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Africa has defied the covid-19 nightmare scenarios. We shouldn’t be surprised.
After the novel coronavirus first appeared in Africa in late February, Ghana’s government decided it would take no chances. Ghanaian citizens were soon put under lockdown, and travel between major cities was banned. Then President Nana Akufo-Addo announced the closure of the country’s land and sea borders.
At the time, my dad was in Ghana visiting family, and he faced the prospect of being stuck until commercial flights resumed. As experts predicted how the pandemic would be a unique and devastating disaster in Africa, my siblings and I scrambled to get my father a spot on a State Department repatriation flight for U.S. citizens. We rushed to get him out because we thought he would be better off in the United States.
But after he got back to Texas, the number of cases there started to rise, and I joked with him that he would have been safer in Ghana. “Ghana is doing much better with this than America,” he had said after I picked him up from the airport, amused that I sprayed down the entire car with disinfectant before making him sit in the back seat, away from me.
News reports and opinion articles have posited that corruption and a lack of health-care infrastructure meant that Africa was a “time bomb” waiting to explode. Rampant poverty and a lack of effective governance would cause the dark continent to fall apart under the weight of a public health emergency. The world, the experts said, should prepare to offer aid, loans and debt forgiveness to African governments — in other words, they should prepare to save Africa.
No need.
While so much about the virus and how it operates remains unclear, sub-Saharan Africa so far has dodged a deadly wave of coronavirus cases. Many factors have contributed to this. A number of West African nations already had a pandemic response infrastructure in place from the Ebola outbreak of late 2013 to 2016. Just six years ago, Liberia lost nearly 5,000 people to Ebola. At the beginning of this year, Liberia began screening for covid-19 at airports. Travelers coming in from countries with more than 200 cases were quarantined. To date, Liberia, a country of some 5 million, has 1,335 cases and around 82 deaths.
After the Ebola pandemic, Senegal set up an emergency operations center to manage public health crises. Some covid-19 test results come back in 24 hours, and the country employs aggressive contact tracing. Every coronavirus patient is given a bed in hospital or other health-care facility. Senegal has a population of 16 million, but has only 302 registered deaths. Several countries have come up with innovations. Rwanda, a country of 12 million, also responded early and aggressively to the virus, using equipment and infrastructure that was in place to deal with HIV/AIDS. Testing and treatment for the virus are free. Rwanda has recorded only 26 deaths.
As the United States approaches 200,000 deaths, the West seems largely blind to Africa’s successes. In recent weeks, headline writers seem to be doing their hardest to try to reconcile Western stereotypes about Africa with the reality of the low death rates on the continent. The BBC came under fire for a since-changed headline and a tweet that read “Coronavirus in Africa: Could poverty explain mystery of low death rate?” The New York Post published an article with the headline, “Scientists can’t explain puzzling lack of coronavirus outbreaks in Africa.”
It’s almost as if they are disappointed that Africans aren’t dying en masse and countries are not collapsing. While Black Americans have been disproportionately contracting covid-19 and dying, Africa’s performance shows, as I quoted a Kenyan anthropologist saying in May, “being a black person in this world doesn’t kill you, but being a black person in America clearly can.”
This pandemic has coincided with a global movement challenging anti-Black racism and white supremacy. This should have been a moment for media outlets to challenge corrosive narratives about Africa and the idea that Africans are not capable of effective policy-making. We could be learning from the experiences that Africans and their governments have had with pandemics and viral diseases, including Ebola and AIDS.
Instead, the media has largely ignored the policy successes out of Africa. In doing so, Western media is reinforcing colonial narratives of Black inferiority and the inability of Black nations to govern themselves at all, much less govern better than resource-rich White nations.
None of this is to say there have not been missteps and challenges on the continent. In countries such as Kenya, police officers have used coronavirus restrictions as a cover to escalate police brutality against citizens — police killed 15 people while enforcing curfew restrictions. Misinformation has spread online, making things harder for health-care professionals.
But overall, African countries have made great efforts to contain the coronavirus, and citizens so far have escaped the nightmare predictions. African lives have been saved thanks to the hard work of many dedicated health-care workers and the collective responsibility of communities.
In this global pandemic, Africa’s success stories matter more than ever.
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White House Overrules “No-Sail Ban” Despite Cruise Ships Being Hotbeds of COVID
Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), was overruled by other members of President Trump’s coronavirus task force over whether a “no-sail ban” on cruise ships should continue for another four months, apparently thwarting a public health expert’s understanding and concern about COVID-19 in favor of appeasing the cruise ship industry.
The current no-sail ban was set to expire on Wednesday, although an industry-imposed ban may continue through October 31. The decision by the task force appears to be the latest example of the Trump administration overruling scientific experts to push for a policy that seeks a return to “normalcy” despite there being no signs of the pandemic slowing down.
Some public health officials believe that the lifting of the cruise ban may have been politically motivated, Axios reported, in order to garner support from the cruise ship industry, particularly in Florida, a contentious swing state in this year’s presidential race. The White House has denied that politics played a role in its decision.
An official within the White House said that industry heads are set to meet soon with the administration in order to hammer out details on how to return to business, to “describe their transformation and dozens of ways that they will mitigate risk and ensure public health.” If the administration is not satisfied with that plan, that official explained, the ban will continue on a month-to-month basis.
But it’s highly unlikely the Trump administration will thwart the wishes of the cruise ship executives. Early on in the coronavirus pandemic, when it was clear that cruise ships were hotspots for the spread of infection, industry executives lobbied hard to push against the possibility of a ban, even meeting at the beginning of March with Vice President Mike Pence in Florida to dissuade him from the need for such restrictions. The CDC eventually imposed a no-sail ban on March 14.
Cruise ships were deemed largely responsible for the spread of COVID-19 during the early weeks of the pandemic. One study from the CDC found that, between February 3 and March 13, 17 percent of all coronavirus cases known in the U.S. involved individuals who had recently been on a cruise.
The current ban set to expire on Wednesday was itself an extension that was implemented last month by the CDC. A report released by the CDC simultaneously noted that 38,000 hours had been dedicated to dealing with the 99 outbreaks of COVID-19 on 123 cruise liners in U.S. waters.
The report stated in no uncertain terms that there would be “substantial unnecessary risk” to health care workers, port personnel and federal employees if the ban was lifted — not to mention a great deal of risk to the health of passengers and crew members working on the ships.
The White House’s decision to go against Redfield’s recommendations on continuing the cruise ship ban through February next year comes days after the CDC director was reported to have been overheard disparaging Scott Atlas, Trump’s most favored and controversial coronavirus adviser. Atlas, a neuroradiologist and frequent guest on Fox News holds dangerous beliefs about how to best combat the disease and is known for pushing theories about herd immunity and disputing the need for the use of masks in public spaces despite his lack of expertise in epidemiology.
“Everything he says is false,” Redfield reportedly said on the phone to an unknown listener during a flight from Atlanta to Washington, D.C.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/tourism-cruises/article246112595.html
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Oh my 
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Yikes
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Day 1351
Hope Hicks tested negative for COVID-19 Wednesday morning, so she boarded AF1. She developed symptoms during the day and received a second test, which came back positive. The White House knew about this Wed evening but Trump still had a fundraiser Thursday.
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We all knew that this nearly-exact sequence of events was completely inevitable, right? My roommate told me the news earlier after I heard him cheer from the other room like he’d won money.
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The number of positive tests are racking up. So far a Senator on the Judiciary committee and the president of Notre Dame… both at the Saturday announcement of ACB as nominee.
And now the RNC Chairwoman.
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Morons.
Michigan Supreme Court Rules Against Governor’s Emergency Powers
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Trump making crazy claims again, and being debunked.
Trump echoed his earlier false claims that Covid-19 was comparable in lethality to the flu on Tuesday, which experts say is much less deadly than coronavirus.
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Restaurant staffers in quarantine after working Trump fundraiser - CBS News
Thirteen workers at a Minneapolis steakhouse were quarantining after the restaurant catered a private fundraiser attended by President Donald Trump during his visit to Minnesota last week, the restaurant said Monday.
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Dumb and callous.
President Trump said he is shutting down negotiations for a new coronavirus economic relief bill and won’t support a new stimulus package until after the election.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-06/trump-tells-his-team-to-stop-talks-on-fiscal-stimulus-package
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He’s such a recalcitrant…why would he play into Nancy Pelosi’s hand as he is perceiving i?
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Reactions to T not moving ahead with another CARES package
addding
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RE: Cares package negotiation from Politico Reporter Jake Sherman
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Top White House aide Stephen Miller tests positive for Covid-19
Stephen Miller tests positive for COVID-19
Stephen Miller tests positive for COVID-19
I know some cages he can quarantine in.
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What is postponing the stimulus package until after the election supposed to do? I honestly do not understand this. This makes no sense. None. This is his chance to say he’s seen the light on his own terms and go “You want $2T? How about $3T? Democrats WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW” and make the rest of the GOP look like assholes if they don’t comply. This is his chance to be the hero.
Trump loves to showboat, he could have used this stimulus package to win hearts and minds all across the country right before election day, as even the people who hate him would have to give him credit for his generosity on this. He may even have been able to win the election on this alone. When Trump says he won’t look at one till after election day, and Biden says as soon as he’s in office he’ll sign one, Trump loses the upper hand because everyone knows that while Trump’s would have been faster, Biden’s will be better.
He just threw a winning narrative out the window in favor of doubling down to own some libs, and it was such an obvious power play just as the election is ramping up. Like I don’t… these people… arghhhh… just… some internal consistency would be nice.
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