The distressed man
&…the jolly good fellow!
After my
last Coro-related intervention (Coro: Coming & Going 3rd time
around…Conspiracy Theories & Vaccine Hesitancy, 2/9/21), I received an
elating message. An Enugu-based friend, townsman and an ardent reader of this
column, Nze
Ezeudokanma Okeke sent this message ‘Ichie thank you
for your astonishing and all-encompassing reportage. I have changed my mind on
vaccines. I will look out for the jab’. I jumped up for joy
and celebrated with a big bottle of water, which I sipped from a very beautiful
tumbler. I will take a glass of palm-wine whenever I am Igbo-Ukwu, to complete
the celebration. Last week, I received a dreadful WhatsApp message. A
physically and emotionally distressed ‘man’ was regretting that the world had
been divided into two, each group with morbid expectation of the other: The vaccinated,
waiting for the unvaccinated to die, and the unvaccinated waiting for the
vaccinated to die. This sounds funny but it
actually creates a very dreadful scenario. An amalgam of seemingly believable
conspiracy theories, has led to an alarming vaccine hesitancy, to the extent
that people are really expecting the vaccinated to die. Such people then look
at a doubly jabbed fellow like me with pity, waiting when the deadly metals,
electricity or poison inserted or mixed with the vaccine, will knock me down
and out. Subsequently, I received another
message, a hilarious one at that. It was a jolly good follow, clutching a glass
of beer and declaring that if the Government had mixed the vaccine with beer
and opened up all the clubs and pubs, everybody would have been vaccinated within
a week. Well, it can’t be everybody; I do not drink beer and I am not a club
patron and as such, this strategy won’t work for people like me.
However, the truth remains that the vaccinated
have better chances of survival than the unvaccinated or at least do not suffer
any Coro-related disadvantages. Those who refuse to vaccinate have been equated
to those who refuse to strap on their seat belts because such belts do not
prevent accidents. But we know that belts minimize the resultant harms from
accidents if and when they do occur. Records from across the globe shows that
most of the casualties are the unvaccinated. Thus, we have moved from the Coro-pandemic
to what Dr Rochelle Walensky of Center for Disease Control termed the pandemic of the
unvaccinated! This is because the fresh cases and deaths,
sadly, consist of the unvaccinated.
Vaccines have been our friends from time immemorial (or‘time
imo-river, according to Chief Zebuludaya
Okoroigwe Nwogbo, alias4.30!) and the new genres are no exception. The efficacy of coro-vaccines
has been proved both scientifically and from verifiable experiences as in this
unfortunate instance. Bobby and Bill Ford, identical twins, worked in the same
auto-shop at Vero Beach and did almost everything together except vaccination.
Boby was jabbed ( Johnson &Johnson) but Bill refused because he has heard too much of
conspiracy theory mixtures . When Oga-Coro invaded and ravaged their
workshop, Bobby, who was vaccinated had 3 days of fever and nothing more. Bill’s
case got progressively worse and while in the valley of shadow of death at
the ICU, he ‘repented’ and started calling on people on
phone to get jabbed. But it was too late for him as he died 14/8/21( see Treasure Coast Newspapers: Vaccine? What happened when identical twins got COVID?).
In US, Dick Farrel, Phil Valentine and Marc Bernier, three
unrepentant
anti-vaccination radio hosts
succumbed to Coro within a month. They had all repeatedly and publicly
mocked vaccination or derided the overall vaccine efforts. Incidentally, Farrel and Valentine publicly
repented of their anti—Vaccine stands before they died while Bernier maintained
his anti-vax posture until death did them part. It reminds me of one of the
greatest anti-vax Nigerians, Fani Kayode. Incidentally, after he had deceived
and confused many people, he went and got jabbed. Just like he has just joined
APC after he had said over his death body!
In Florida,
where the Governor Ron-Desantis dismissed the importance of vaccines and banned
compulsory masking, 15 staff of Miami Dade Public School died within 10 days,
leading to public outrage. As at mid-August, Florida ‘enjoyed’ about 244 deaths
daily with about 2,345 deaths and over 129,000 cases in
a week. It was so bad that they rented refrigerated units (mobile ‘cold-rooms’)
to store corpses! And just the other day, Uche Pete-Edochie reported that he
just recovered from Coro after spending N6m on treatment and still counting,
including N350000 daily charged by the
facility, and another Coro patient spent as much as N17m( $28000) on treatment.
Even if one can afford N17m, does it make sense to invest it Coro-treatment; Coro
that one could avoid by free vaccination, masking and personal hygiene?
Coro is real and one of the surest safety-route
is vaccination. Governments across the globe are tired of what Central Bankers
call ‘moral suasion’ and now they have barred their fangs adopting ‘by
fire by force’ strategies. Last week, the Edo State Government, despite
pending, and threats of further, court cases, barred all un-jabbed fellows from
the secretariat. The FG is intending to enforce vaccination on its employees (once
the issue of availability is sorted out) but 6 states are not eager to follow
suite (Enugu, Taraba, Cross River, Ogun, Bauchi and
Abia). The Chief Executive of National
Primary Health Care Agency made a pointed point when stated emphatically that ‘
you have a right to reject the vaccine but you do not have the right to
endanger other peoples’ health’. In Zimbabwe, the Justice Minister had
ordered all government employees who did not want to jab, to resign and leave
in peace. On 16/9/21, France suspended 3000 health workers without pay for
refusing to be vaccinated. That was just a day after the policy came into force
and as usual with these White-men, there are protests all over the place.
Protesting
health workers
The US has just (9/9/21) introduced a stringent vaccination regime,
making it compulsory for all federal works and contractors, all health workers
and 30000 head-teachers. Employers of more than 100 staff should also enforce
compulsory jabbing or in the alternative, non-jabbed fellows should produce
negative test-results every week, with a fine of $14000 (N8m) per infraction.
The TRUMPeters have termed
this authoritarian and have threatened to head to court. One peculiar thing about the US is that the
pandemic and its containment are seen from political prisms. Thus, only 50% of Trump
voters have been vaccinated as against 91% of Biden voters ( NBC News) while Republicans
in general, are the second least likely
people to be vaccinated ( Kaiser family Foundation). Just the other day
(5/9/21) the unimaginable happened; almost an abomination for football
fanatics. The Brazzilian Police/
health authorities audaciously invaded the pitch and disrupted the Brazil/Argentina
match,so as to enforce Coro protocols, which some visiting team members,
Martinez, Romero & LoCelso &
Buendia had violated. I think this is the first of its kind and evidences the
power of Oga-Coro. In Vietenam, Le Van Tri
was convicted and jailed for 5
years for breaking quarantine rules and democratising the virus amongst the
people.
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Talking about Coro protocols and human
rights, one of my colleagues, Dr Adesola Adeleke of the Department of Chemical Sciences(OOU)
has just sued the Lagos State Governor, Commissioner of Police and others for
N65m for declaring her wanted after she had returned from South-Africa,
complaining that she was made to go through psychological trauma and was
ensconced in a mosquito infested hotel at Isolo Lagos despite the fact that she
fulfilled all the requirements. Hers is not a case of refusing to do the
needful; it was and is a case that despite doing the needful, the authorities
still treated her like a delinquent returnee. Beyond turning children into
orphans and wives into widows, Oga-Coro has also put some couples asunder. In Cape
Town(S/Africa), Mrs. Charnelle Spies has filed for divorce from Graham, her
husband of 18 years because he refused to be jabbed. Graham, who is already coronised said he did not want to be used as a guinea-pig
Meanwhile, the delta
variant has become the predominant strain in Nigeria while Coro-bed occupancy
in Lagos has increased to 53%( as at 6/9/21).
The numbers are also rising as 5773 new cases were recorded within 10
days, despite the fact that some states were not testing. 320 deaths occurred
in August alone out of the 2495 since
the advent of Coro(average,130 monthly). Nigeria is expecting 52m doses in early 2022 while North Korea has rejected the
3m doses donated by China, claiming that they did not grant Coro any Visa and
as such, it has not visited and cannot visit!
Two Nigerian artistes, Jah Prayzah & Killer T ( I have never heard of them before
but my children will surely know them) were arrested at Mugabe Airport over
fake Covid certificates, after they had performed at Adam Molai’s
birthday party. Some people have linked the arrest to the fact that the party
in South-Africa was largely attended by the G40 group, which is at ‘war’ with
the current Zimbabwean Government. The Nigeria Veterinary Medical
Association (NVMA), has also asked to be integrated into the war against
Oga-Coro.
As the war against Oga-Coro is raging, Guinea had confirmed the
first Marburg virus case in West Africa, while the Nipha
virus, which is more deadly than Coro, claimed the life of a boy in India in
early September. This shows that Oga-Coro is grooming some successors!
That is even when the vicious virus never tire because another varriant
simply called Mu ( They should have called it mumu!)has
also emerged( sintifically labelled B.1.621) and the WHO has listed it as a varint of interest
on 30/8/21
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Furthermore,
out of the millions of Americans Coronised, only 678000 have succumbed to the vicious virus,
about .0017% of the population. Some nay-sayers would argue that despite the
‘whole noise’, Coro is not that deadly. However, it might have been worse if it
was not frontally attacked and we should not concentrate all efforts on
Oga-Coro and overlook other micro and macro health challenges. It also appears
that those who are confusing and frightening people about jabbing in Nigeria
are doing a ‘good job’ because the total number of Nigerians jabbed is barely
1% of the number required to attain the herd immunity. Oga-Coro has also been
beneficial to the banking industry where E-transactions rose by 82% between
March 2020(N36trn) to March 2021( N65.6trn). How is this linked to Coro? Lock
down, work from home and de-crowding of the banking halls, which forced people
to patronize e-channels.
·
Stan Ukeje, my
friend before-before, was a pro-bono research assistant for this edition
· I am pained by the
death of Dr Mailafia, with whom I have shared the same page in BusinessDay, as
columnists.
This is superb.
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