Lead on Covid Recovery

Great leaders are usually visionary, rarely followers, though good leaders know that they must consult widely.

West Africa has mostly skirted the Covid-19 pandemic, not just because of the fantastic job of managing the pandemic, which may have been in some cases, but more from the public’s attitude to the disease which is now mostly apathetic; however, the true nature of our escape appears to be mainly through a convergence of issues that have brought about certain advantages to the public, such as the presence of malaria antigens in the body, the close presence and consumption of animals, that carry the zoonotic virus, as well as recurrence of zoonotic diseases such as malaria, dengue, cholera, e-coli, salmonella infection, typhoid, psittacosis, etc.; the geographic advantage of the region with its weather, sunlight and particularly high temperature as well as the extremely poor health care systems all seem to have converged to harden most people against this latest threat to humanity and may have  mitigated the severest of consequences, which is now contributing to the unfortunate attitude of the public taking the pandemic for granted and must be viewed from the lens of our extremely low vaccination rates.

In West Africa, the people have already concluded that the international measures at curbing the disease are not appropriate to them and have essentially disregarded the many protocols such as mask wearing, social distancing and vaccination with minimal impact to themselves. Unless the numbers are lying, the CNN impact seems to be at variance with reality on the ground. We look at the numbers; Spain 8.42M infections and 90.0k deaths, Italy 8.79M infections, 141k deaths, Nigeria 251K infections, 3k deaths, Ghana 154K infections, 1.3k deaths and South Africa 3.56M infections, 93k deaths and we see all the above playing out; and finally, we need to examine these deaths variance with the Pre-Covid annual death rates by effect and disease?

The people appear have themselves downgrade the Covid-19 diseases to endemic than a pandemic and most have reverted to prior lifestyles of essentially traditional commerce and close contact, interactions, of course we hear of people dying daily, but the numbers don’t seem to shock and are more relatable to the natural state of things. The people and their leaders appear to be speaking at each other, rather than to each other and an apparent disconnect appears to exist between public health policy and public attitude. One can certainly argue that West Africa better managed the disease than many of its international counterparts and that West African can lead on the issue of post-Covid pandemic recovery, and this is where leadership comes in.

Spain is pushing Europe to downgrade the pandemic to an epidemic with the aim of balancing the economic consequences of the multi-year impact of the diseases, and despite West Africa’s success, by the act of man or God, it appears that its leaders are ignoring the  signs and are disconnected with the public;  rather, West African governments appear to be waiting for a cue from the West, while pushing international mandates with limited success and which appear to be out of touch with the reality of the disease on the ground.

My summary is that it is time for African leaders to demonstrate leadership on this global issue, it is time to lead the global post-Covid economic recovery, particularly for their region and to improve the lives of citizens. It is also necessary to better educate the the public on managing the diseases through vaccination, safety protocols and enhanced public health policy. It is necessary to correct the ideas that vaccination prevents bothe getting and spreading covid as that information is probably a leading cause of spread as well as rejection of vaccines and inform that the vaccine merely mitigates the worst consequences. 

The time to sit and follow must end, we now have better understanding of the disease, we have vaccines and medicines. It is time to recognize that coronaviruses are here to stay, and we must adopt our lifestyles to coping with them. Enough hostage taking.

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