World’s pettiness, biggest obstacle in dealing with Omicron

When the Omicron variant of the Coronavirus was identified by South Africa in late-November, some of the top nations were quick to blame and ostracise parts of Africa – clearly showing that the raging pandemic has done little to unite the world to fight for a common cause.

Irrational decisions and a recourse to panic-inducing policy moves have, ironically,  exposed the soft irrational core of  countries in Europe and in North America that otherwise lead the world in scientific advancement.

It took a while for the medical establishment in Johannesburg to respond to the “attack” from the West that has all but stigmatised nations in Africa. Two days after the Omicron was identified the UK, on November 27, triggered a travel ban to South Africa and a few other nations in sub-Saharan Africa. The US and Israel soon followed UK’s example while the latest is Australia.

This, despite the fact that it has been convincingly proved that such travel bans have not helped in the past, as in the case of the earlier Delta variant which today reportedly is present everywhere across the globe.

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As of December 1, the Omicron was already present in at least 24 countries, says the World Health Organisation (WHO). Cases are emerging every day including in India of people infected by Omicron who have had no record of travel anywhere,  leave alone Africa.

The scientific establishment in South Africa has had to aggressively appear in public and defend the country stating all they did was identify the Omicron variant (B.1.1.529) and that it may have already existed in other countries. Why punish the country for being transparent and efficient in identifying a new strain, they asked.

The Omicron variant is being examined. In the next few weeks, the world will know how potent it is and whether it will beat the virulent Delta variant that caused havoc in India and around the world earlier this year.

The point of this piece is not the Omicron itself. The more ominous takeaway is the toxic reaction from the rest of the world, especially by the so-called developed nations. The pandemic has laid bare the political differences and the coloniser mindset, petty to say the least that have stymied joint action against the unprecedented degree of threat and destruction unleashed on humans by the Coronavirus.

Remember the top-notch global do-gooder Bill Gates and his assertion in April this year that he wouldn’t advice vaccine knowhow to be shared with developing countries. In an interview to UK’s SkyNews, Bill Gates was asked if it would help to change intellectual property law to enable “the recipe for these vaccines to be shared.” The Microsoft founder simply said, “no”. He added that it may be a novel idea to move vaccine manufacture from the US to India, but that would happen only if his Foundation willed it. And, he wouldn’t want that.

It is no surprise, therefore, that a country like India has not had the benefit of vaccine technology of the mRNA variety as the makers Pfizer and Moderna put forth an impractical condition – asking for sovereign indemnity against side-effects. India, incidentally, has never granted such indemnity to anyone so far.

The outbreak of COVID-19, and the subsequent spread in early 2020 set off a spate of rumours that it was part of a Chinese attempt to wage biological warfare on the rest of the world. The then US president Donald Trump called it the “China virus” starting off a vicious trend of virus-shaming Beijing.

Taken in by Trump’s tendentious description, individuals from the Chinese and south-east Asians were racially targeted across several parts of the United States and there was a clamour to sequester China from the rest of the world. The accusations cooled down when it was discovered that the US itself had been partnering China in a virology project and it too would have to had share the blame for the pandemic if the allegation against Beijing was proved.

Nearly two years since the outbreak of the pandemic the finger-pointing at Beijing has not exactly stopped, but there is a constant attempt to blame countries for the spread of the virus.  The mutation of the Coronavirus, like all viruses, is beyond anyone’s control and as the world has seen and experienced, by the time a potent variant starts its journey around the world, it is too late for anyone to actually stem its spread.

India too came under the scanner earlier this year when the B.1.167 variant went rampaging across the country. It was initially called the Indian variant. Before it got entrenched in scientific vocabulary, the government in New Delhi objected and the world relented, instead calling it the delta variant.

As Omicron shows, while the learning curve has been exponential since the outbreak in late-2019, epidemiologists and doctors are still grappling with the fundamentals of the COVID virus and disease.  If vaccines are an example of what the world can do when it cooperates across political borders,  the continued spread is in part due to the steep divisions that governments have been unable to bridge.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations have cried hoarse asking governments around the world to unite and fight the virus. While to some extent the world has cooperated, helping in the creation of a vaccine in record speed there are still large issues to be resolved. The uneven distribution of vaccines, for example, has only exacerbated the problem.

Logistics, internal demand in various countries on governments to take care of their own citizens first are issues that are understandable. But quirky decisions like the United Kingdom not recognising vaccines given in India have only added to the already messy situation.  Similarly, the needless non-recognition of vaccine certificates issues in India,  has caused mutual animosity.

Also read: Did wily Omicron pick up cold virus genes to attack humans easily?

There was no rationale for vaccine discrimination, especially since Covishield, the dominant vaccine in India, was actually developed in the UK in cooperation with an Indian private manufacturer. The British government eventually relented but the mindset of advanced countries in continuing to see the developing nations as inferior has unnecessarily opened up old fault lines of resentment and outrage.

For the Omicron, such differences and ego-issues among various nations is good news as the variant can merrily spread causing one traumatic wave after another. As for us, the victims, it is abundantly clear that something extraordinary needs to be done by the world for the Coronavirus to be effectively neutralised. The response to Omicron has, sadly, shown we are nowhere near achieving this.