The Paradoxes of the Pandemic and World Inequalities

Robert Fatton

doi:10.3390/socsci10090332

Abstract

While causing over 150,000 deaths in Africa, the spread of the COVID-19 virus did not produce the expected hecatomb. Clearly, the crisis is not over and with the emergence of new variants, the death toll could increase significantly. So far, however, COVID-19 has caused fewer African victims than elsewhere. Explaining this reality remains difficult and speculative. It appears, however, that a major reason might be the continent’s very young population and the fact that it enjoys relatively low levels of obesity. These two factors have played a significant role in the high COVID-19 mortality rate in the most affected industrialized countries. In addition, many African countries have learned how to deal with health emergencies from their past experiences with other major pandemics. A final and more controversial explanation of the low death rate in the region is that in their fight against malaria, Africans have used hydroxychloroquine—a medicine that has allegedly curbed the effects of COVID-19—on a mass scale and for generations. COVID-19 has also had crippling consequences for the continent’s already debilitated economies and raised poverty to alarming levels. The pandemic has also highlighted the persistence of narrow nationalistic interests, as well as the massive inequalities of wealth and power that structure the global system. This is evident in the very uneven worldwide distribution of the COVID-19 vaccines.

Highlights

On 31 December 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that China had suffered “cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology . . . detected in Wuhan City”.1 Most governments reacted to the news as if the spread of what would be known as the COVID-19 virus would create a minor and ephemeral crisis akin to nothing more than a severe seasonal flu
This was no irrational reaction, as WHO stated two weeks later that the “evidence is highly suggestive that the outbreak is associated with exposures in one seafood market in Wuhan” and reassured the world that the market had been closed on 1 January 2020
Most observers argued that African nations in particular would suffer a calamity because they generally lacked the institutional framework for imposing such massive protective measures

Summary

Introduction

On 31 December 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that China had suffered “cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology . . . detected in Wuhan City”.1 Most governments reacted to the news as if the spread of what would be known as the COVID-19 virus would create a minor and ephemeral crisis akin to nothing more than a severe seasonal flu. The very uneven and unequal global distribution of the vaccines may not have the devastating consequences that many expected as the poorest regions of the Global South, sub-Saharan Africa, registered significantly lower rates of death per million than the wealthy areas of Western Europe and North America. It appears that social distancing, lockdowns (strictly enforced or not) and the wearing of masks have helped limit the number of deaths.. While COVID-19 may not have caused the African health catastrophe that many experts expected, it may have had indirect but devastating economic and social consequences for the immediate and mid-term well-being of the continent’s population

COVID-19 in Perspective

Findings

COVID: The Continuous Absence of Global Solidarity