Field Marshal
Elder Lister
I have watched the lackadaisical approach of Uhuru's gavament (criminal enterprise?) to the Covid-19 epidemic with great horror and trepidation. Either these guys don't care or they just do not have the capacity to understand things.
Countries across the world are closing their borders - the US has banned all flights from Europe, imagine that - but what do we have here? KQ has stopped a few flights here and there, but you can still fly from Spain to JKIA, despite the former being one of the world's hotspots of the pandemic. I hear Ethiopian is still delivering passengers from China.
Personally, I have refrained from fueling the hysteria associated with Corona, but I think I will be failing if I didn't warn my fellow Kenyans - and Africans - that we may be about to experience a calamity of biblical proportions.
Here's why.
First, as we all know, Kenya (read this to mean the entire continent) cannot mobilise the kind of resources that are needed to combat an airborne/contact-borne epidemic. Rich countries like the US and China are already struggling, so you can imagine if we had 200,000 infections requiring hospitalisation - people will die in the streets.
Secondly, while the WHO says the Case Fatality Rate (CFR) so far is anywhere between 1-3.5%, this is likely to rise to above 10% in Kenya. Reasons?
1. Poor medical services - as we have seen in Italy, even a first-world medical system can be overwhelmed in a week.
2. Underlying conditions: Kenya has one of the highest HIV, TB and Malaria rates in the world (top 7 in all three). In some counties in this country two out of every 10 adults has HIV!!! These tropical diseases seriously impair the immune system, and malaria could work to make children - so far apparently immune - vulnerable.
What's more, if a corona pandemic takes root here, doctors and nurses will probably abscond, meaning that HIV, TB and malaria patients, as well as those suffering from other chronic diseases (diabetes, cancer etc) will not get their medicines, further complicating the situation.
3. Culture, and socio-economic factors - Our behaviours and social weaknesses, including a poor, crowded, mass transit system, lack of contact addresses to allow tracing, lack of civic responsibility (how many Kenyans do you think can self-isolate), crowded slums and neighbourhoods, etc etc makes Kenya the perfect ecosystem for corona.
4. Kenya will soon be entering its 'winter' season, June - August, when temperatures plummet. This is our flu season, and corona may take root and spread exponentially at this time. So, when Europe is entering summer and reducing infections, ours will be rising. The fallacy of African immunity will end.
The above factors will be compounded by one immutable reality; THIS TIME ROUND NOBODY WILL COME TO OUR AID, except may be China. With corona being a a global epidemic, everybody will be so busy holding their shit together to help anybody else. A lot of Kenyans do not know this, but there are about 1.5m HIV-infected people alive today just because of the American taxpayer; crudely put, you ferk, get infected, they pay. This time you can forget it. Trump is too busy fighting the disease in his own backyard to care.
In the circumstances, it is easy to lose hope. Don't. Just do what you can to stay safe. Nature will find a way, and it is likely the pandemic will burn itself out, like all flu pandemics, in a year or so.
But prepare yourself, mentally, for something you have never experienced before, and which - hopefully - you may never experience again.
I hope I am wrong, but as you all know, I rarely am.
Countries across the world are closing their borders - the US has banned all flights from Europe, imagine that - but what do we have here? KQ has stopped a few flights here and there, but you can still fly from Spain to JKIA, despite the former being one of the world's hotspots of the pandemic. I hear Ethiopian is still delivering passengers from China.
Personally, I have refrained from fueling the hysteria associated with Corona, but I think I will be failing if I didn't warn my fellow Kenyans - and Africans - that we may be about to experience a calamity of biblical proportions.
Here's why.
First, as we all know, Kenya (read this to mean the entire continent) cannot mobilise the kind of resources that are needed to combat an airborne/contact-borne epidemic. Rich countries like the US and China are already struggling, so you can imagine if we had 200,000 infections requiring hospitalisation - people will die in the streets.
Secondly, while the WHO says the Case Fatality Rate (CFR) so far is anywhere between 1-3.5%, this is likely to rise to above 10% in Kenya. Reasons?
1. Poor medical services - as we have seen in Italy, even a first-world medical system can be overwhelmed in a week.
2. Underlying conditions: Kenya has one of the highest HIV, TB and Malaria rates in the world (top 7 in all three). In some counties in this country two out of every 10 adults has HIV!!! These tropical diseases seriously impair the immune system, and malaria could work to make children - so far apparently immune - vulnerable.
What's more, if a corona pandemic takes root here, doctors and nurses will probably abscond, meaning that HIV, TB and malaria patients, as well as those suffering from other chronic diseases (diabetes, cancer etc) will not get their medicines, further complicating the situation.
3. Culture, and socio-economic factors - Our behaviours and social weaknesses, including a poor, crowded, mass transit system, lack of contact addresses to allow tracing, lack of civic responsibility (how many Kenyans do you think can self-isolate), crowded slums and neighbourhoods, etc etc makes Kenya the perfect ecosystem for corona.
4. Kenya will soon be entering its 'winter' season, June - August, when temperatures plummet. This is our flu season, and corona may take root and spread exponentially at this time. So, when Europe is entering summer and reducing infections, ours will be rising. The fallacy of African immunity will end.
The above factors will be compounded by one immutable reality; THIS TIME ROUND NOBODY WILL COME TO OUR AID, except may be China. With corona being a a global epidemic, everybody will be so busy holding their shit together to help anybody else. A lot of Kenyans do not know this, but there are about 1.5m HIV-infected people alive today just because of the American taxpayer; crudely put, you ferk, get infected, they pay. This time you can forget it. Trump is too busy fighting the disease in his own backyard to care.
In the circumstances, it is easy to lose hope. Don't. Just do what you can to stay safe. Nature will find a way, and it is likely the pandemic will burn itself out, like all flu pandemics, in a year or so.
But prepare yourself, mentally, for something you have never experienced before, and which - hopefully - you may never experience again.
I hope I am wrong, but as you all know, I rarely am.
