Omicron

[Jibrin Ibrahim]

Covid-19 Moves and Omicron Concerns

Jibrin Ibrahim, Deepening Democracy, Daily Trust, 10^th December 2021

It has been a difficult two weeks for me as I travelled to Niger Republic for a conference on “Conversations on the Sahel” and on my return was diagnosed with Covid-19. It is difficult to know where and how the infection occurred. Everyone on the flights had their face masks on, except when refreshments were served and people remove them to eat and drink. Gone are the days when direct flights from Abuja to Niamey on Arik, existed. Now it’s ASky with a difficult trajectory from Abuja-Lome-Ouagadougou-Niamey. During the conference itself, it is facemask always, except when making a speech. Lunch was served in the garden but people congregated to chat. At the hotel, we sat in the open by the pool but then we were talking and eating. The opportunities for this smart virus are endless and three people at the conference tested positive on their return. Should I have kept my earlier resolve of no travel until after Covid-19? But when will it end, if ever? Eventually, everyone’s resolve collapses.

When the diagnosis came – POSITIVE, my first thought was I had written many obituaries for friends who had died of Covid-19 so now someone has to take the responsibility for mine. It was a silly thought. I have had my double vaccination so AstraZeneca would defeat the virus and that was what happened, or so I think. The NCDC doctors were very diligent and came to the house every other day for my case management and had all the necessary drugs in stock. Thank God I am now on the mend although the lethargy that follows the infection is overwhelming and writing this column has been a real challenge. The irritating cough also will not allow me rest in spite of punishing it with steam inhalation. On the whole, the fear of the disease is the nature of its attack – strangulating its victims through oxygen deprivation and the vaccine is a real protector in that regard. 

It has above all been a difficult two weeks for Africans as moves by Covid-19 in the form of multiple mutations reveal a lot of the under-belly of how the West reacts when it gets the opportunity to blame Africa for the pandemic. The key finding is why should facts matter when there is an opportunity to castigate Africa and Africans. The Omicron variant (B.!.1.529) SARS-Cov-2 was discovered by diligent South African scientists and State authorities who informed he World Health Organisation and the international community on 24^th November that they had discovered a variant of concern with multiple mutations and a possibility of very fast transmission and the world should do the necessary. Instead of praising them for their expertise and diligence, the response of the West was immediate stigmatisation.

The United Kingdom led the way banning flights from most Southern African countries. This is a country that has been inept and a failure in rapid response to prevent the spread of Covid-19 to its people and became the most proportionally infected country in the world with a massive death burden. The only time it has acted fast was when the word African emerged in the conversation. The obvious response the civilized world reached was racism and a deep desire in the United Kingdom to impose apartheid on Africa in line with the growth of populist ideology and practice under Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Currently, the Omicron variant has spread to 57 countries around the world but the stigma remains only on Africa. It is interesting that the Netherlands later discovered that they had the variant in a sample taken from 19^th November, which makes it older than the South African one but no European country is targeted.

The new development is that the United Kingdom, Canada and now Saudi Arabia have added Nigeria to the travel ban list although the number circulating in their countries is higher than what obtains in Nigeria. It appears that their concern is the discovery of a number of Nigerians with documents asserting they had been vaccinated or tested for Covid-19 but when tested had no anti bodies suggesting part of their documentation is fake. Our Government must earn to identify and punish the few bad eggs that are giving us a bad name. The reality however is that they were already in the search for excuses to pick on us.

The big story on Covid-19 is that vaccination is a solution only if the entire world is vaccinated but countries with resources have monopolised the vaccines, over and above what they need for their populations. When South Africans and the World Health Organisation told the world, the Omicron could have developed in any country and picking on Africans was simply a racist move, they were ignored. Today, it is clear it is already spread all over and flight bans serve no purpose.   

On Wednesday, the Nigerian government, through the health minister, Osagie Ehanire, announced that gifts of vaccines from the West had expired and had been withdrawn and will be destroyed by the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), the country’s agency in charge of drug and foods standards. According to Reuters, the expired doses were of AstraZeneca brand and delivered via COVAX, the dose-sharing facility led by the GAVI vaccine alliance and the WHO. About one million doses have gone to waste, mainly because they were delivered to the country not long before their expiry dates. Many African countries are left with the logistic challenge of using vaccines under time pressure due to this problem of late delivery from countries that kept them for long although they did not even need them as they had more than enough. As Nigeria’s Health Minister said, the solution to the challenge of vaccine expiration is local manufacturing of vaccines. He added however that Nigeria has utilised most of the over 10 million short-shelf-life doses of COVID-19 vaccines so far supplied in good time.

Meanwhile, the indications are that this pandemic will remain with us for a long time. I conclude with the verse I contemplated at the beginning of the pandemic:

COVID-19

 

Jibrin Ibrahim, 6^th April 2020

 

Coronavirus Came and the Dying Began

Panic Set in and Remedies Were Sought

Social Distancing, Did They Say Two Metres Apart?

Yes, Decision is Total Lockdown, Stay at Home

 

Coronavirus Came and the Dying Began

Social Distancing Made Sense

No to Handshakes and Hugs

Staying Far Apart Made Sense

 

Only That for the Poor, they Live Ten in a Room

To Move: They are packed in Buses like sardines

Three Dozen People for One Toilet

Social Distancing Makes Sense; But Not for the Poor

 

But the Rich Too Suffer

China the Emerging Superpower was Bereaved and Battered

Then the European Powers – Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom

The United States then took over the Macabre Race to the Cemetery

 

Testing, Tracking and Tracing as Solution

It’s Easy, See South Korea, Singapore and Hongkong

It’s Hard, See United Kingdom and United States

Strength is Not Governance

 

Professor Jibrin Ibrahim

Senior Fellow

Centre for Democracy and Development, Abuja

Follow me on twitter @jibrinibrahim17

[Ibrahim Abdullah]

Comrade:

Great to know you beat it. Continue to live and fight.

A lutta continua!

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[Harrow, Kenneth]

jibrin, i am relieved you are recovering.

the past few years have tied us to our chairs, couches, homes, so tightly it feels that the world is out there and out of reach. if i were twenty, i'd no doubt not feel that way; but i'm 78 and more vulnerable. that you were able to fight off this scourge is very good to hear.

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Ibrahim Abdullah <ibdu...@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, December 10, 2021 7:44 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Omicron

 

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[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

Travel ban on France to follow?

A new variant has been found in  France.

Meanwhile Fauci says that Omicron is “almost

certainly “less harmful than Delta. 

I wish you a swift recovery, Jibo.

GE

https://www.google.com/amp/s/

www.express.co.uk/news/science/1534321/

covid-new-variant-found-france-marseille-hospital-forcalquier-ihu-b16402-omicron/amp

Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association

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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Jibrin Ibrahim <jibrinib...@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, December 10, 2021 6:48 AM
To: 'chidi opara reports' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Omicron

 

Please be cautious: **External Email**

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[Patrick Effiboley]

Prof Jibrin,

Safe recovery to you. I myself was supposed to cancel a travel to Accra for tomorrow due to the fact that I was not vaccinated and not willing to.

Let hope that the pandemic goes quicker to its end to allow free circulation.

Dr Emery Patrick EFFIBOLEY

Maître-Assitant en Histoire de l'Art

Chef, Département d'Histoire et d'Archéologie, Université d'Abomey-Calavi, Bénin

Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of the Witwatersrand,Johannesburg,(2014-2016) 

www.researchgate.net/Profile/Emery_Effiboley

 

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Praise the Lord! Alhamdulillah!

Congratulations & Merry Christmas in advance to Professor Jibrin Ibrahim who has just won his personal two-weeks long mortal battle against the dreaded Corona enemy. A quarantined battle.

Reading very fast forward I thought that I was going to read “My first thought was that I had already written my Last Will & Testament” (like Alfred Nobel) - as we all have to do, well in advance of the event known as “the certainty”, but what he wrote and what we actually read from him about the past and the future looming in front of us struck me as a lot worse: “my first thought was I had written many obituaries for friends who had died of Covid-19 so now someone has to take the responsibility for mine. It was a silly thought.”

Just as it’s often fitful bouts of laughter accompany hysteria – and a patient has to be slapped out of it, so too that it’s only the sense of relief at being let off the hook as it were, that gives us enough respite to be able to joke about these near-death experiences, about being snatched from the very jaws of death, in a timely manner, to survive to talk about it. Sadly, Dr. Obadiah Mailafia did not. I read Obadiah this afternoon, the shortest book in the Hebrew Bible and thought of him.

In Sierra Leone, early in the morning on New Year’s Day you’ll hear the old Creole Folks going around chirping “ ‘Appi New Year me noh die O!”

I understand that I’m going out on a limb here about Nigeria's official knee jerk reaction to the UK taking the logical measure to protect their own endangered species living in the British Isles, from the vicious corona enemy.

Why should Nigeria’s Ambassador to the UK eschew the polite niceties of diplomatic protocol and choose to take to the offensive instead, with his vile accusation against Her Majesty’s Government, hurling at her the emotive, politically loaded missile “Apartheid”, equating that government with the policy that once oppressed the good people of South Africa?

I heard him on the BBC ‘s Focus on Africa, sounding exasperated, doing his best at trying to defend his vile accusation which was of course unjust and didn’t quite make any sense , since the travel ban affects many other countries including Sweden.

What’s this pathetic, uncalled for diatribe: “The obvious response the civilized world reached was racism and a deep desire in the United Kingdom to impose apartheid on Africa in line with the growth of populist ideology and practice under Prime Minister Boris Johnson. “ ?

Assuming that the statistics that would back Professor Ibrahim referring to the UK as “the most proportionally infected country in the world with a massive death burden.” are reliable, then, if anything, one would have expected sensible sovereign Nigeria to have taken similar precautionary measures, not in retaliation but as a preventive measure, to safeguard Nigeria’s 200 million souls from invasions from the UK. It’s the essence of pikuach nefesh. 

Civilised world? We don’t have to start being sentimental or racist about it, those are the kinds of measures that a country that’s serious about combating omicron would take.

[Harrow, Kenneth]

rates of covid internationally:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/world/covid-cases.html

the u.k. is far from the worst. for instance, norway is worse, so is the netherlands, belgium switzerland, etc. east europe is a mess.

Coronavirus World Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak - The New York Times About this data Source: Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University. Daily cases are the number of new cases reported each day. The seven-day average is the ... www.nytimes.com

after peru, almost all the worst death rates are east european. by far.

the u.s. is worse than canada, by far, which explains why we could not cross canada from michigan to massachusetts, to see our son and grandkids, for a year or more. now we can, if we have a recent test and of course double vaccination. or else drive the long way around lake erie, which we did last time.

i do not resent any of the restrictions on travel made to stop the spread. what would any of us do differently?

i forwarded to this list a brilliant article on how the s africans were working to combat its spread, maybe about 1-2 weeks ago, and i found it brilliant. it showed how the medical authorities there were sending out workers to encourage vulnerable people to get vaccinated. one woman in particular, to encourage other unvaccinated women. the most vulnerable are those with aids, whose resistance to the covid infection is low. they have to take their aids meds, and they are encouraged by local medical authorities to do so. the meds are free, but not always close to home.

they work much much much bettere than here in michigan where we are having a horribly high rate, among the worst in the country. if they imposed a travel ban on us, i would understand and agree with it. i am furious with the idiots in my state, almost all rightwing nutcases, who refuse the vaccine. and who endanger all of us., our hospitals are full; if you have a heart attack, you are at great risk of dying since there is no room in hospitals in our state. you would be turned away at the door, and people are dying because of the high rate of covid infections filling up the beds.

i don't know about the logic of banning south africans; i know the question of where omicron first broke out is completely irrelevant. the article on how that country is working to combat the disease is very impressive, and does not once ask the dumb question, who got it first, who is responsible for it. this is the answer about "responsibility" which the article gave:

the covid virus mutates as long as it is alive in a live human body. if you are sick, say with aids, and manage to hang on longer, during that period while your resistance is low the virus mutates.

simple.

get the vulnerable vaccinated; keep infected people away from others; make sure the 8 million s africans with aids are taking their medications because if they don't , they are at higher risk of getting the infection and incubating mutations.

this has nothing to do with travel bans! it has to do with protecting all of us, and the people in south africa, in southern africa, everywhere.

where is the resistance to the vaccine greatest? in the u.s. and europe, among rightwingers, republicans, really crazy people who seem not to care that they endanger the rest of humankind by their recklessness. in africa it varies, but it isn't just lack of available vaccines, but also fear of/apprehension of the vaccine, and younger people thinking it represents low risks to themselves. just like the youth in michigan.

i understand jibrin's anger against travel bans. but the larger picture is what matters: how to force people to get vaccinated, one way or another. make them pay a fine if they won't do it; and if you succeed, you'll have countries like portugal or new zealand where the death rates are low and infections are under control.

in michigan that is not the case, and every time we get together with others, even with masks, we wonder if we are being foolish and taking unnecessary risks. how long can we continue like this??

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, December 11, 2021 5:05 PM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Omicron

 

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[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

We thank God you are free, Jibrin.

Toyin

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

“It would be easier to vaccinate the world than to try in vain to block COVID-19 variants from crossing borders.” :

( From AIDS to Omicron, Pharmaceutical Apartheid Hurts Us All) 

[Gloria Emeagwali]

One issue that analysts forget,

 when speaking  about vaccines 

 and Africa,  is vaccine hesitancy.

Many  in Europe reject

the vaccine,  but they assume 

that  all Africans, to the last

person, will  gratefully rush

 to take the vaccine when  stingy

hands release it. Sorry, it

isn’t going to be that easy.

There are lots of vaccine 

sceptics and “conscientious

 objectors” in Africa, too.

Prof. Gloria Emeagwali 

On Dec 13, 2021, at 17:22, Cornelius Hamelberg <Cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Biko Agozino]

But Jibo, it be like say the Covid fine for your body o. You looked slimmer and you spoke more gracefully on Sunday. Happy survival. We are lucky to know that most people infected will survive Covid. We are survivors. Continue taking precautions even after being vaxxed.

Biko

https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/aa01a0d9-dc52-43d3-ab82-2d6bba6c6b6fn%40googlegroups.com

.

[Salimonu Kadiri]

​When the outbreak of COVID-19 was announced in 2019, I was expecting our usual civilised abusers to place the origin of the disease in Africa. I came to think of haemorrhagic fever named Marburg in 1967. In August 1967, some workers at Behringwerke AG, a German vaccine-producing subsidiary of pharmaceutical giant, Hoechst AG suffered from haemorrhagic fever while working with the tissues of the monkeys. The monkeys, Cercopithecus aethiops, were part of the 600 exported to Europe by an American Company who was granted monopolistic license by the Uganda government, in exchange for peanuts, to sweep the forests of Uganda of monkeys for exports to Europe and America for laboratory and medical experiments. All in all, seven of the 31 infected workers at the German vaccine producing company died of haemorrhagic fever by December 1967. Although no cases of haemorrhagic fever were reported among animals and humans in Uganda and Kenya, researchers from the United States and Europe invaded the two countries in search of the reservoir of Marburg virus. They tested every monkey , ape, rodent, mosquito, tick, hyena, canine, feline, and bovine they could get their hands on. But no reservoir of the virus was ever found. What kind of experiment was being conducted on the monkeys in the German vaccine company was never disclosed or suspected of having backfired. However, when a similar haemorrhagic fever suddenly appeared in Yambuku, DRC, in 1976, the name of Marburg disease was suddenly changed to Ebola, the name of a river in Yambuku province where the disease broke out. For Caucasian, it is preferable to associate Africa to diseases than to Europe. That was why the civilised abusers of Africa twisted Ebola to become a strain far more fatal than Marburg virus which originated in a German Phamaceutical laboratory where monkeys were being used for experimental purpose. The cause of Marburg and Ebola, whether from bat or monkeys, is not known as of date.

In the Autumn of 1980, Dr Michael Gottlieb of the University of California at Los Angeles Medical Center encountered some Caucasian patients who were not responding to treatments. Gottlieb appraised the patients carefully : they were pale, almost ashen; extremely thin; their mouth full of white fungal infection, they were coughing uncontrollably and evincing severe lung pain. By April 1981, Dr Gottlieb had five patients under treatment for Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) who were not responding. Remarkably, all the five patients were Caucasians, gay, aged between 29 and 36 years at the time of PCP diagnosis, suffered PCP along with Candida and cytomegalovirus infections had abnormal immune responses, reported multiple sex partners, occasionally used amyl nitrite (proppers) as sexual stimulants and none of the patients knew one another before. Dr Gottlieb forwarded a report to the Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STD) division of the US Centre for Disease Control (CDC) in May 1981. James Curran published Gottlieb's paper in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report of June 5, 1981, revealing to the public, for the first time, the strange health problem within homosexual Americans. The editorial written by Jim Curran reads partly as follows, "The occurrence of pneumocystis in these 5 previously healthy individuals without clinically apparent underlying immunodeficiency is unsettling. The fact that these patients were all homosexuals suggests an association between some aspect of a homosexual lifestyle or disease acquired through sexual contact and Pneumocystis pneumonia in this population....... All of the above observations suggest the possibility of a cellular- immune dysfunction related to a common exposure that predisposes individuals to opportunistic infections such as pneumocystis and candidiasis." 

Scientists at the US CDC named the homosexual ailment, Gay-Related Immunodeficiency Disease (GRID) which by December 1981 had reached 270 cases in the US. The street name for GRID in the US then was Gay Plague. The American homosexual lobby did not like name of a disease being attached to their sexual practice; while CDC scientists were aware that neither the government nor the American public would grant research funds for an acquired life-style disease. The CDC decided to change the name GRID and Dr Peter Duesberg explained how the change of name was motivated : Having decided that the syndrome was a single contagious disease, the CDC now worked to swing the most biomedical and political institutions behind its new war. Support would be hard to gather unless the disease had an easily remembered name; by July of 1982, the CDC decided to call it Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). This name also swept under the rug any connection between the Syndrome and the risk groups (sodomites), a move favoured both by the CDC and the homosexual rights movements - who did not like emphasis on AIDS being a gay disease. In addition, more federal money had to be appropriated to give this disease more respectability and to attract more experts to this new field. (p. 150-151, Inventing the AIDS Virus by Dr Peter Duesberg).

On the new name, Randy Shilts noted, "Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome gave the epidemic a snappy acronym, AIDS, and was sexually neutral. The word, 'acquired, separated the immune deficiency syndrome from congenital defects or chemically induced immune problems, indicating the syndrome was acquired from somewhere even though nobody knew from where (p. 171, AND THE BAND PLAYED ON)." 

Then, what is AIDS? AIDS, according to Dr Peter Duesberg, is not a disease but a syndrome of about thirty diseases listed by the CDC as at January 1, 1993. He asserted, "It displays no unique combination of diseases no unique combination of diseases in the patient. Clinically, it (AIDS) is identified by the diagnosis of specific diseases known to medical science for decades or centuries. (p.209, Inventing the AIDS Virus, by Peter Duesberg)." Some of the 31 listed diseases associated with AIDS were : Pneumocystis Carinii Pneumonia (PCP) which before the advent of AIDS was associated with malnutrition;  Kaposi's Sarcoma, a form of blood vessel tumour that causes internal and external lesions (According to Robert Gallo, it was first described in 1872 by Austrian dermatologist, Moricz Kaposi. Kaposi's sarcoma was first seen in older men of Jewish and Italian ancestry, and later in others of Mediterranean ancestry, especially the Greeks p.260, Virus Hunting); thrush, caused by fungal infections; pronounced  herpes simplex-II throughout the body; marked lymph node swelling;  radical infections of the stomach and gastrointestinal tract with Entamoeba histolytica; diarrhoea and gastric problems caused by the Cryptosporidium parasite; tuberculosis; cervical cancer etc. Once AIDS was presented by the CDC as a new disease that threatened not only the life of Americans but the entire world, funds were to be pumped into researching the cause of it and finding cure. Early in 1982, James Curran of the CDC had approached Dr Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute to get involved in the research for the cause of AIDS. What happened after Dr Robert Gallo (MD) took over the leadership of AIDS research is worth recalling in view of Kenneth Harrow's opinion on omicron which he stated as follows, "I know the question of where omicron first broke out is completely irrelevant. The article on how the country is working to combat the disease is very impressive, and does not once ask the dumb question, who got it first, who is responsible for it." Despite the fact that AIDS started in the US, it was completely relevant for Gallo and others where AIDS originated from and the dumb questions of who got it first and who was responsible for it were asked. (To be continued)

 S. Kadiri   

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Harrow, Kenneth <har...@msu.edu>
Sent: 12 December 2021 01:34

To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Omicron

 

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[Harrow, Kenneth]

why i said it was dumb?

i am not an epidemiologist, but an africanist.

caring for africa, protecting it from malignments, doesn't mean protecting it or any other region from charges that the origin of the disease proves something bad about its origins. like being gay, say.

the s african piece alluded to cases in netherlands and elsewhere, not to accuse, not to belittle, but to indicate where to focus attention and action.

dumb means accusations

it does us no good in the end to always wind up saying "they" started it, in their labs, in their military actions, in their evil ways. that kind of approach always bounces back on the accuser, moving us away from, how can we solve where we are now, rather than, look what you did to us.

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Friday, December 17, 2021 5:43 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/HE1P193MB00767C2CA55C157DAA38EE5AAE749%40HE1P193MB0076.EURP193.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM.

[Gloria Emeagwali]

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/232698/modelling-suggests-rapid-spread-omicron-england/

[Salimonu Kadiri]

Since Covid-19 and its variants is still ongoing, I want to re-open the debate generated by the article of Professor Jibrin Ibrahim of December 10, 2021, titled, "Covid-19 Moves and Omicron Concerns."

​Thanks to Kenneth Harrow for sympathising with us, Africans, in our sufferings under centuries of overt and covert colonial rule. To me, you are a humanist who love your neighbours as yourself and who will not do to others what you don't want others to do to you. Think if the global powers are like you, this world would have been a paradise for all of us to live in, regardless of race or colour of the skin. Since you claim to be an Africanist, (and I believe you are sincere about your claim) who cares for Africa, you must inevitably care about what Caucasian Virologists and Medical Scientists say about Africa and do to Africans in terms of viruses and diseases. In your December 12, 2021 submission on this thread you mentioned AIDS, despite the fact that you are not an epidemiologist. Premised on your categorical statement on AIDS, I wish to continue where I stopped in my last submission about AIDS before I fell sick, even though I am a layman as far as medical science and related subjects are concerned. 

Before accepting to get involved in the research of what causes AIDS, Dr Robert Gallo wrote, "Intellectually, I began to play out one Scenario. What if AIDS were due to mutation of an HTLV, probably occurring in Africa, which has spread to Haiti; then to the United States? (p.136, Virus Hunting by Robert Gallo)."  Remarkably, as at April 11, 1983 when Gallo and National Cancer Institute became firmly committed into finding the cause of AIDS, 1,295 Americans had contracted AIDS and 492 had died (p.271, And The Band Played On by Randy Shilt). Although there was no single report of AIDS occurrence in Africa at the time, yet Gallo's probable mutation of an HTLV occurred in Africa. It was as if 1,295 American men were caught as bed-wetter and the cause is blamed on rainforest in Africa.

What does Gallo's acronym, HTLV, mean? HTLV stands for Human T-cell Leukaemia Virus, which Gallo was credited for discovering in 1981 after his head-fight with Japanese researchers resulting in a rapprochement whereby the Japanese were credited with discovering the disease called Adult T-cell Leukaemia (ATL) while the virus that causes it is called Human T-cell Leukaemia Virus (HTLV). In 1981 when many people, except few in the medical science, were not paying attention, Gallo asserted that 16th-century Portuguese brought Africans and monkeys to the Japanese Islands of Kyushu and Shikoku whereby the virus jumped species from monkey to mankind. African slaves brought HTLV to America. He stated further that HTLV is sexually transmitted. Soon after his discovery of HTLV, Gallo announced the discovery of HTLV-II, a variant of  HTLV-I and collections of his HTLV family had begun. 

On Monday, 23 April 1984, Dr Robert Gallo appeared at a press conference in Washington DC together with the US Health and Human Service Secretary, Margaret Heckler. Excerpts from Secretary Heckler's press briefing read, ".... the probable cause of AIDS has been found ..... a new process has been developed to mass-produce this virus . . . we now have a blood test for AIDS which we hope can be widely available within about six months. We have applied for the patent on this process today .... we can now identify AIDS victims with essentially 100 percent certainty . . . .  the new process will enable us to develop a vaccine to prevent AIDS. We hope to have such a vaccine ready for testing in about two years... "  Gallo on his part said that "in my mind the cause of AIDS is unequivocally a new retrovirus which we call HTLV-3."  (see p. 193-194, Virus Hunting by Robert Gallo). The difference between what Heckler and Gallo said were remarkable. While the former talked about founding the probable cause of AIDS the latter without presenting any evidence claimed that his newly discovered retrovirus named HTLV-3 was the cause of AIDS. On May 4, 1984 Science Journal published the discovery of Gallo's HTLV-III under the headline, "Strong New Candidate for AIDS Agent" with the sub-headline, "A newly discovered member of the human T-cell leukaemia virus family is closely linked to the immunodeficiency disease." Nothing in the published papers proved that HLTV-III actually caused AIDS. Gallo and his fellow virus hunters had to move fast before any question was asked about how his leukaemia virus could cause AIDS. 

According to  TIME magazine  of April 30, 1984,  Gallo claimed that the new HTLV-III he assumed to be the cause of AIDS evolved in Africa. "The virus," he said, "may have been around in the bush for some time, but with mass migration into cities, crowding and prostitution, what was contained at low level became a problem." The underlined is to emphasize that Gallo was only guesing and did not have any scientific proof to support his asserted statement. Thereafter, in the NEWSWEEK of May 7, 1984, Gallo presented a world map with arrows pointing to probable routes of the AIDS virus 'on the move' out of Central Africa. The map was accompanied with the following description : (i) AIDS probably appeared first in Africa, as the result of a a minor genetic change in a less lethal virus, or when rural people who harboured the virus moved to urban areas. (ii) French and Belgians who lived in central Africa presumably carried the disease back to Western Europe. Aids also traveled to the Caribbean, possibly brought there by Haitians. (iii) From Haiti, vocationing homosexuals from the United States may have brought AIDS home. Proven facts, especially in science, are never presented in hypothetical manners such as it, probably, presumably, possibly or may have - occurred.  The origin of Gallo's HTLV-III that was later renamed HIV was hypothetically placed in Africa. Thus, Kenneth Harrow  counsels below, "... make sure the 8 million S-Africans, with AIDS are taking their medications because if they don't, they are at higher risk of getting the infection (Covid-19) and incubating mutations." Covid-19 is a respiratory illness caused by severe accute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) while AIDS is caused by the blood-borne human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Contrary to Kenneth Harow's assertion, AIDS cannot be medicated but HIV is treatable. Therefore, it cannot be true that South Africa has 8 million AIDS patients awaiting death.

S. Kadiri ( to be continued)

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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Harrow, Kenneth <har...@msu.edu>

Sent: 18 December 2021 00:00

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[Harrow, Kenneth]

i wonder what delicate sore point i touched on, salimonu.

at times i fear if i open my mouth, i will be jumped on. the report on 8 million people w aids (or being treated w aids, etc) came from a report i passed on to the list. it was what? the guardian or bbc, don't remember. a brilliant article that gave enormous positive impressions of s africa's handling of the covid follow-up, contact tracing, by explaining how people w aids/hiv had a lower resistance to covid, which created fertile ground for mutations. the way it was being handled in s afr was a model for the world.

but salimonu, you begin w outing me/othering me, as the outsider who "sympathizes" with you, "Africans, in [your] suffering...."

i wonder what is wrong w me that i should be so subtly attacked for the infection of the white savior complex?

if i am to join in dialoguing with people on this list--which we have been doing for some time now--shouldn't it be w mutual respect, if not more?

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com>

Sent: Sunday, January 23, 2022 10:16 AM

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

 Shalom Kenneth Harrow & Baba Kadiri 

Here's something for our serious consideration :

https://twitter.com/Finnpal/status/1485170315051380739?t=lARxwjBaXwvULfe6BV8YJg&s=08

[Harrow, Kenneth]

important issue, cornelius.

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>

Sent: Sunday, January 23, 2022 6:31 PM

To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

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[Salimonu Kadiri]

​With due respect to Kenneth on this important issue, let me recall that while Robert Gallo (M.D.) placed the origin of the virus that causes AIDS to Africa and credited Haitians that worked in central Africa with taking the virus back home where U.S. homosexual tourists in Haiti were infected, a book titled AIDS: Aetiology, Diagnosis, Treatment and Prevention was published in the U.S. in 1985. The book was edited, in part, by Vincent DeVita, Director of the U.S. National Cancer Institute. Two NCI epidemiologists, James Goedert and William Blattner, in their contribution to the book concluded : There is no evidence that the AIDS virus originated in Haiti, nor is it possible at this time to determine whether homosexual American tourists introduced AIDS into Haiti, or whether they returned from Haiti (to the U.S.) with the AIDS virus. In fact, none of the U.S. AIDS afflicted homosexuals at that time or later was ever proven to have visited Haiti or have had sexual intercourse with male Haitians.

However, Robert Gallo was a U.S. star researcher of retroviruses then and whatever he said was the law. In his decision to place the origin of his HTLV-III into Africa he recruited a Harvard professor, Myron Max Essex, a specialist in feline leukaemia to join him in search of how the virus evolved in Africa. In the Science Magazine of 22 November 1985, volume 230, p.951-954, Myron Max Essex asserted that the HTLV-III originated from the African Green Monkey, Cercopithecus aethiops. The title of the published Science article was, M. Essex, P.J. Kanki and J.Alroy - Isolation of T-lymphotropic retrovirus related to HTLV-III from wild caught African Green Monkeys. Essex and colleagues decided to call their virus STLV-IIIagm meaning Simian T-cell Lymphotropic Virus (African Green Monkey). They assumed that their STLV-IIIagm might have been transmitted to humans in central Africa, giving rise, perhaps after series of mutations, to HTLV-III. Gallo's HTLV-III was later proved to be a viral fraud and Essex's STLV-IIIagm was evidently proven to be fake. It was on this viral fraud and fake science that Africans south of the Sahara were declared by the Western world to be on the verge of extinction as a result of what was later renamed HIV infections.

1985 was the year when Gallo's HTLV-III balloon, as the cause of AIDS, was punctured and began to leak fraud. That year, the Pasteur Instititute in Paris, headed by Professor Luc Montagnier, sued the National Cancer Institute in a U.S. federal court asking for a share of the royalties that the NCI had accrued from its AIDS test patent developed from the discovery by of HTLV-III by Gallo in 1984. What Pasteur institute had to do with Gallo's HTLV-III discovery will be my starting point in the next phase of this discussion.

S. Kadiri

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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Harrow, Kenneth <har...@msu.edu>

Sent: 24 January 2022 04:27

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[Harrow, Kenneth]

solimonu, i defer to your dedicated expertise in tracking down the scientific pubs on epidemiology of aids.

my reaction was based on one simple thing, which you know no doubt better than i. in attributing the origins of an epidemic to one particular group, as stigmatizing that group, enormous damages result.

be it africans in central africa, or gays in haiti, or recently, under the bastard trump calling covid the chinese virus and implying its origins were in a chinese lab, the result will be enormous resentment and hatred against that group.

that hatred and resentment is a kind of disease, a human caused disease, based on the predilection of people to disparage others. to Other different people. and then to destroy them.

that's my fear.

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com>

Sent: Tuesday, February 1, 2022 3:23 PM

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[Salimonu Kadiri]

​Kenneth, knowing where a disease (virus) first appeared is requisite to finding its cause(s), treatment or cure. Mentioning where a disease first occurred should reasonably not be taken as stigmatizing the people of the area in which it first appeared. Severe acute respiratory syndrome, which is a viral respiratory illness caused by a coronavirus  (SARS-COV), was first reported in mainland China and Hong Kong in 2003. Over the next few months, the illness spread to some countries in North and South America, Europe and Asia but not to Africa. The disease was contained in 2003, without much noise, perhaps, because HIV/AIDS was still much in vogue then. In 2012 there was outbreak of what was then termed, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Corona Virus (MERS-COV) in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Republic of South Korea. That too was contained without much ado.  Then in 2019, COVID-19 broke out in Wuhan, China, which initially was blamed on bats or wild animals' market in the city. That Donald Trump with his street urchin language called COVID-19 a Chinese virus has been ignored worldwide because he is neither a medical scientist nor a virologist. That cannot be compared to when Robert Gallo M.D., professor Myron Max Essex and a bunch of some Western Medical Scientists, just for commercial and economic reasons decided to place the origin of HIV/AIDS into Africa. It is on the basis of that fraudulent science that the BBC and the Guardian newspaper you referenced could report that there are 8 million AIDS patients in South Africa.

I ended my last submission on this topic by mentioning that France in 1985 filed a suit against the U.S.A.'s government to seek for shares in royalties accrued from blood test patent derived from HTLV-III. We have to remember that the genesis of Robert Gallo's HTLV-III discovery as the cause of AIDS began in Paris late in December 1982 when a Paris homosexual and fashion designer, Frédéric Brugiére, reported at La Pitié Salpêtrière hospital. He complained of general debility, fatigue, enlarged rubbery nodes on his neck. He has had a history of several episodes of gonorrhoea and had been treated for syphilis in September 1982. He was a frequent visitor to New York. Lab tests indicated he had cytomegalovirus, Eptein-Barr virus and herpes simplex virus. A tissue sample from his lymph nodes was sent to Pastur Institute where Francoise Barré-Sinoussi and Jean-Claude Chermann under the leadership of Luc Montagnier set about growing the lymphocytes in a culture. By the end of January 1983 they found a retrovirus which they named BRU, taken from the first three alphabets from the patient's surname. The result of their investigation was published in the May 1983 issue of Science journal. Before the publication Gallo described his role thus, "When Science asked me for my comments on Montagnier's work, I strongly endorsed its publication. Montagnier had, however, omitted to write one important part of the paper, the abstract - the summarry of one's findings that is included at the beginning of most scientific articles -  and, given the pressures of time, I offered to write it for him. He agreed. Over the telephone, I  read to him and Chermann what I had written (p.151, Virus Hunting by Robert Gallo)." Gallo for obvious reason did not narrate the contents of the abstract he helped Montagnier to write and published in the May 20, 1983, issue of Science. Gallo's abstract reads, "We report here the isolation of a novel retrovirus from the lymph node of a homosexual patient with multiple lymphadenopathies. The virus appears to be a member of the human T-cell leukaemia virus (HTLV) family." When Montagnier discovered that Pasteur Institute's virus was linked by Gallo to his HTLV family, he protested against the linkage and asserted that their virus was unrelated to leukaemia. Thereafter, Montagnier group began to call their virus Lymphadenopathy-Associated Virus (LAV) but never claimed or established that it was the cause of AIDS. In order to convince Gallo that LAV was not a leucaemia virus, the Pasteur Institute sent an isolate of LAV to Gallo on 17 July 1983 and another sample with picture of LAV on September 23, 1983.

As said earlier, Robert Gallo had appeared together with the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, at a press conference in Washington , DC, on 23 April 1984 and claimed that he had discovered probable cause of AIDS without producing any evidence. However, on May 4, 1984, Science published Gallo's discovery on its news page under the main title : Strong New Candidate for AIDS Agent, with the sub-heading, 'A newly discovered member of the human T-cell leukaemia virus family is very closely linked to the immunodeficiency disease.' The new discovery was named HTLV-III, meaning Human T-cell Leukaemia Virus - III. The article was supported with the pictures of HTLV-I, HTLV-II and HTLV-III. While HTLV-I and HTLV-II were similar as members of the same family, HTLV-III appeared to be a bastard conceived and born with LAV isolate sent by Pasteur Institute to Gallo in September 1983!!! When LAV/HTLV-III went through nucleic acid sequences to determine their genetic structures at the end of 1984, it showed that they were closely alike but totally different from HTLV-1 and HTLV-II. Two years later, on 18 April 1986, Robert Gallo and his associates who were involved in the discovery of HTLV-III admitted in Science journal that LAV electron microscope picture was mistakenly forwarded as HTLV-III for publication in the May 4, 1984, issue of Science. However, Gallo and his group never forwarded their real electron microscope picture of HTLV-III to Science. Following Gallo's admision that his HTLV-III picture was actually LAV, the U.S. dominated International Committee on the Taxonomy of Viruses decided to replace LAV/HTLV-III with HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), in May 1986, as the cause of AIDS.

After admitting, at least indirectly, that HTLV-III was cultured from LAV, the case filed by France against the U.S. over accrued blood test royalties put the U.S. in a dilemma. According to Randy Shilts, an official of the Centre for Disease  Control, Dr Don Francis, warned the U.S. government through a memorandum about the negative potentials contained in the French's suit. Don Francis warned, "If this litigation gets into open court, all of the less-than-admirable aspects will become public and, I think, hurt science and the Public Health Service. The French clearly found the cause of AIDS first and Dr Gallo clearly tried to upstage them one year later (p.593, AND THE BAND PLAYED ON, by Randy Shilts)." Consequently, U.S. sought out of court settlement with France which culminated in a White House ceremony where the French President, Jacques Chirac, and President Ronald Reagan signed an agreement. Thus, the political and commercial value of LAV=HTLV-III caused two heads of state, and not scientists, to resolve a dipute over a viral discovery. (To be continued)

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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Harrow, Kenneth <har...@msu.edu>

Sent: 01 February 2022 22:39

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

 A side-issue of posssible interest to us all : 

https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/273-joe-rogan-and-the-ethics-of-apology