The world is in the same Covid boat – so why is Africa the scapegoat?

When it comes to Covid, we are all in the same ship. It is sinking.

We are all desperately trying to bail out the water. But those in the Global North have not only hoarded buckets but continue to refuse to share how to make them.

The ship is listing badly to one side if it goes under, we all will go down together.

Instead of taking ethical responsibility for their mishandling of the pandemic – particularly in terms of prioritising profits over human misery – Africa instead is offered up as scapegoat.

A scapegoat is meant to carry the sins of others – blameless, it is nonetheless blamed.

Unethical behaviour includes vaccine hoarding, refusing to waive intellectual property rights, and not sharing technology so as to ensure profit despite the unrelenting and ongoing death toll of the pandemic.

Coupled with this is the ongoing inability to regulate social media which has disseminated disinformation around vaccines since the digital outrage economy remains highly profitable.

Declaring a premature victory against Covid based on high vaccination rates in a few privileged countries was pure idiocy, but great populist politics.

The UK, against all reason and science, lifted mask mandates, and actively encouraged crowds to be packed cheek-by-jowl into sports and other venues.

As winter neared and the superspreader events continued, cases shot up – and not only in Britain. It was quite evident Christmas would have to be cancelled – yet again.

At just this time, brilliant South African scientists discovered the Omicron variant. The travel ban hid the unpalatable reintroduction of hated rules and mandates.

Politics 101 demands a villain upon which a weary populace can hate. The UK travel response may well be a knee-jerk panicked reaction, but it also provided an opportunity for a deft and dishonourable shifting of the narrative to blame the victim.

We do not yet know if Omicron is more infectious, more deadly, more immune evasive or all three.

What we know is that variants were entirely predictable and hence preventable with the right tools. But this would have meant pledging to ensure coverage for all and not just those in high income countries.

As to why we found it – when you are searching for variants of concern, it is not a numbers game – every variant is initially only a tiny fraction of a percent.

Here, we have a laser-like focus and network of dedicated clinicians actively flagging unique symptoms and breakthrough infections for sequencing. It is this that arguably sets SA apart.

That we detected it does not mean it emanated here but that HIV/Aids is a harsh teacher. Mutations are inevitable. Time is a precious resource.

Omicron could turn out to be the mutant virus scientists have feared but the most chilling aspect of the Covid responses is that even the most herculean scientific endeavours are utterly humbled by human behaviour.

We do not know if Omicron was incubated in a single, severely immune-compromised individual, or has been circulating in those many countries without genomic surveillance, or has emanated from an animal host.

But we know that the support for profit above people – Pfizer is estimated to make $36 billion (about R581 billion) from vaccine sales – prevented timely supply to other countries and enabled the rise of mutations.

It is disingenuous to point out that SA has said – accurately – there is enough supply given the vastness of our terrain and the difficulty of accessing remote areas with vaccines that need to be super-cold.

But SA had to wait six anxious months for vaccines while the global North cornered the supply.

Imagine if the distribution of the vaccines was as easy as the proliferation of lies on social media?

The narrative around vaccine hesitancy is similarly problematic.

Imagine if the US was informed they did not deserve to receive so many vaccines because so many of their citizens are antivaxxers or because it is their technology companies that are the primary vectors for vaccine disinformation?

The gross inequity in timely supply and IP and technology hoarding is more than a catastrophic moral failure. This failure has baked in the potential to derail current vaccine efforts.

There is no grim satisfaction to be taken in the panic of the well-resourced since it affects us, one and all. We are all still in the same boat. It’s still sinking.

And the horror is – what if the buckets that used to work, are no longer fit for purpose?

But there yet remains, as always, hope.

The slave trade was outlawed by Britain precisely when it was most profitable as a direct result of the moral outrage of the British public.

Although it was against their economic self-interest, this crime against humanity was abolished.

Vaccine apartheid deserves the same fate.

Kathryn Kure is a member of Creative Commons and advocates for open sharing