From UnHerd's The Post, December 6:
This continent has bigger problems than CovidIn the past two weeks, Africa has once again come under attack from global public health policy. First, numerous countries barred travel from Southern Africa because of the Omicron variant — even though this was only discovered through South Africa’s outstanding epidemiological expertise and was already present elsewhere. And now Tony Blair has launched his own fusillade, demanding a new Africa policy to ensure the “ability to get Covid vaccines into people’s arms”.
Why does Blair think we need his leadership? Africa is made up of sovereign states. Nevertheless, the former PM is constantly popping up to “advise” countries that he feels are not following “correct Covid plans”, most recently as a “special Covid emissary” to Tanzania. It should be up to African countries to determine their own public health goals, and Covid-19 is far from the most serious public health concern in Africa today.
In his article Blair states that without full vaccination “[in] the poorly vaccinated parts of the world the virus will continue to mutate, eventually spreading beyond a country’s borders”. Which begs the question: do Western countries fear that Africans will die of Covid, or rather that they will infect them with Covid? It seems more about the latter.
The former Labour leader’s intervention doesn’t seem to have much to do with African public health....
....MUCH MORE
Bringing to mind a similar plea in 2007
Africans to Bono: 'For God's sake please stop!'
Although another comment re: Bono from that same year seemed rather wistful:
Chicago Economists to Aid Inflation-Weary ZimbabweInflation has ravaged this landlocked country in southeastern Africa for decades, but recent events have surprised even hardened observers such as Zanu Nkomo (pronounced "Jim Smith"). "I asked the man at the store how much he charged for a cup of mukaka wakakora (curdled milk)," Nkomo explains. "He said 120,000,000 Zimbabwean dollars, but by the time I got my wallet out, the price had gone up another 30 million."The rate of inflation recently hit its highest level ever, 7,000 percent per year, causing international bodies to seek help from leading academics around the world to stabilize the situation before the country descended into chaos. A group of inflation fighters from the economics department at the University of Chicago has stepped into the breach, offering hope that the country may be able to reverse its current course with an infusion of market discipline.
"We were hoping for Bono," says Nkende Masvingo, referring to the rock singer who has made sub-Saharan poverty his personal crusade, "but they sent us Gary Becker because U2 was on tour."
Becker, the winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in Economics, will lead a "dream team" including Steven Levitt, co-author of the best-selling pop economics book "Freakonomics", that will set up camp in this city, the nation's capital. "First, we need to understand the situation," said Becker...
