Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Omicron

why i said it was dumb?

i am not an epidemiologist, but an africanist.

caring for africa, protecting it from malignments, doesn't mean protecting it or any other region from charges that the origin of the disease proves something bad about its origins. like being gay, say.

the s african piece alluded to cases in netherlands and elsewhere, not to accuse, not to belittle, but to indicate where to focus attention and action.

dumb means accusations

it does us no good in the end to always wind up saying "they" started it, in their labs, in their military actions, in their evil ways. that kind of approach always bounces back on the accuser, moving us away from, how can we solve where we are now, rather than, look what you did to us.

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

harrow@msu.edu

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Salimonu Kadiri <ogunlakaiye@hotmail.com>
Sent: Friday, December 17, 2021 5:43 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Omicron

 

​When the outbreak of COVID-19 was announced in 2019, I was expecting our usual civilised abusers to place the origin of the disease in Africa. I came to think of haemorrhagic fever named Marburg in 1967. In August 1967, some workers at Behringwerke AG, a German vaccine-producing subsidiary of pharmaceutical giant, Hoechst AG suffered from haemorrhagic fever while working with the tissues of the monkeys. The monkeys, Cercopithecus aethiops, were part of the 600 exported to Europe by an American Company who was granted monopolistic license by the Uganda government, in exchange for peanuts, to sweep the forests of Uganda of monkeys for exports to Europe and America for laboratory and medical experiments. All in all, seven of the 31 infected workers at the German vaccine producing company died of haemorrhagic fever by December 1967. Although no cases of haemorrhagic fever were reported among animals and humans in Uganda and Kenya, researchers from the United States and Europe invaded the two countries in search of the reservoir of Marburg virus. They tested every monkey , ape, rodent, mosquito, tick, hyena, canine, feline, and bovine they could get their hands on. But no reservoir of the virus was ever found. What kind of experiment was being conducted on the monkeys in the German vaccine company was never disclosed or suspected of having backfired. However, when a similar haemorrhagic fever suddenly appeared in Yambuku, DRC, in 1976, the name of Marburg disease was suddenly changed to Ebola, the name of a river in Yambuku province where the disease broke out. For Caucasian, it is preferable to associate Africa to diseases than to Europe. That was why the civilised abusers of Africa twisted Ebola to become a strain far more fatal than Marburg virus which originated in a German Phamaceutical laboratory where monkeys were being used for experimental purpose. The cause of Marburg and Ebola, whether from bat or monkeys, is not known as of date.

In the Autumn of 1980, Dr Michael Gottlieb of the University of California at Los Angeles Medical Center encountered some Caucasian patients who were not responding to treatments. Gottlieb appraised the patients carefully : they were pale, almost ashen; extremely thin; their mouth full of white fungal infection, they were coughing uncontrollably and evincing severe lung pain. By April 1981, Dr Gottlieb had five patients under treatment for Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) who were not responding. Remarkably, all the five patients were Caucasians, gay, aged between 29 and 36 years at the time of PCP diagnosis, suffered PCP along with Candida and cytomegalovirus infections had abnormal immune responses, reported multiple sex partners, occasionally used amyl nitrite (proppers) as sexual stimulants and none of the patients knew one another before. Dr Gottlieb forwarded a report to the Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STD) division of the US Centre for Disease Control (CDC) in May 1981. James Curran published Gottlieb's paper in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report of June 5, 1981, revealing to the public, for the first time, the strange health problem within homosexual Americans. The editorial written by Jim Curran reads partly as follows, "The occurrence of pneumocystis in these 5 previously healthy individuals without clinically apparent underlying immunodeficiency is unsettling. The fact that these patients were all homosexuals suggests an association between some aspect of a homosexual lifestyle or disease acquired through sexual contact and Pneumocystis pneumonia in this population....... All of the above observations suggest the possibility of a cellular- immune dysfunction related to a common exposure that predisposes individuals to opportunistic infections such as pneumocystis and candidiasis." 

Scientists at the US CDC named the homosexual ailment, Gay-Related Immunodeficiency Disease (GRID) which by December 1981 had reached 270 cases in the US. The street name for GRID in the US then was Gay Plague. The American homosexual lobby did not like name of a disease being attached to their sexual practice; while CDC scientists were aware that neither the government nor the American public would grant research funds for an acquired life-style disease. The CDC decided to change the name GRID and Dr Peter Duesberg explained how the change of name was motivated : Having decided that the syndrome was a single contagious disease, the CDC now worked to swing the most biomedical and political institutions behind its new war. Support would be hard to gather unless the disease had an easily remembered name; by July of 1982, the CDC decided to call it Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). This name also swept under the rug any connection between the Syndrome and the risk groups (sodomites), a move favoured both by the CDC and the homosexual rights movements - who did not like emphasis on AIDS being a gay disease. In addition, more federal money had to be appropriated to give this disease more respectability and to attract more experts to this new field. (p. 150-151, Inventing the AIDS Virus by Dr Peter Duesberg).

On the new name, Randy Shilts noted, "Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome gave the epidemic a snappy acronym, AIDS, and was sexually neutral. The word, 'acquired, separated the immune deficiency syndrome from congenital defects or chemically induced immune problems, indicating the syndrome was acquired from somewhere even though nobody knew from where (p. 171, AND THE BAND PLAYED ON)." 

Then, what is AIDS? AIDS, according to Dr Peter Duesberg, is not a disease but a syndrome of about thirty diseases listed by the CDC as at January 1, 1993. He asserted, "It displays no unique combination of diseases no unique combination of diseases in the patient. Clinically, it (AIDS) is identified by the diagnosis of specific diseases known to medical science for decades or centuries. (p.209, Inventing the AIDS Virus, by Peter Duesberg)." Some of the 31 listed diseases associated with AIDS were : Pneumocystis Carinii Pneumonia (PCP) which before the advent of AIDS was associated with malnutrition;  Kaposi's Sarcoma, a form of blood vessel tumour that causes internal and external lesions (According to Robert Gallo, it was first described in 1872 by Austrian dermatologist, Moricz Kaposi. Kaposi's sarcoma was first seen in older men of Jewish and Italian ancestry, and later in others of Mediterranean ancestry, especially the Greeks p.260, Virus Hunting); thrush, caused by fungal infections; pronounced  herpes simplex-II throughout the body; marked lymph node swelling;  radical infections of the stomach and gastrointestinal tract with Entamoeba histolytica; diarrhoea and gastric problems caused by the Cryptosporidium parasite; tuberculosis; cervical cancer etc. Once AIDS was presented by the CDC as a new disease that threatened not only the life of Americans but the entire world, funds were to be pumped into researching the cause of it and finding cure. Early in 1982, James Curran of the CDC had approached Dr Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute to get involved in the research for the cause of AIDS. What happened after Dr Robert Gallo (MD) took over the leadership of AIDS research is worth recalling in view of Kenneth Harrow's opinion on omicron which he stated as follows, "I know the question of where omicron first broke out is completely irrelevant. The article on how the country is working to combat the disease is very impressive, and does not once ask the dumb question, who got it first, who is responsible for it." Despite the fact that AIDS started in the US, it was completely relevant for Gallo and others where AIDS originated from and the dumb questions of who got it first and who was responsible for it were asked. (To be continued)

 S. Kadiri   

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu>
Sent: 12 December 2021 01:34
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Omicron

 

rates of covid internationally:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/world/covid-cases.html

the u.k. is far from the worst. for instance, norway is worse, so is the netherlands, belgium switzerland, etc. east europe is a mess.

Coronavirus World Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak - The New York Times About this data Source: Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University. Daily cases are the number of new cases reported each day. The seven-day average is the ... www.nytimes.com

after peru, almost all the worst death rates are east european. by far.

the u.s. is worse than canada, by far, which explains why we could not cross canada from michigan to massachusetts, to see our son and grandkids, for a year or more. now we can, if we have a recent test and of course double vaccination. or else drive the long way around lake erie, which we did last time.

i do not resent any of the restrictions on travel made to stop the spread. what would any of us do differently?

i forwarded to this list a brilliant article on how the s africans were working to combat its spread, maybe about 1-2 weeks ago, and i found it brilliant. it showed how the medical authorities there were sending out workers to encourage vulnerable people to get vaccinated. one woman in particular, to encourage other unvaccinated women. the most vulnerable are those with aids, whose resistance to the covid infection is low. they have to take their aids meds, and they are encouraged by local medical authorities to do so. the meds are free, but not always close to home.

they work much much much bettere than here in michigan where we are having a horribly high rate, among the worst in the country. if they imposed a travel ban on us, i would understand and agree with it. i am furious with the idiots in my state, almost all rightwing nutcases, who refuse the vaccine. and who endanger all of us., our hospitals are full; if you have a heart attack, you are at great risk of dying since there is no room in hospitals in our state. you would be turned away at the door, and people are dying because of the high rate of covid infections filling up the beds.

i don't know about the logic of banning south africans; i know the question of where omicron first broke out is completely irrelevant. the article on how that country is working to combat the disease is very impressive, and does not once ask the dumb question, who got it first, who is responsible for it. this is the answer about "responsibility" which the article gave:

the covid virus mutates as long as it is alive in a live human body. if you are sick, say with aids, and manage to hang on longer, during that period while your resistance is low the virus mutates.

simple.

get the vulnerable vaccinated; keep infected people away from others; make sure the 8 million s africans with aids are taking their medications because if they don't , they are at higher risk of getting the infection and incubating mutations.

this has nothing to do with travel bans! it has to do with protecting all of us, and the people in south africa, in southern africa, everywhere.

where is the resistance to the vaccine greatest? in the u.s. and europe, among rightwingers, republicans, really crazy people who seem not to care that they endanger the rest of humankind by their recklessness. in africa it varies, but it isn't just lack of available vaccines, but also fear of/apprehension of the vaccine, and younger people thinking it represents low risks to themselves. just like the youth in michigan.

i understand jibrin's anger against travel bans. but the larger picture is what matters: how to force people to get vaccinated, one way or another. make them pay a fine if they won't do it; and if you succeed, you'll have countries like portugal or new zealand where the death rates are low and infections are under control.

in michigan that is not the case, and every time we get together with others, even with masks, we wonder if we are being foolish and taking unnecessary risks. how long can we continue like this??

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

harrow@msu.edu

---

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, December 11, 2021 5:05 PM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Omicron

 

Praise the Lord! Alhamdulillah!

Congratulations & Merry Christmas in advance to Professor Jibrin Ibrahim who has just won his personal two-weeks long mortal battle against the dreaded Corona enemy. A quarantined battle.

Reading very fast forward I thought that I was going to read "My first thought was that I had already written my Last Will & Testament" (like Alfred Nobel) - as we all have to do, well in advance of the event known as "the certainty", but what he wrote and what we actually read from him about the past and the future looming in front of us struck me as a lot worse: "my first thought was I had written many obituaries for friends who had died of Covid-19 so now someone has to take the responsibility for mine. It was a silly thought."

Just as it's often fitful bouts of laughter accompany hysteria – and a patient has to be slapped out of it, so too that it's only the sense of relief at being let off the hook as it were, that gives us enough respite to be able to joke about these near-death experiences, about being snatched from the very jaws of death, in a timely manner, to survive to talk about it. Sadly, Dr. Obadiah Mailafia did not. I read Obadiah this afternoon, the shortest book in the Hebrew Bible and thought of him.

In Sierra Leone, early in the morning on New Year's Day you'll hear the old Creole Folks going around chirping " 'Appi New Year me noh die O!"

I understand that I'm going out on a limb here about Nigeria's official knee jerk reaction to the UK taking the logical measure to protect their own endangered species living in the British Isles, from the vicious corona enemy.

Why should Nigeria's Ambassador to the UK eschew the polite niceties of diplomatic protocol and choose to take to the offensive instead, with his vile accusation against Her Majesty's Government, hurling at her the emotive, politically loaded missile "Apartheid", equating that government with the policy that once oppressed the good people of South Africa?

I heard him on the BBC 's Focus on Africa, sounding exasperated, doing his best at trying to defend his vile accusation which was of course unjust and didn't quite make any sense , since the travel ban affects many other countries including Sweden.

What's this pathetic, uncalled for diatribe: "The obvious response the civilized world reached was racism and a deep desire in the United Kingdom to impose apartheid on Africa in line with the growth of populist ideology and practice under Prime Minister Boris Johnson. " ?

Assuming that the statistics that would back Professor Ibrahim referring to the UK as "the most proportionally infected country in the world with a massive death burden." are reliable, then, if anything, one would have expected sensible sovereign Nigeria to have taken similar precautionary measures, not in retaliation but as a preventive measure, to safeguard Nigeria's 200 million souls from invasions from the UK. It's the essence of pikuach nefesh. 

Civilised world? We don't have to start being sentimental or racist about it, those are the kinds of measures that a country that's serious about combating omicron would take.

On Friday, 10 December 2021 at 13:27:33 UTC+1 jibrinibrahim891 wrote:

Covid-19 Moves and Omicron Concerns

Jibrin Ibrahim, Deepening Democracy, Daily Trust, 10^th December 2021

It has been a difficult two weeks for me as I travelled to Niger Republic for a conference on "Conversations on the Sahel" and on my return was diagnosed with Covid-19. It is difficult to know where and how the infection occurred. Everyone on the flights had their face masks on, except when refreshments were served and people remove them to eat and drink. Gone are the days when direct flights from Abuja to Niamey on Arik, existed. Now it's ASky with a difficult trajectory from Abuja-Lome-Ouagadougou-Niamey. During the conference itself, it is facemask always, except when making a speech. Lunch was served in the garden but people congregated to chat. At the hotel, we sat in the open by the pool but then we were talking and eating. The opportunities for this smart virus are endless and three people at the conference tested positive on their return. Should I have kept my earlier resolve of no travel until after Covid-19? But when will it end, if ever? Eventually, everyone's resolve collapses.

When the diagnosis came – POSITIVE, my first thought was I had written many obituaries for friends who had died of Covid-19 so now someone has to take the responsibility for mine. It was a silly thought. I have had my double vaccination so AstraZeneca would defeat the virus and that was what happened, or so I think. The NCDC doctors were very diligent and came to the house every other day for my case management and had all the necessary drugs in stock. Thank God I am now on the mend although the lethargy that follows the infection is overwhelming and writing this column has been a real challenge. The irritating cough also will not allow me rest in spite of punishing it with steam inhalation. On the whole, the fear of the disease is the nature of its attack – strangulating its victims through oxygen deprivation and the vaccine is a real protector in that regard. 

It has above all been a difficult two weeks for Africans as moves by Covid-19 in the form of multiple mutations reveal a lot of the under-belly of how the West reacts when it gets the opportunity to blame Africa for the pandemic. The key finding is why should facts matter when there is an opportunity to castigate Africa and Africans. The Omicron variant (B.!.1.529) SARS-Cov-2 was discovered by diligent South African scientists and State authorities who informed he World Health Organisation and the international community on 24^th November that they had discovered a variant of concern with multiple mutations and a possibility of very fast transmission and the world should do the necessary. Instead of praising them for their expertise and diligence, the response of the West was immediate stigmatisation.

The United Kingdom led the way banning flights from most Southern African countries. This is a country that has been inept and a failure in rapid response to prevent the spread of Covid-19 to its people and became the most proportionally infected country in the world with a massive death burden. The only time it has acted fast was when the word African emerged in the conversation. The obvious response the civilized world reached was racism and a deep desire in the United Kingdom to impose apartheid on Africa in line with the growth of populist ideology and practice under Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Currently, the Omicron variant has spread to 57 countries around the world but the stigma remains only on Africa. It is interesting that the Netherlands later discovered that they had the variant in a sample taken from 19^th November, which makes it older than the South African one but no European country is targeted.

The new development is that the United Kingdom, Canada and now Saudi Arabia have added Nigeria to the travel ban list although the number circulating in their countries is higher than what obtains in Nigeria. It appears that their concern is the discovery of a number of Nigerians with documents asserting they had been vaccinated or tested for Covid-19 but when tested had no anti bodies suggesting part of their documentation is fake. Our Government must earn to identify and punish the few bad eggs that are giving us a bad name. The reality however is that they were already in the search for excuses to pick on us.

The big story on Covid-19 is that vaccination is a solution only if the entire world is vaccinated but countries with resources have monopolised the vaccines, over and above what they need for their populations. When South Africans and the World Health Organisation told the world, the Omicron could have developed in any country and picking on Africans was simply a racist move, they were ignored. Today, it is clear it is already spread all over and flight bans serve no purpose.   

On Wednesday, the Nigerian government, through the health minister, Osagie Ehanire, announced that gifts of vaccines from the West had expired and had been withdrawn and will be destroyed by the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), the country's agency in charge of drug and foods standards. According to Reuters, the expired doses were of AstraZeneca brand and delivered via COVAX, the dose-sharing facility led by the GAVI vaccine alliance and the WHO. About one million doses have gone to waste, mainly because they were delivered to the country not long before their expiry dates. Many African countries are left with the logistic challenge of using vaccines under time pressure due to this problem of late delivery from countries that kept them for long although they did not even need them as they had more than enough. As Nigeria's Health Minister said, the solution to the challenge of vaccine expiration is local manufacturing of vaccines. He added however that Nigeria has utilised most of the over 10 million short-shelf-life doses of COVID-19 vaccines so far supplied in good time.

Meanwhile, the indications are that this pandemic will remain with us for a long time. I conclude with the verse I contemplated at the beginning of the pandemic:

COVID-19

 

Jibrin Ibrahim, 6^th April 2020

 

Coronavirus Came and the Dying Began

Panic Set in and Remedies Were Sought

Social Distancing, Did They Say Two Metres Apart?

Yes, Decision is Total Lockdown, Stay at Home

 

Coronavirus Came and the Dying Began

Social Distancing Made Sense

No to Handshakes and Hugs

Staying Far Apart Made Sense

 

Only That for the Poor, they Live Ten in a Room

To Move: They are packed in Buses like sardines

Three Dozen People for One Toilet

Social Distancing Makes Sense; But Not for the Poor

 

But the Rich Too Suffer

China the Emerging Superpower was Bereaved and Battered

Then the European Powers – Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom

The United States then took over the Macabre Race to the Cemetery

 

Testing, Tracking and Tracing as Solution

It's Easy, See South Korea, Singapore and Hongkong

It's Hard, See United Kingdom and United States

Strength is Not Governance

 

Professor Jibrin Ibrahim

Senior Fellow

Centre for Democracy and Development, Abuja

Follow me on twitter @jibrinibrahim17

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