.
Think of it this way - your population is already infected, and a travel ban only hurts your economy, but doesn't improve your country's infections. So by waiting, you continue to receive economic benefits from traveling (including any incoming tourists), and only report once it's inevitable that it's going to be found regardless.
Edit: you fight against this game-theoretic problem by changing the incentives. If the world pooled together a fund, which is used to offset the costs of travel restrictions to compensate for the sacrifice, then countries would more likely report correctly.
Closing all borders might, I guess, be somewhat effective.
The naming issue was problematic for several reasons, but mostly populist: we don't want the stigma of a COVID variant being 'blamed' on a region.
"Fighting infectious diseases is a long game that involves the whole world."
Yes, that means if you're hosting a new variant, you're going to face travel restrictions . Just like if you get infected, you have to quarantine. And that's that.
Just think of it in terms of simple economic incentives.
Travel restrictions on SA imposes a massive cost on the economy of SA.
Why should a country spend money on actively looking for new variants, when this is the consequence when a new variant is found?
1. actively tried to cover up the disease as it spread outside its borders and
2. did the same thing with another coronavirus in 2003
I think there's a lot of us who wouldn't have minded if this virus was named after them, and very much blame them.
They were the 'Brazil Variant' , 'South African Variant' and later 'Indian Variant'.
They changed to a more regularized system which is fair.
Having the 5B plebes hear about 'The Brazil Variant' I think is just bad populism.
When this is all over, if historians want to refer to it as the 'Chinese Flu' then so be it ...
How many of the places that have identified incoming travelers with the new variant have enough genetic surveillance of infections to rule out the presence of the variant in their general population?
Everyone realizes that there's no way to keep it out without ultra-strict controls with most nations do not have, but, they can delay the virus - hopefully until after the holidays, they can smooth out how quickly it erupts, and they can buy time to further understand it's impact.
Imposing a travel ban on a country that does a lot of surveillance and then not on countries that do less surveillance is the worst kind of arbitrary.
It happened the same way with the Delta variant and the initial outbreak in Europe. It was first found a in a few countries a way, and just two or three cases. Next thing you know, it is in your own country.
I'm not saying that there shouldn't be any travel restrictions, but I am say that they generally are quite too late.
If we have already mask wearing, pcr tests and so forth, what do we gain from these endless knee jerk travel bans.
It feels like we are going to be stuck forever in this cycle.
South Africa is the only affordable English speaking country one can go vacation during the Northern Hemisphere Winter.
You get 400h of sun there in December and January.
Many UK citizens were looking forward to going there.
I still think SA loses more than the poor UK tourists who have to stomach going to Madeira or Morocco and listen to heathen languages instead of SA.
> "What is going on right now is inevitable, it's a result of the world's failure to vaccinate in an equitable, urgent and speedy manner. It is as a result of hoarding [of vaccines] by high-income countries of the world, and quite frankly it is unacceptable," said AU vaccine delivery alliance co-chair Ayoade Alakija.
> "These travel bans are based in politics, and not in science. It is wrong... Why are we locking away Africa when this virus is already on three continents?"
True words spoken clearly. The fact my country was unwilling to pass vaccine mandates when there was time but kept hording vaccines and not donating them to poorer countries will go down as a mark of shame.
It has also served as a counter example I like to use now that representative democracy doesn't function as a safeguard against populism - passing strict pandemic laws even though they might be unpopular didn't happen, so why not just let the people vote?
It did happen in many representative democracies so i don' think you can draw conclusions just based on that.
> representative democracy doesn't function as a safeguard against populism
I'm an Israeli Jew, I have no love for Libya and they no love for me. But in my opinion it is very clear why Gaddafi was overthrown, and it fits a pattern.
They are based in science. BC Health Data shows very directly that BC was mostly infected by the US, not China or Europe. We also know from NZ and AUZ experience that borders matter. In most cases it will be impossible to 'lock it out' but it will definitely be possible to slow the tide.
"unwilling to pass vaccine mandates when there was time but kept hording vaccines "
Those issues are unrelated, not really populist, and the UK was not 'hoarding vaccines'.
Based on very interesting comment by chii, " whether to or not to report a covid 19 case first" is a game theoretic problem.
Clearly a rational player will avoid punishment , and hence reporting.
Long term, the best solution is to make sure that the entire world gets vaccinated evenly. Dense populations first.
Short term = our own people first.
But there's no way to compare them if a different strategy is taken. Not every country will think the same and the country / politicians that implements the long term solution will get severe backlash from their own citizens for every measure that they will take to dampen the virus.
The only mid in between is not force vaccination and give those vaccins that are potentially unused to other countries instead of holding on to them ( except group purchases)
Any other thoughts that are realistic from a politicians POV?
nor playing an Ostrich with your head in the sand, how well did the 'Chernobyl Accident' denial workout?
Most Countries have merely instituted a two-week ban, and/or require two-weeks Quarantine at this point.
This is to allow further inspection of the virus linage, and preform research with animal models.
The 'othering' of healthy Western unvaccinated people has been pushed to encourage compliance in populations that are already 80 or 90 +. % vaccinated... Meanwhile South Africa has about 20% vaccination rate, and even that is relatively very high for the continent.
It's abundantly clear that Corona easily travels between countries before being detected, so as long as we're taking two years for a 20% vaccination rate on vaccines that lose a significant amount of effectiveness after a few months, the idea we can vaccinate Corona away is sheer hubris at best.
How far are we from a global system of vaccine delivery that can vaccinate 7 billion people within weeks?
Even if we do that - can we vaccinate all the animals that are spreading the virus? Among others, that's deer, cats, ferrets, hamsters, primates, minks, tree shrews, raccoon dogs, fruit bats, rabbits, etc.
Can we then vaccinate all of those people and animals every six months, and lock them all down? Because that's what's necessary for eradication. Every health professional who tells you otherwise is either ignorant or complicit, far as I can tell.
Isn't it time we start prioritizing the protection of the most vulnerable, not just in our backyard but globally?
And further, can't we prioritize the willing, rather than trying to enforce medical procedures through coercion and threat?
Can't we say at this point that the pharma cunts have acquired enough lucre, and they need to start sharing the health?
Only the EU and US governments have a real chance of forcing these issue, and the conversation around doing so is hopelessly lacking in the most basic common sense or decency right now. It's even contractually suppressed. Media companies and politicians have figured that it's expedient to blame all the failings of health systems on unvaccinated people, and the practical science is almost completely removed from the conversation. We all ought to be angry about that,
So why is it not already happening, you ask? Because it's only been two years of fighting the virus. We will need some time to reflect on the experience and design a system that works in the next case. But when we play our cards correctly, this might very well be the last respiratory pandemic ever.
Furthermore, the obsession with "stopping the spread" of something whose spread plainly can't be stopped EVEN with draconian security theater and lockdown measures is simply misguided. It's a classic case of shifting goal posts right into Goodheart's Law in the sense that the much more reasonable previous focus on stopping hospitalization and death rates has been shifted to a manic focus on case numbers period, regardless of their real harm to people. As a result, we risk containment measures causing much more harm than the increasingly harmless cases of the virus themselves, as it inevitably becomes an endemic part of our human infection cycle. This is what so many previous viral diseases have done and we've learned to live with them quite decently. Enough bloody hysteria about every new variant or spread of the virus unless it's actually harming large numbers of people to a dangerous degree.
And where in the current media narrative are you seeing 7 billion vaccinations as a goal? What about people who don't want a medical procedure against their will?
And how in the world do you think we'll get there with the state of IP legislation? Where's the discussion on that?
I love the optimism bud, but can we be a little realistic here please.
There's no media pushing for 7B because there's no global medium. If you count the nation-wide newspapers and add the numbers you'll end up with about 7B, modulo nations that have no free media, of course.
People that don't want vaccinations will at some point be treated like people that don't want blood transfusion. Sad, but it's their choice.
IP legislation has nothing to do with any lack of doses. The BionTech vaccine could be manufactured in one plant for world-wide consumption, if needed. The current pace is dictated by supply chain constraints, manufacturing setup effort, orders, and distribution. Any other vendor would face the very se issue. If someone would want to order an additional billion of doses, BionTech/Pfizer could certainly deliver. In fact, there are so many ways to code the spike protein that there's no way IP is preventing other vendors from setting up a competing product. It's manufacturing experience that makes the difference now.
> there's no global medium
... He said on the internet.
> People that don't want vaccinations will at some point be treated like people that don't want blood transfusion.
Glad to hear you say this, but didn't you also just say that eradicating the virus by vaccinating 7 billion people is possible and to be aimed for?
> IP legislation has nothing to do with any lack of doses.
It sure does. https://www.citizen.org/article/pfizers-power/
I suggest you start trying a little harder to understand what I'm saying before arguing or saying I don't know what I mean.
And, until you address the issue of animal reservoirs your entire argument has a planet sized hole in it.
Of course vaccine hesitancy/resistance is not solved by availability.
Begs the question - is stupidity the "great filter?"