Many get angry when, especially in tragic moments like the present, someone remembers the privilege to live here rather than in the Third World.
Feel free to get angry but there is news which, although good, has implications that should really make us reflect on how often our affluent societies fall into unintentional ridicule.
The first malaria vaccine has been approved. This is gigantic news because this mosquito-borne disease kills half a million people a yearhalf children.
It is a terrible disease that can strike many times, it is estimated up to on average six episodes the year and each episode, in addition to the risk of death, compromises the immune system thus exposing to other diseases.
It is an interesting disease almost exclusively Africa between the two tropics and the Indian subcontinent. Until now malaria had been fought with insecticide-treated bed nets, now we have a vaccine.
The problem is that the vaccine, while approved, will risk being a mirage for the affected populations for a long time. Here are governments that they give us the vaccine, despite procrastinating mistrust and even violent opposition, there we will have to rely on humanitarian organizations. First of all, the GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization), one of the main protagonists of the conspiracies imagined against Humanity by the cacadubbi novax. It is indeed a partnership of public and private entities (mainly the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation but also the Shell, Lions Club and an anonymous and mysterious Swiss foundation that so many gossip feeds) which has had a great role in research against COVID-19 and which should now also organize a vaccination campaign in the Sub-Saharan Africa, India and Southeast Asia against malaria.
The problem is that COVID absorbs a lot of attention and, above all, sponsorships, not to mention of industrial plants who are thinking of immunizing the reluctant north of the world, thus postponing the problems of the poorest. Incidentally, Africa has only 4% of its population vaccinated, making it a potential nemesis heralding variants.
The hopes for this new vaccine they are big and many voices are already being raised from developing countries, to start the vaccination campaign against one of the most terrible and visible. Yet it is a very vaccine more uncomfortable and weak of those anticovid against which many do the squeamish ones. After four inoculations the vaccine works at 50%, which means hundreds of thousands of lives saved every year, but after four years immunity wears out making a new vaccination necessary. Yet there wouldn’t seem to be no vax around there.
However, this pandemic is bringing a lot of attention and, still above all, sponsorship to vaccine research. Perhaps, thanks to what researchers are learning, we will have a more effective vaccine against the flu and even against AIDS. The no-vax problem will remain only the luxurious nuisance of rich societies while the structural problem will still and always be that of the inequalities between the North and South of the world they were talking about Brandt and Craxi now decades ago.
Anti-vaccines are widespread in France, Germany and Austria. Among the Nordic countries, Sweden also has many no vaxes. In Eastern Europe, Ukraine and Russia boast the fiercest and most widespread hostility to vaccines. The USA, Canada and Chile are also not very confident and Japan much less than them. Ethiopia, Bangladesh and India are instead the nations with the most confidence in vaccines.
Consider that herd immunity is still slow to be achieved the underrated measles.
Behind the anti-vaccinism there are vyou were and own conspiracies (which however are discovered) due to very petty economic interests or even mere vanity.
The case of the former doctor Andrew Wakefield is famous who, under the urging of a lawyer who dealt with compensation for vaccine damage, began to falsify his research to validate a causal link between vaccines and autism.
And how much money goes into alternative medicine, alternative lifestyles and so on? Bookshops, paid conferences, etc. are a great source of income for doctors and gurus.