Roughly 50 people, mostly black, held up protest signs outside the University of the Witwatersrand (UW) where South Africa's first clinical trials on a new Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine candidate are set to begin with the help of about 2,000 volunteers.
In partnership with the University of Oxford, UW claims that testing this new vaccine candidate on willing participants will help to ensure that a safe and inexpensive commercial vaccine is eventually made available to Africans. However, the protesters are not so sure.
"I'm not happy at all!" 29-year-old graphic designer Tebogo Legoale told news reporters, reflecting on his continent's past involvement in testing potentially dangerous drugs on innocent people who do not fully understand the risks involved.
"I mean, this feels like the 1980s all over again when the AIDS pandemic just broke out in South Africa."
Walter Mashilo, another 29-year-old who is known as a local activist, agrees. He says that he believes members of parliament and ministers' children should be the first to receive this experimental vaccine, not poor people who are being tricked into potentially sacrificing their own lives.
"We are clear, comrades: we don't want this vaccine," Mashilo announced to the crowd standing before him, many of whom were seen carrying "We are not guinea pigs" signage.
The following episode of The Health Ranger Report, which you will not want to miss, discusses the prospect of door-to-door forced vaccinations once one of these experimental Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines is granted market approval:
Traditional healers want their medicines recognized as effective treatment, not new vaccines
With the highest reported infection rate in Africa, South Africa is ground zero for the potential launch of a new Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine, hence why at least one is being tested there. But even traditional healers are saying not so fast.
As is often the case, traditional healing protocols are once again being overlooked or ignored by government officials in Africa, even though they have been used for centuries to help people heal naturally from disease.
Many traditional healers are vocally opposed to the testing of this new vaccine for the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) because they say their methods already work, and do not require the injection of potentially deadly chemicals into people's bodies.
"We are not going to follow a vaccine because we as healers believe that our traditional medicine is not given a chance," stated 32-year-old Sellwane Mokatsi, a compliance officer in South Africa who is also a member of the traditional healers' organization.
Whether one agrees or disagrees with the prospect of using folk medicine to overcome the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19), it remains an undeniable fact that innocent black lives are being exploited to rush a new vaccine to market. And the question remains: Do liberals even care?
"If black lives matter – and they do – someone had better straighten these people out," wrote one commenter at The Globe and Mail who claims to have guest lectured at UW "during the end of Apartheid" when the school was "a beacon of racial tolerance and science-based decision-making."
"I had great hope for Cyril but he could be presiding over the last democracy," this same commenter added about South Africa's current president, Cyril Ramaphosa. "What a sad commentary on South Africa and Wits University."
More related news about the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) is available at Pandemic.news.
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