Low vaccination rates in Africa are only partly to do with availability. For example:
Some countries have been forced to destroy thousands of doses of donated vaccines from their stockpiles. Namibia, for example, announced on Monday that it had to destroy 150,000 expired doses.
“It is highly regrettable that we are forced to destroy in excess of 150,000 vaccines, which have reached expiry date, because those who are eligible are refusing to be vaccinated,” Namibia President Hage Geingob is reported to have told a news conference on Monday.
According to the Washington Post, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe have all asked drugmaker Pfizer in the last several months to pause vaccine shipments because of challenges with uptake.
Access to social media has facilitated the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories. In the Africa CDC study, people with high levels of hesitancy were more likely to use social media and be exposed to disinformation. Half of those surveyed in South Africa believed the virus was linked to 5G technology. In another South African study, approximately a third of those who would refuse the vaccine trusted social media as a primary source of information. A small study in Addis Ababa showed that hesitancy was 3.6 times higher among those who received their information from social media compared to those who relied on television and radio.
Just got my Pfizer booster and flu shot. Its been a hell of a two months. Covid followed by stomach issues and then a super bad cold or flu that lasted two weeks.
It’s hilarious (and by hilarious I mean fucking stupid, waaf, we are the baddies) that there are these countries and communities that have legitimate reasons to be skeptical of anything like this that is pushed on them by the American government / UN / etc, yet for some reason, in America, it’s fucking white people, the people LEAST likely to be fucked over by the government, who drive the vocal distrust of the vaccine.
Like, yea, I completely understand why someone in Africa or Pakistan would be skeptical of shit coming from the American government. But what fucking basis does Starbucks Karen have for thinking this is some plot to destroy her and her community? Bitch, the US government bends over backwards to serve white people like you. Yet all we hear from on the anti-vax front are these aggrieved, wannabe-victimized white people.
So, data coming in from the UK show pretty clearly that OMGicron is gaining on delta even when delta was is high. I had been holding out some hope that the remarkably rapid rise seen in South Africa was potentially due to an uptick in sequencing or somehow related to being at a delta trough or maybe just poor vaccination, but the UK data showing similar growth even when both sequencing and delta are continuing to be pretty high shuts that down. OMGicron is spreading a lot faster than delta ever did, and even in a place where vaccination is pretty high. Merry fucking Christmas, everyone!
I think vaccine hesitancy and logistics in Africa are certainly slowing down vaxx distribution to some degree, but uhhh, I’m pretty sure that problem pales in comparison to 1st world fuckery. Wealthy nations have been buying their way to the front of the line for vaccines, the COVAX program failed spectacularly, noted philanthropist Bill Gates has been keeping a tight grip on his vaccine IP, fucking Cuba has launched a remarkably successful vaccine program solely because the 1st world are being dicks about sharing their lifesaving IP. Excuse me if I’m a little skeptical of this convenient narrative of superstitious Africans not lining up to get vaccinated because they’re silly Africans.
In South Africa it’s more or less 100% vaccine hesitancy. This is from two weeks ago:
The Health Department’s Acting Director-General Nicholas Crisp said that currently there were 16.5 million vaccine doses in the country, with about 2.5 million more expected in the coming days.
“If we do have an uptake now, we can assure the public there’s plenty of vaccine. We can also assure the public that at the moment we have way more capacity to vaccinate people than we have people coming for vaccination at the moment,” Crisp said.
She’s the most important thing in the world, our thoughts are consumed with her, and all of our actions and the government’s actions are specifically targeted at her because she is all we care about.
I mean, we’re not supposed to do arm chair psychiatry but I don’t particularly feel guilty about looking at the shit that people believe based on their Facebook postings and saying “yeah, that’s crazy”. It’s not even colloquial “crazy” anymore. It’s actual mental illness. The human brain is not capable of dealing with the organized assault of social media.
But since Churchill is not here to point this out, I’ll note that this tweet is based on genomic surveillance data that’s simply not available in the United States. We really don’t have a good understanding of how fast Omicron is spreading here because we don’t have this data.
So if Omicron is less severe - a question I realize is probably still very much outstanding - is its spreading like wildfire a good thing or a bad thing or something in between?
Bad thing in short-term, tbd longer term IMO. Can make the case it will build immunity, but always possible Theta or w/e spreads like wildfire as well because omicrom immunity weakens as likely is happening with omicrom/delta. On balance this is all pretty bad news IMO, but we will have to see.
Root hard for this new antiviral to be as good as it seems it might be.
It’s weird. I’m led to believe that OMGicron is spreading rapidly yet the 7dma has declined in the Czech Republic has declined by 25% in the last two weeks.
At the same time, reports are that the variant is being found quite a bit in Brno. Is there gonna be a sixth wave so soon after the first?
This is not all that weird, it’s just the nature of exponential growth. If you have a very large number that’s decaying exponentially and a very small number that’s growing exponentially, the total goes down rapidly for a while, then it hits a valley, then it soars. If there are a hundred or even a thousand daily Omicron cases, you can lose them in the national numbers, but a few doublings later you have an enormous number. Here’s South Africa’s data, with the marker at a date when Omicron might have started spreading. Czechia is probably a bit further along the curve, but you can see that South Africa had a much stronger case for feeling like they’d turned the corner, and you can see how that turned out.
Just want to say that the info and discussion itt over the past several days has been excellent and interesting. So much better than the endless bickering it had been. Much appreciated and hope it stays this way.
I realize this is anecdotal, but I do not like it a bit. I had somewhat moved into “I’m fully vaxxed and boosted, it is time to start living life again” mode, but that is starting to sound foolhardy.
I hate these articles. Someone who’s boosted catching omicron was inevitable and certain the day the variant was announced. Trumpeting these just drives panic and mistrust of vaccines.
I havent seen any reason to worry any more about severe illness as a relatively young triple vaxxed person, my worry is still more passing it to vulnerable/unvaxxed I have contact with.
I have seen enough to worry about catching it (data still TBD) but, honestly, if long COVID is a prevalent thing among the boosted/vaxxed than society perma fucked anyways and just give me the widowmaker at 50 so I dont need to be around for it so more really about the people I come into contact with.
I am personally kinda bummed because Im just getting my oldest vaccinated so had some hope we could start go doing indoor activities while masked. That’s probably on hold indefinitely now. Hopefully boosting kids not a holiday 2022 event at the FDA.
