In West Africa, Omicron has only recently started peaking. To date, only 52% of the population of the global South are fully vaccinated, and in few countries the booster shot has now been introduced, and people are invited to get theirs.
I find myself, somehow conflicted. On the one hand, I absolutely get it! We are, all of us as the world population, completely over COVID-19 protocols. We are so over it that in December, I spoke to a few people who indicated that they are so tired of being controlled by COVID, that if they were to test positive, they said they would not isolate. Although I certainly would, and for the prescribed period, I find myself understanding where they come from and why they feel this way. On the other hand, and knowing full well that we will have to live with COVID-19 for a long long time, I cannot imagine living through it without a mask, and without keeping a reasonable enough distance between myself and the next person. I still give people the death stare for coughing, and I myself feel ashamed if I even sneeze in public. Earlier, on the travel here, an older man coughed, and I immediately thought of Masupu’s words, that there is not such thing as flu in the summer, when we are living through a global pandemic. I suppose my soft spot for the elderly and the very young directs my bias towards an inclination that we are not taking this seriously enough, and that we should be.
