So finally, a COVID-19 vaccine is here. It has been approved for use in little Britain. What has not died is the raucous that its approval has generated, least of all in the United Kingdom. Usually, when people in the real world talk, not only do people in Trump-classified shithole nations pay attention, they try to steal the conversation.
That is why anyone who says beggars have no choice has never encountered a Nigerian policeman at a roadblock. Whenever it becomes obvious that a corrupt officer has lost his right to extortion, he switches to diplomacy. Y’ll hear stuff like, ‘Oga oya show appreciation’.
As far as we know, the closest we got to having a COVID-19 vaccine was tripping over a certain distant cousin of ours named in the development of one. It’s a phenomenon known in Nigerian parlance as famzing! Well, we have jumped from that pedestal into riding the conspiracy train.
You can’t blame us. At the height of the global pandemic in March, we listened to the blind clairvoyance of gods of men who swore by their stained collars that the virus was the result of the global 5G-infrastructure switch. The tragedy is, PhD holders are caught in this imbecilic conspiracy theory.
Incidentally, Nigeria is yet to join the 5G networks, maybe that explains why some people think that COVID-19 is a mild form of malaria. Fast-forward 10 months; Kogi State is still coronavirus free! Yahaya Bello thinks that qualifies him to occupy Aṣọ Rock. You can’t blame him for dreaming wild, in a country where Buhari is president!
The first COVID-19 vaccination started this morning in some parts of the United Kingdom. Little Britain is trying to regain lost grounds from the Great Britain that colonised Nigeria and a third of the globe at a time. But if you are a frequent traveller to London, one simple request from friends and family is to bring the odd paracetamol! Why when we make that stuff here? The reason is that avarice has taken integrity out of available medications.
It is annoying that the Nigerian sceptic buys into the puerile argument that the new vaccine is not safe for human use. They arrived at that conclusion after becoming captive audience of blind seers and rabid sceptics who think that the ‘white man’ is on the verge of creating a new world order aimed at turning the rest of humanity into robots. These captive audiences of robotic indoctrination believe that global leaders have connived with vaccine producers to embed chips into every vial of the serum. The vaccine then turns recipients into unthinking humanoids.
Some of the foreign sceptics claim to be scientists. But they were sleeping on their lobotomised brains when their productive counterparts were busy finding reprieve for a world captured by an unseen virus. The difference between them and their cut and paste followers in Africa is that they live in countries with effective and efficient health care facilities. Their rote sceptics have relatives who travel 30 kilometres to get to a cottage hospital where an auxiliary nurse takes the place of a qualified doctor.
The science is as convincing to me as swallowing two tablets of paracetamol for a nagging headache. The bad side of a vaccine is as bad as swallowing paracetamol for a brain aneurysm. RNA, short for ribonucleic acid, works in the body by replacing a DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) that a virus such as SARS/COVID clings to. It teaches the body’s defence mechanisms to fight an invading virus and dispels its particles in the body in the same way a functional digestive system dispels of faecal matter after it has extracted the nutrients in our food. Old vaccines work when a weakened form of the virus is introduced into the body to stimulate this response. COVID infection does not guarantee immunity!
It is insane to think that a vial of vaccine has an embedded genetic code that alters natural DNA and renders its victim soporific. A cook does not get inebriated because his master drinks vodka. It’s insane to propagate these theories to unsuspecting people who could be vulnerable to COVID-19. Yes, money has been made from developing vaccines, just as it is being made from developing and modernising vehicles. Those who decapitate other people’s intellectual sweat, replacing it with ‘copied’ would find it difficult to understand the science of this.
So far, over 1.5 million humans have succumbed to SARS/ COVID-19 virus globally. They did not commit suicide. They had the desire to live. In the months since it was first discovered, 64 million humans have been infected out of which 45 million have recovered. Some of these people have been infected twice, showing that even infection does not confer immunity. The safest way to combat it is through vaccines. Vaccines trigger natural immunity. Time would tell whether such immunity would be lifelong or seasonal, only the living would know.
Happily, Africa has been spared the deadly impact of this virus, even then, to deny its impact is to live in a fool’s cocoon. The numbers tell the story. This is not a joke. It is a pandemic – meaning an epidemic of global proportion, one that has knocked down the economies of established societies and paralysed the globe. The only way up is to immunise people.
COVID-19 is unchartered territory and its antidote could not have been projected. The trials are period because the world could not wait for extermination to do something. The new RNA vaccine has been tested on people of colour (40% of volunteer), and on vulnerable groups. It is not recommended for pregnant mothers and people with very rare diseases, but it is clinically safe.
Nations with the capacity to buy into it have older people and frontline workers on their priority list. That’s the best way to preserve strapped health care facilities.
In Africa, we denigrate or refuse this vaccine at our own peril. It is unimaginable that in the face of a global pandemic, a people without the means of tackling malaria subscribe to conspiracy theories. In Nigeria, we know that anything capable of grounding Muhammadu Buhari’s planes for 10 months should be taken seriously.
Our attitude to this vaccine is that of a hungry unwanted guest that shows up at a dinner table, telling his hosts that he doesn’t like the meal served. Our leaders are at the back of the queue, hoping they’ll be remembered when the honoured guests have been served.
It is safe to keep hoping that COVID-19 spares our continent its virulence. If it hits us with half the fury with which it has hit some developed nations, there’ll be nothing left of us. Our governments have invested nothing in the development of this vaccine; our citizens should shut up and hope that when the children have been served, the crumbs would fall from the table. The road ahead has a signal – take the vaccine or face annihilation. This is not a police roadblock where beggars make the rules.
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