by The countries in southern Africa are not especially pleased with the rest of the world. This is due to the travel bans being put in place restricting travel to and from a number of southern African nations as a result of the Omicron variant of COVID-19.
Probably no country is as pissed off as South Africa. President Cyril Ramaphosa was especially angry calling the travel restrictions “unjustified and discriminatory.” He went on to add:
“The prohibition of travel is not informed by science, nor will it be effective in preventing the spread of this variant. The only thing the prohibition on travel will do is to further damage the economies of the affected countries and undermine their ability to respond to, and recover from, the pandemic,” Ramaphosa said on Sunday.
Travel and tourism were finally getting back on their feet in South Africa after being crushed by COVID-19 in 2020. This is especially true for the safari industry. For example, with the US ban on visitors from South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique among others, outfitters and safari companies will not be able to send representatives to major conventions in January such as those of the Dallas Safari Club and Safari Club International.
Spike.T, who is a regular on the Africahunting.com forums and who lives in Zambia, posted this somewhat satirical account of the Omicron variant and the world’s reaction.
“In just 48hrs everything just went upside down, looking at all the updates and social media posts I could not help but write the below outlining the absurd response from the countries. Maybe some of them will realize what has actually transpired.”
South Africa: Hey guys, look what we discovered in our labs while researching Covid19 variants and mutations
World: What??
SA: It’s a new variant of Covid19, seems to be different than others, lets work together and study it further.
World: What? You have a new variant of Covid19?!?!
SA: No, we just found a way to ‘identify’ a new variant, it seems it has also already been detected in Hong Kong, Israel and Botswana.
UK: Hey guys, no offence but we already have 45,000 cases a day, don’t wear a mask everywhere, allow large gathering however we cannot risk getting a new variant.
SA: But we just identified it and showed you guys how to check for this variant, it did not originate here. We have advanced labs because we do research on AIDS, TB and other communicable diseases.
UK: Thank you for the research, however a complete travel ban to you and your 5 neighbors.
Netherlands: We heard UK banned flights to you because you have the new variant, we are also imposing a ban to you and your neighbors!
Namibia: WTF! What did we do? We have less than 20 new cases a day since a month now!
EU: Guys, we have a situation in our hands.
Namibia: The situation where Germany has had 76,000 cases a day and Other countries are breaking daily records for cases?
EU: No, not that situation.
Lesotho: Is it that UK still has 40,000+ cases a day and doesn’t seem to have it under control?
EU: No, UK isn’t a part of us anymore, not our concern.
Malawi: We hear Poland has some serious rise in cases and hospitalizations
EU: Really?! We have no idea, we must look into it. But not what we are talking about.
Eswatini: What situation then?
EU: We heard that South Africa has a new variant, their numbers are rising rapidly and since some of you are next to them, we need to close travel to the region with immediate effect!
SA: Dude, we just identified it! We only have a few cases in the region. Especially when compared to what you guys have. What’s with the knee-jerk reaction?
Namibia: Knee-jerk, that’s the word we were looking for.
UAE: We are closing flights to Southern Africa, we don’t want to risk it. Sorry guys.
USA: We are looking into this and studying the variant, we wont ban flights yet.
SA: Thank you USA, finally a voice of reason!
Mauritius: Sorry SA and the variant group, I saw some other countries refer to you as that, we are friends and all but we are concerned about our tourism and economy, so we will also ban you guys for now until we know further.
SA: We thought you were family. Goes to show how money is more important!
Belgium: We already have 1 new case of the new variant, thanks a lot SA.
SA: We literally just showed you how to identify it.
UK: Thanks a lot SA, now we also have 2 cases of it.
SA: What about our vaccinated people?
World: Nope, we need to run tests first and figure out what this virus can do and how effective the vaccination is against it.
WHO: Hey guys, a quick question. The next Greek alphabet is ‘Xi’. What do we do? China? Are you here?
China: Don’t you dare! Leave us and our president out of it. Call it something else. And we don’t allow anyone in anyway, so the variant is not our concern.
WHO: We got it boss. It’s now called Omicron.
WHO: Sorry we meant Sir. China isn’t our boss.
SA: It’s true what they say, no good deed goes unpunished. The next time we won’t tell you guys about the next mutations or variants we find.
World: Sorry can’t hear you, too busy dealing with the outbreak that you caused. How about we talk about this later?
Namibia: It’s the weekend, lets braai & go camping and let the world figure this one out themselves, we are still open to everyone. And if you wish to travel here, ask your leaders to start thinking before making decisions.
To be continued…..
Written by Nrupesh Soni.
I know there is great fear about COVID-19. While I am neither a scientist nor an epidemiologist, it seems that this strain may be more transmissible but on the ground reports indicate that the symptoms tend to be less severe. We shall see but I really hope that we don’t head into another round of lockdowns or even Australian-style concentration camps.
That is super funny. In a creepy distopian way, of course.
They do have a point… sigh
Great to see some humo(u)r regarding the YUK’s position. However the response to Omicron is horrible. This virus is here to stay and we should encourage people to learn to live with it, protect the most vulnerable, and treat the most seriously ill. Everyone else should just get on with it, like they do with the ‘flu every year. I don’t hear a single word about what is really important, which is whether the latest horror variant is mutated in its T-cell epitopes, which is where protection really lies. COVID control, like gun control, is about the control, not the COVID.
For those reading this comment, I should note that ScotShot holds a PhD in immunology and knows of what he speaks.
I would point you to a guest post by him from here from last year.
https://onlygunsandmoney.com/2020/05/31/the-sars-cov-2-pandemic-has-given-us-two-very-successful-experiments-in-social-control-one-global-one-national.html
Our local paper ran an article about how 10% of teachers in our school districts around the county got a religious exemption from the vax versus only about 1% who got a medical exemption. Setting aside the fact that the requirements for a medical exemption were so onerous that the only way to get one was to get the first dose and have to be raised from the dead, and even then the recommendation was often that you get the second dose but have medical personnel standing by just in case, the only possible option to keep your job was to apply for a religious exemption. You then had to sit through a meeting where they explained to you that only “sincerely held beliefs” qualified and looked for any indication that maybe you weren’t really serious.
Why am I mentioning this? Because my guess is that the only purpose of running the article is to stir up the pitchforks and torches crowd about the fact that 10% of us are murdering their children under the pretext of ancient superstition. I look forward to next week’s paper in which we will be harangued by the usual suspects who will write in demanding that we be immediately fired and shunned from polite society.
I don’t see this going away any time soon as they seem to be enjoying their efforts to bend us to their will.
So instead of some other name, it’s named after a President of France? Oh, Macron!
Makes as much sense as all of the other panic-epidemic we’ve suffered through.