Why is the WHO Promoting Covid-19 Vaccines in Tropical Countries?

Sunday, December 27, 2020 - groundviews.org

The currently available Covid-19 vaccines have been authorized for emergency use in Europe and North America. This is due to what has been termed a health emergency as winter advances and Covid-19 flu cases spike, primarily in the northern hemisphere. Highly advertised Covid-19 vaccines are being produced, rolled out by powerful pharmaceutical and bio-technology companies headquartered in Euro-America under the warped speed operation, although their efficacy including how long the immunity lasts is not clear.

These vaccines are being marketed on global media and news channels to the rest of the world although they have not gone through a full trials process and their long term impacts on populations, particularly those in the South, are unknown. There are suggestions that the current Covid-19 vaccine’s anti-bodies they trigger may last for less than 10 months.

In several tropical Asian and African countries, the 2020 country-specific data shows that there is no Covid-19 health emergency. In Bangladesh, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Tanzania and Uganda there is a low incidence of Covid-19 when compared to average annual rates of influenza related deaths. In Sri Lanka questions arise as to why national health authorities are being urged by the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF, with World Bank and Asian Development Bank providing loans, to buy vaccines at this time, especially when it is claimed that there may not be sufficient doses for populations in North America and Europe where there appears to be a Covid-19 emergency.

On average it takes over 5 to 10 years to systematically trial vaccines. The hi-tech Pfizer and Biontech vaccines have not been trialed in the South where the health and nutrition statuses of people are different than in the north. In the industrialized world, larger volumes of processed food are consumed and non-communicable diseases that constitute the co-morbidities profile for Covid-19 are also far more widespread than in tropical countries, especially those where rice is a staple food.

Sri Lanka country data

A year after Covid-19 emerged, the Sri Lanka country statistics and data for 2020 indicate that Covid-19 is milder than seasonal influenza, as is the case in other tropical countries such as Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Bangladesh. The number of deaths due to Covid-19 and related co-morbidities in Sri Lanka this year are less than 200, although in a normal year between 5,000 and 7000 people die of influenza co-morbidities. The empirical and qualitative data and facts on the ground show that no workers in the mercantile and industrial sectors have died of Covid-19 in 2020. Likewise, no nurses, doctors, Public Health Inspectors (PHIs) or other frontline health workers in quarantine centers have died of Covid-19. There were fewer patients in hospitals than in previous years.

However, last week the WHO and UNICEF representatives in Colombo met the Prime Minister and health authorities and urged purchase of vaccines for which the government would need to borrow Rs. 10 billion from the World Bank. The question arises since data for 2020 shows that there is no Covid-19 emergency and less than 200 persons have died of Covid-19, should not the government wait until a vaccine is fully trialed in tropical countries with low Covid-19 incidence? As Sri Lanka is currently in a massive debt trap and its currency is in free fall with the economy badly hit by lockdowns and loss of livelihoods, these funds would be better spent jump starting the economy, especially as curfews have cause great economic damage. Moreover, should not these tropical countries in the south with low caseloads wait until a vaccine is authorized for non-emergency use?

It is not Covid-19 but the policy response that has triggered a national emergency. Economically, socially and politically devastating curfews and isolation policies have been introduced on the advice of the WHO resulting in fear, isolation, increasing poverty and inequality, pushing the country into a bigger debt trap and forcing the government to sell off strategic assets and seemingly give tax relief to various international companies, investors and airlines.

Test, test and trace using flawed tests has been the mantra on which the WHO, Ministry of Health (MOH) and the Government Medical Officers’ Association (GMOA) policy of economically, socially and politically devastating lockdowns and isolation has been implemented by the government and military. These policies are not based on Sri Lanka’s country specific, quantitative and qualitative Covid-19 data and are counter-productive to the mental and physical health and well-being of the population.

It is now clear that the virus has spread to all parts of the country but has little traction in Sri Lanka. The metric that matters to determine the severity of a disease in a population in order to design balanced, targeted and evidence-based health policy is not the number of infections but rather the number of deaths relative to infections extrapolated to the whole population. The MOH and GMOA guided by the WHO has used questionable epidemiology models, metrics and flawed PCR tests to whip up a fear psychosis and lock down the country rather than use the tried and tested Infection Fatality Rate (IFR). The WHO’s Covid-19 global pandemic narrative has been crafted on the Case Fatality Rate (CFR). Covid-19 mortality based on CFR ranges from 1 per cent to as high as 5 per cent while the IFR is much less by orders of magnitude.

WHO, BCG and low incidence of Covid-19

The low incidence of Covid-19 in Sri Lanka is due to several interrelated and country-specific contextual factors such as year round hot and humid tropical weather (above 20 degrees Celsius) that degrades the Covid-19 virus and transmission; the BCG vaccination that confers innate and trained immunity against respiratory illnesses; good national health infrastructure including BCG monitoring; and local diet and food habits.

Many international scientists have exposed the fact that high numbers of false positive PCR tests account for high rates of supposedly asymptomatic cases and question the Covid-19 data presented by the WHO and the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) data base. In India highly flawed PCR tests gave up to 80 per cent false positives and a community survey was abandoned. The flawed tests account for very high numbers of apparently asymptomatic cases when in fact these cases either have Covid-19 anti-bodies from last year’s flu or the tests were simply wrong. Sri Lanka and many other impoverished countries in the South have been locked down and economically devastated based on flawed tests and a global media narrative that exaggerated the number of Covid-19 cases by giving false positives. This is in a nutshell is the Covid-19 hoax.

Policies to promote fear and stigma

The WHO has previously denied that the BCG vaccine may significantly lessen the impact of Covid-19. The WHO, MOH, GMOA and Covid-19 Task Force policy of lockdowns and isolation based on random PCR and rapid antigen tests that deliver high levels of false positives while targeting poor communities and neighborhoods with ethnic minorities and using the military has spread a fear psychosis, stigmatizing patients, particularly women and garment factory workers, and resulted in closure of factories, destruction of livelihood and thousands of job losses, leading to rising poverty and inequality. Often this racial and religious profiling and scapegoating is based on false positive PCR tests and are meant to promote division, distrust and de-stabilize society and government.

The canard that dead bodies carry and spread the infection has whipped up a media frenzy targeting Muslim and Christian religious minorities who bury their dead. There appears to be a deliberate attempt to divide and distract from a science and evidence based national Covid-19 policy discussion of the real data, empirical facts and qualitative, social science date on the ground.

The policy of isolating the Western Province, which is the economic growth hub, and preventing travel and internal tourism is increasing regional poverty and inequality. Countries such as Japan with higher Covid-19 numbers are encouraging internal travel and tourism to assist economic recovery at this time. Arresting people for not wearing masks and PCR and rapid antigen testing at exits points of the Western Province has been less than optimum for society and economic recovery.

To confuse people and distract from analysis of the data, some media houses and politicians have had recourse to the occult, superstition and cultural myths and rituals to mislead the masses. The lack of an evidence-based policy response by the government appropriate to the Sri Lanka country context is related to the lack of a qualified, educated and competent Minister and team in the MOH who are able to analyze country data and make evidence-based health and national policy.

It is highly likely that Sri Lanka has achieved herd immunity as the flu season at the end of 2019 had all the signs of Covid-19, also given high levels of travel and tourism to and from China, but since there is no systematic anti-body testing we do not know if this is the case. Rather than buying vaccines it would be appropriate for the MOH to conduct anti-body tests with accurate test kits to assess how many in the population have immunities and if herd immunity has been achieved as the country-level data and statistics seem to indicate.