Uganda covid

 

covid in Africa

 

covid information: Ivermectin use in Zimbabwe

 

.....

in the west, it is the sick, elderly, and those with chronic illness such as diabetes or renal failure who are dying.

But in Africa, those HIV positive are at risk.

CDC report from Zambia.

The effect of HIV infection on COVID-19 outcomes is unclear. Studies in South Africa (1) and the United Kingdom (2) found an independent association between HIV infection and COVID-19 mortality; however, other studies have not found an association between poor COVID-19 outcomes and either HIV status among hospitalized patients (3–5) or HIV-associated factors such as CD4 count, viral load, or type of antiretroviral therapy (ART) (6). The effect of HIV infection on COVID-19 outcomes remains an urgent question in sub-Saharan Africa, where many countries are experiencing dual HIV and COVID-19 epidemics, and capacity to treat severe COVID-19 is limited. ... those with severe HIV disease were more likely to develop severe COVID-19 or to die of COVID-19 compared with those with controlled HIV disease.

translation: If you have severe HIV, you are at higher risk. 
If your HIV is under control (e.g. by taking treatment) your risk is normal.

the big problem is keeping HIV positive people taking their anti HIV medicine during the pandemic. 

Mozambique update

 StrategyPage has a summary of terrorism in Mozambique, and the presence of US experts to train the local military.

few Yanks know about their history: all the skilled folks left and the civil war after independence killed a million people (starvation and disease). So the Frelimo communists took over, meaning that they set up an oligarchy to steal everything in sight.

the Muslim uprising here is about the Frelimo oligarchy controlling all the wealth from the new natural gas/oil fields and leaving the locals poor. It is in an area where there are a lot of Muslims, so voila, guess who is willing to help them?

Anyone who noted how this worked out in the rest of Africa realized this was going to make some Mozambique politicians very rich while everyone else remained poor.

 

That got the northern Moslems receptive to calls for rebellion and that led to Islamic terrorists taking the lead, as they often do in Moslem majority areas. It only took a few years for several small Islamic terror groups to get organized and then agree to merge to form the larger Ansar-al-Sunna group. Starting out with less than a hundred gunmen and even more unarmed supporters, it took about four years of fighting, growth and a few spectacular victories for Ansar-al-Sunna to reach nearly a thousand gunmen. At that point the Moslem rebels decided to become an ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) affiliate called ISCAP (Islamic State Central Africa Province).

Terrorism in Mozambique

 StrategyPage discusses the ISIS like Islamic terrorism in Mozambique, that attacked an oil facility.

LINK

several notes: They came from the outside via Tanzania, so are not locals.

The oil facility is bringing in money, but the problem is that they brought in outside help, since such facilities require skilled workers, and locals can't do the job. So there is a resentment against them. 
There are some jobs for locals, but of course they went to the friends and relatives of the local big shots. So as in Nigeria, corruption means local resentment, which facilitates terrorism.

The local anger at the new natural resource bonanza is a common phenomenon in Africa, where most nations with oil or natural gas or any valuable exportable raw material see most of the export income stolen by corrupt politicians. This is the rule, not the exception in Africa. Big promises were made to nearby inhabitants, but governments crippled by corruption fail to deliver the promised benefits. Add the fact that Mozambique’s minority Moslem population is concentrated in the north, to provide the Islamic terrorists with recruits and some local support and you have potential problem. This can create a classic long-term problem sustained by fanatic Islamic terrorists.

this time it's the muslim terrorist vs the French and local corrupt officials etc. 

read the whole article, which relates the sad history of Mozambique and it's many wars... and the Russian/communist history for good or evil is mentioned.

One hopes Biden will not decide to get involved, since this should be Europe's sphere of influence.

And not just Europe:

the Chinese are aware that they could face similar attacks in countries where they have similar facilities... they even have their own Rambo type propaganda film that ends with the promise that China will defend their people no matter what. Heh. in the film he rescues all those Chinese working in a local factory... you mean no locals working/ Well never mind.  But you see the potential problem. Neocolonialism: only skilled workers can develop resources, but locals are not skilled, and the money goes to the corrupt local politicians, a good way to get a war started.

And the reason Angola had so many Cuban soldiers in the olden days was to let the government, run by a minority tribe, get all that lovely loot. And then there is Nigeria....sigh.

 

Sttarting the covid shots

 Reuters article says that Zimbabwe is getting the vaccine from China India, and Russia

the chinese vaccine gives 50 percent protection but China is giving it to a lot of poor countries to push their image of the savior country.

Ironically, the Russian Sputnik vaccine works: It is based on the old fashioned adenovirus type vaccine and reviewed in the British medical literature as being 90 percent effective.

the Indian vaccine is less tested and relies on the old fashioned technology of using an inactivated virus. more info on it's Wikipedia page.

the article says that less than 2000 people have died from Covid, which is a low number given the many other diseases there killing people, for example a large HIV positive population.

Alas, I haven't heard from my friend there in two years: And she never picked up the last two wire money I sent her, so I can't get a first hand report on what is going on.

and now they canceled Australis

The tech companies are blocking mainstream conservative stories, no problem.

But now facebook is saying they will block any news from Australia.

Something to do with their copyright law.  

And Australia investigating them under anti trust laws. 

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/australia-strips-googlefacebook-to

And they are going after google too.

https://youtu.be/Fsu4dQbHKOc

Last month, China tried to bully Australia into submission and lost.

Fertilizer? We don't need no stikin' fertilizer

 that is sarcasm and refers to this meme

in recent years, the Chinese have moved to Africa in search of mineral resources and farmland. 

In Zimbabwe, they took advantage of the self righteous "sanctions" against Mugabe, who "stole" the farm land of the white farmers (who of course had stolen their farm lands a couple of decades ago from the local Africans). But China ignored the sanctions, and was not above giving gifts to move in.

I am ambivalent about Chinese investment: They are neocolonialists when it comes to exploiting the mines (so Chinese exploitation instead of European exploitation) and their shops sell cheap Chinese goods that make local factories uncompetitive (something we see here in the Philippines).

 But China is helping the agricultural sector by introducing modern high yield methods (fertilizer, "green" hybrids and GM hybrids and working with farmers who own their own land, 

and yes, Bill Gates is helping supply the much needed fertilizer in some areas.

this goes against the meme of the powerful "organic" ecology movement. of course who see traditional practices as sustainable and pollution free (just ignore the kids dying of kwashiorkor).

The modern "green revolution" hybrids (that required fertilizer) and especially now the even more productive GM seeds have been discouraged by some governments in Africa, because of powerful NGO's and church groups that believe in the myth that change is bad, and primitive farming methods and tribal customs should not be changed.

NatGeo on China who now has pollution problems (but hey they are feeding their people). But when it comes to Africa, note that one lady scientists said they can't afford it.

“Africa cannot afford massive amounts of fertilizer,” says Sieglinde Snapp, a crop scientist at Michigan State University. A more sustainable approach, she says, is greater reliance on nitrogen-fixing plants.

Summary: Fertilizer? we don't need no stinkin fertilizer. (pun).

 BBC report from 2014.

as for the Chinese takeover/looting of Africa's mineral resources: This is from StrategyPage:

February 3, 2021: China has continued to expand its dominant control of African raw materials. Currently Chinese firms control about 70 percent of Congo’s mineral deposits and mining industry. Chinese state-owned firms own most of this, which includes substantial portions of the global supplies of copper and cobalt. Since 2012 Chinese companies have invested at least $12 billion in Congolese mineral assets.

Some of those billions go to enrich Congolese officials who make possible Chinese ownership and protect it from local or foreign interference. The eagerness to gain control of so much cobalt is driven by Chinese plans to become the major producer of electric vehicles. Congo is the world’s biggest cobalt producer, each year producing between 55 percent or 65 percent of the world’s total cobalt. 

Chinese companies control around 40 percent of Congo’s cobalt deposits and means of extraction. Cobalt is critical as a stabilizer in rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. It takes about ten kg (22 pounds) of cobalt to manufacture an electric car battery. China is committed to producing electric vehicles (EVs) of all types.

Nigerian massacres

GetReligionblog discusses the many sources of the killing of mainly Christian peoples: by the Islamic militants and the tribal conflicts between the Muslim cattle herders and the Christian farmers.

Of course, both these terrorist groups kill fellow Muslims, but not so much.

The press coverage is spotty of course.

sad.

But of course they left out the terror by southern "terrorists" who mainly are Christian and object to the oil wealth being siphoned off.

And I'm old enough to remember when the mainly Christian Biafiran tribe sought to seceed and were literally destroyed by the government forces (estimated 2 million killed by famine) (rumor: with the help of the western companies that wanted their oil wealth). This is worse than it seemed since the tribe was also highly educated. Ironically, the best coverage of this was by the Irish, since many local missionaries were from that country.

Rwanda: Big brother?

Global voices, a site that publishes independent bloggers, has a report about how Rwanda is monitoring all their citizens.

a story complicated by their history of the massive slaughter during their civil war, and the impressive rebuilding of the country.

I have no expertise here so advise you just to read the story.

covid in Zimbabwe

An article in Global voices (independent bloggers) on Covid in Zimbabwe, and the protests against corruption (stealing money meant to go to the folks suffering from the virus).

and AlJ has an article on the crack down on dissenters.

Chin'ono is accused of inciting public violence. He denies the allegations and says journalism is being criminalised.
He has written articles alleging corruption in multimillion-dollar deals to combat coronavirus that have been awarded to powerful individuals close to the government.

Coronavirus in Africa

AlJ link

There are 183,474 confirmed infections and 81,367 recoveries, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Experts warn fragile healthcare systems in many African countries could be overwhelmed in the face of a severe outbreak of COVID-19, the highly infectious respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus.

if you believe that the number of "confirmed" cases is the same as the actual number of cases, then you are a fool.

most of the cases are in Egypt and South Africa. Ah, but how many are dying in villages or in the neighborhoods and aren't getting a diagnosis? Especially if they are elderly (and in Africa, elderly means 50 years old) or have HIV.

One thing I haven't read much about: is the use of Chloroquin being done as prevention? Are people still taking Chloroquin for malaria prevention (even when I worked in Africa, Falciparum malaria was becoming resistant).

And what about those taking retroviral drugs for HIV? Are they dying at a higher rate (HIV affects T cells, which are the cells that fight Covid) or are the retroviral drugs protecting people?

Just wondering.

Black Lives matter (but not if they live in Africa)

StrategyPage summarizes the latest news from Central Africa.

Ebola is back, alas.

 While Ebola is one of the most lethal epidemic diseases ever encountered, a much less lethal visitor from China has recently shown up in Congo. The covid19 has, in three months, inflicted around 3,400 confirmed cases of covid19 virus in Congo and 72 confirmed deaths. That’s 37 per million people and 0.8 deaths per million. For all of Africa (including North Africa) there have been 120 cases per million and 3.4 deaths per million people. That’s far lower than anywhere else...

the only problem: the numbers are not accurate you know.

 There may be more cases in Congo but the country has little or no access to modern medical care and people regularly die of undiagnosed afflictions. Since most of these involve a fever, caused by the immune system trying to fight off some kind of infection, people call many fatal conditions an unspecified fever, and such fatal fevers are common.

Sigh. This is probably true here in the Philippines too. One of our neighbors had a fever and shortness of breath but died in the hospital of a "heart attack". I am pretty sure that he had Covid, but they didn't test him. I have no proof, but maybe because if a known case was found in that (private) hospital then no one would go their for routine illnesses.

Africa covid

shut down economies from virus could lead to massive starvation

on my main blog, I have written about the increase in poverty and need for food aid here in the Philippines: my latest report HERE.


but not much is being written about how it might affect Africa.

There are some reports that genetics makes Africans less likely to get the virus, but that hasn't been the case in the USA. And in Africa, one wonders if the climate//sunshine might lower the spread (i.e. when it is warm, you don't have people indoors as much, but in todays' world of buses, factories, schools, etc that might not be true).

Virtueonline, an Anglican website, has posted an article about the virus in Africa: not a lot of numbers next to the many thousands who die from malaria or other common diseases, but the pressure to use western style prevention methods might make things worse.

and yes, many of these countries will stop planting the next crop for prevention of virus spread: but I wonder if this is overdoing it: Here in the Philippines after some mix ups about food and rice delivery trucks being allowed to go though check points, things have improved. And our farmers are harvesting here, even though we have a strict lockdown of our town (although one suspects family members won't be able to come back from Manila to help with the harvest, our people here in town can drive out to the farm in cars to help with the harvest... I don't know if this is true in other areas.

but this report of strict urban style lockdowns in rural areas is disturbing: If true, more will die of starvation than any virus.

Pastor Campos Afonso's report from churches in Angola is repeated throughout the continent where most states are in lockdown. The President of Angola declared a quarantine and State of Emergency from 27 March-11 April. All church meetings are closed. Pastors, leaders and members are observing the measures in their homes to combat the virus from spreading.
If the lockdown situation of COVID-19 continues it will affect the 2020 harvest because people will not be able to work in the fields. The lockdown means a shortage of work, tools and transport to take products from the countryside to the cities.
Lack of transport also means people cannot get from the cities to work on their family land to gather the harvest. Products collected this year will rot in the fields. New seeds will be in short supply for cultivation in the next year.
People are consuming the products that were being reserved as seeds for planting in 20202021 after having sold the December and January production. Most have nothing to eat in this period of isolation. Many could die of hunger instead of being killed by COVID-19. Locals say that church intervention is needed to help the most vulnerable people and poor Christians.

DRC response to coronavirus

globalvoices has a report on the cases in DRC, which were imported from Europe.

 DR Congo has banned large gatherings, ordered school and university closures for four weeks and closed its border with Rwanda, all measures taken to stem the spread of the virus. The government also suspended all international flights from countries with a high number of cases of COVID-19.

Genetic puzzle on coronavirus

I had read a couple articles that mentioned Africans having fewer Corona virus cases and deaths, and I assumed that this was because of the sunlight/living outdoors instead of inside houses in the winter as in China and the USA/Europe, or maybe because a lot of Africans take anti malarial medicine to prevent getting that disease, or maybe just that they haven't done enough tests and people are sick without going to hospitals and getting counted.

But StrategyPage notes:

...Chinese researchers found that Africans are less likely to catch covid19 because they have one fifth as many cellular receptors in their lungs than Chinese. That difference enables covid19 to cause breathing problems more, or less, readily. ...

  Lung damage is the most frequent cause of death among covid19 victims. So far Africa, with 18 percent of the world population has only suffered about 0.3 percent of the covid19 infections. Africans are not immune, just less likely to get in infected or suffer the breathing problems that cause most covid10 related death

this doesn't mean they can't get sick or die, but merely that the disease might be less fatal in certain populations.

One wonders if this observation is seen in the African diaspora on other continents.

the chaos in the DRC

LINK

stategypage discusses ebola and other disease, locusts, and war.


You think you have it bad?

the Congo and other central African areas are fighting disease, war, and locusts.

Disease: unlike Liberia, the WHO has fought the Ebola epidemic with local health care workers, and is now using vaccines.

the churches are doing a lot of the developmental work, but  are not mentioned in most of the lay press reports, but when I was in Africa, most of the rural hospitals and clinics were either church sponsored or run by medical personnel trained in church hospitals. I suspect it is the same in Central Africa, but of course the secular "doctors without borders" get most of the publicity in the news reports, probably because they are European/American (i.e. white).

the bad news: Corona virus is expected to hit (maybe via China, since China has a lot of their people doing work on various projects in Africa). But since there is now a medical infrastructure in place (to fight ebola), it mwans maybe they will be able to handle this better than more African countries.

SP latest news is that cases are down:

The number of new Ebola “cases per day” has dropped. From February 18 to 23, there was only one new confirmed case in North Kivu Province. As of February 23, there have been 3,444 total cases,

but ebola is not the only killer here. From SP:

February 14, 2020: The UN issued a report examining malaria in Burundi during 2019. From January through December 2019 Burundi had 8,892,300 malaria cases. The disease killed 3,294 people or 37 per 100,000 infected.

and measles has killed at least 6000 in the area:

Under the leadership of the DRC Ministry of Health, WHO, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and other partner aid agencies vaccinated more than 18 million children under five across the country in 2019. '

However, in some areas, routine vaccination coverage remains low and 25% of the reported measles cases are in children over the age of five. ....

Since the start of 2019, around 310 000 suspected measles cases have been reported. The epidemic has been aggravated by low vaccination coverage among vulnerable communities, malnutrition, weak public health systems, outbreaks of other epidemic-prone diseases, difficult access by vulnerable populations to health care and insecurity that has hampered response in some areas.

see that comment about "insecurity?

This is from gangs/ irregular tribal insurgencies and wars.

when I was in Africa, our main danger was not from government soldiers, or even the regular insurgents, but from deserters or rogue groups from both sides who had guns and who used them to rob/rape/kill.

Again the SP article includes reports of various groups who killed people.








But note that these are being fought. China got into the news saying they will export 100 thousand ducks to eat the locusts, but I wonder if that will work: I suspect most will die during transport, and those that survive the trip might not adjust to the climate. More likely the locals and the dogs will eat the ducks.

but the dirty little secret is that pesticides are being used (don't tell western greenies). Again from SP:

On February 11 the Ugandan government deployed around 2,000 Ugandan Army soldiers to fight the locusts. Here’s how an army counter-locust operation works. When locals detect a swarm they report it. Uganda is also employing drone aircraft to monitor locust swarms and their movements.

When a swarm is identified, several dozen soldiers armed with manual and motorized pesticide spray pumps move to the infested area. Ugandan military officers report that locust swarms don’t move at night, which means the pre-dawn hours are the optimal time to spray pesticide on an infested field to insure killing adult locusts. 

Speaking of "greenies":  one of the reasons I dislike "animal conservation" is that they take the side of animals against the locals.

Usually this means stopping locals from killing predators or elephants who eat them or their crops, but SP notes:

February 6, 2020: European media are citing a draft report that alleges “ecoguards” in the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville) are physically assaulting and intimidating Baka pygmy tribesmen who live near a national park the guards patrol. Ecoguard is shorthand for “ecological guard.” The ecoguard program is partially funded by international conservation groups. According to reports, the ecoguards carry firearms. For thousands of years, pygmies have been persecuted by the majority of Africans of normal height. As a result, the pygmies lived reclusive lives, often deep in forests away from majority populations.

Sigh.

voter biometrics in Zimbabwe (China link)

from Global voices:

In previous elections, citizens could visit any polling station and vote just by showing their conventional ID cards, which contained their name, ID number, date and place of birth and date of issue. After voting, one's finger would be smeared with indelible ink to avoid double voting. Now, citizens suddenly had to submit their photos, fingerprints, national identity numbers and home addresses into one integrated and digitized system. If they did not do this, they were told, they might be barred from voting. This increased public fears of monitoring and intimidation, already a common theme for elections in Zimbabwe. The system was touted both by ruling party and opposition voices as a strong guard against “ghost” voters and other types of election fraud.

But its underlying technology was not built with these issues in mind. Nor was it built in Zimbabwe. China’s ‘AI foray’ into southern Africa

The government of Zimbabwe signed a strategic partnership with CloudWalk Technology, a Chinese company that has become a leader in the field of facial recognition, in March 2018. The objective of the partnership was to commence a large-scale facial recognition program in Zimbabwe, which government officials said would be used to preserve “law and order,” and then expanded to other public sector programs.

oh, by the way, the UKGuardian calls the famine "man made". Duh.

South Africa following Zimbabwe into chaos