The revelation of a new COVID-19 variant (Omicron) has once again thrown us into the same aggravating news cycle that has been fatiguing Africans for about as long as the media has existed. Headlines sounding their alarmist titles that the “South African variant” is running rampant, were swiftly followed by a slew of sweeping travel bans from the US and others that conveniently, yet not surprisingly, omitted non-African countries such as Belgium, the United Kingdom and Israel where the variant has also been detected.

What was glaringly absent from these headlines were some inconvenient truths that didn’t quite gel with the media’s go-to ‘dark continent’ narrative. The first of these truths: South Africa is at the forefront of infectious disease research and development internationally, and was the first to detect this new variant and alert the global scientific community. But rather than applaud the country’s scientists for their advanced genomic sequencing and ability to detect variants faster than anyone else in the world, they were rewarded by knee-jerk travel bans from the US and many others. The second of these truths: variants such as Omicron are often born and thrive in low vaccination areas - therefore, thanks to vaccine inequity which is a direct result of the West’s blatant hoarding of vaccines, this will likely not be the last variant that we see.

The real news story here is that (yet again) rich countries’ greed, self-absorption, and of course racist and selective policies, will continue to keep the world on a self-destructive path. Until that truth is reported on and actions taken to reverse its massive effects, this tired, recurring storyline will not have a happy ending for any of us.

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