I forgot to take my book with me this morning so, rather than read about a train trip in India, I started writing my blog on my phone. I do this sometimes and, though it’s a bit more laborious than writing on a laptop, it gets the job done. It’s also quite pleasant in Starbucks early on, with few distractions.
Anyway, when my brain stops coming up with snappy sentences, I tend to flick around. It was during one of these flicks, that I came across an interesting snippet.
While the rest of the world reels from Covid19, Africa is doing a lot better. The people at WHO are wondering why. It would appear that a combination of being outside more, being less urbanised, exercising more and having been subjected to various other things like ebola, malaria and polio have all contributed to them being pretty much immune to some extent. There’s also the fact that the populations are younger. I reckon less of a reliance on processed foods and more cooking from fresh is also helpful.
At the beginning of the pandemic, there’d been warnings that there’d be bodies in the streets in many of the poorer African countries, but this hasn’t happened. The report states that in Nigeria, for instance, there has only been 3,000 Covid deaths out of a population of 200 million. There’s that many every few days in the US.
The article I read was accompanied by a series of photographs of people in Harare, Zimbabwe. They all looked healthy and happy. There’s also a piece from the BBC, here.
Whatever else can be said about the two pieces, it’s undeniable they are the first positive Covid stories I’ve come across. Among the fear and the catastrophe, the tears and the avoidance, photographs of smiling people are very encouraging.
At the other end of the day, I took the girls up to the park where we watched the sunset. Freya enjoyed it, but Emma was more interested in chasing a tennis ball.
