There have been over 5 million COVID deaths worldwide, but one continent that defied expectations was Africa.
Last year, health officials predicted millions would die in Africa from COVID, but instead, the continent has a death rate (161.26 per million population) lower than the world average (653.52 per million population), and Africa is described by the World Health as being “one of the least affected regions in the world” in its weekly pandemic reports.
According to a recent report from the Associated Press, COVID-19 seems to have become a thing of the past. In Zimbabwe, for example, only 33 new cases and zero deaths were recorded last week.
Fewer than 6 percent of the African continent has been vaccinated.
Naturally, the experts are baffled.
“Africa doesn’t have the vaccines and the resources to fight COVID-19 that they have in Europe and the U.S., but somehow they seem to be doing better,” said Wafaa El-Sadr, chair of global health at Columbia University.
According to the AP, “Some researchers say the continent’s younger population — the average age is 20 versus about 43 in Western Europe — in addition to their lower rates of urbanization and tendency to spend time outdoors, may have spared it the more lethal effects of the virus so far.”
However, some studies are looking into other possible explanations.
Researchers working in Uganda discovered that COVID-19 patients were less likely to experience severe symptoms or death if they had high rates of exposure to malaria.
“We went into this project thinking we would see a higher rate of negative outcomes in people with a history of malaria infections because that’s what was seen in patients co-infected with malaria and Ebola,” said Jane Achan, a senior research advisor at the Malaria Consortium and a co-author of the study. “We were actually quite surprised to see the opposite — that malaria may have a protective effect.”
The link between nations with high rates of malaria and lower rates of COVID death and less severe symptoms was observed in the early weeks of the pandemic. What was Africa doing differently?
Interestingly, Africa has been using chloroquine (CQ) and hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) as an early treatment.
A study published in April 2020 in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene warned that, “there is currently no evidence that CQ or HCQ, two low-cost drugs for which we have extensive experience for treatment of malaria and rheumatic disorders, has beneficial effects on the clinical course of COVID-19 patients,” and then warned that, “the off-label use of CQ and HCQ to prevent or treat COVID-19 in Africa and elsewhere must be viewed with greatest caution, considering potential serious toxicities and benefit versus risk. If the effectiveness of these and other drugs is established in global trials, therapeutics for COVID-19 will require further operational evaluation in Africa.”
Because of the high rates of malaria in Africa, CQ and HCQ are widely available there and have been used to treat malaria for decades. It’s a cheap, off-patent drug, that was unfortunately highly politicized in the early weeks of the pandemic because President Trump cited a study showing it was potentially a gamechanger in the fight against COVID.
Unfortunately, Democrats cared more about defeating Trump in the election than saving lives, and fueled hysteria against the drugs. Anyone touting the drug’s potential was silenced, including doctors. Many peer-reviewed studies have shown that HCQ contributes to less severe symptoms and lower mortality when administered early. Unfortunately, those studies were ignored while studies that claimed HCQ caused higher mortality were given wide coverage in the media… and some turned out to be bogus.
Imagine how many lives might have been saved had we really been “in this together” instead of so many being “in this to get Trump.”
Or Maybe, just maybe the people who recorded all of the Covid deaths and cases exaggerated the numbers… by thousands of percent.
Exactly…I don’t believe anything the government says…
So True and everyone that died it was recorded as Covid for the big hospital backout
Should be payout sorry for my typo
What exactly has to happen for you to accept any semblance of reality. Are you saying that there were no real covid deaths?
Not a chance, you fucking moron traitor. Shut the fuck up.
Africa is clearly smarter than the morons who run the US
My feelings exactly and a stolen election has major consequences
What stolen election? Your just a loser like the idiot trump that did nothing right to get elected, and now continues to capture your weak mind with this BS. He’s a traitor. Nothing less. We know that. So stop attaching your life to him because he’s proven to us for almost 6 years now that he could give a rats ass about any of us.
If memory serves me? Aren’t those two drugs the very ones that President Trump championed in the very beginning?
President trump never “championed” a thing. He avoided it to this day, (of course he secretly got his vaccine as soon as he could), and brought us way deeper into it than we needed to go. But he simply refused to do any of his job.
Researchers working in Uganda discovered that COVID-19 patients were less likely to experience severe symptoms or death if they had high rates of exposure to malaria.
And there is the anti-malaria drug ivermectin.
Of course Big Pharma cannot allow lives to be saved when there is money to be made off murdering people with the COVID Faux-Xi virus
Jesus Christ are you stupid. So you’re saying that the entire world is in on a conspiracy to hide a known drug (or malaria?) from I guess the rest of us so they could pretend we had a pandemic? You’re kidding right? Stuff just goes in your ears and right out your mouth? What exactly is your idea here?
Please attempt to remain civil in your arguments. Ugly profanity does not increase the power of one’s reasoning.
Simple, existing treatments already existed, & were being used worldwide for Covid-19 before our vaccines were hurriedly put into arms. The facts are the facts, & when one ignorantly shouts that ACTION should be taken, as if nothing was already being done, the question to be asked then is why our advanced nation was so unaware (read as: unaccepting) of extant effective treatments. The answer to that rests either in extreme American ELITISM (follow the $$), or extreme American STUPIDITY. Please be willing to accept the fact that anything used to consolidate power over the Individual, in the hands of the “elected” few, must be viewed as a threat to self-determination. Even if that thing seems to work to your advantage at the moment, it will not always be so, & who will be left to protect YOUR right to self-determination? Be careful what you seem to wish for. I’d take care whom you curse today as well. They may be the only ones who care to fight for YOUR Constitutional freedoms.