With 214 million people, Nigeria is the 7th largest nation on Earth but has never reported any significant mortality from Covid.
What explains the enduring success of Nigeria during the covid pandemic?
For context, Nigeria and Brazil each have 214M residents - but while Brazil has reported 623K deaths from Covid, Nigeria has had only 3K people die, thus far.
Why was covid 200 times more deadly in South America than in West Africa?
While Omicron cases are setting records in nations across the West, Nigeria's omicron wave actually had the fewest total infections among their four seasonal waves.
Why were so few Nigerian's susceptible to Omicron?
The Omicron wave in Nigeria had a high peak but also a rapid decline and a low CFR - indicating that, if anything, a higher share of cases were detected during Omicron.
Why has Omicron spread like wildfire in the West but petered out harmlessly in Nigeria?
With only 2.4% of the population vaccinated, could negative VE explain why heavily vaccinated Europe/Americas are setting records while Nigeria saw their smallest wave of infections during Omicron?
Certainly, vaccines don't explain why covid mortality passed Nigeria by...
FYI, the 4th wave in Nigeria was nearly exclusively Omicron infection. Why did it infect so few Nigerians, if it is inherently more infectious?
Seroprevelance surveys have found that >50% of Nigeria's population had already recovered from Covid prior to the emergence of Omicron (most of whom were unaware of their infection).
Perhaps prior infection provides immunity?
medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
Masks are also close to non-existent in Nigeria, as is any sense "social distancing" (which would be impossible in the dense urban centers where 1/2 the population reside).
Back in November, the press noticed that Africa had avoided "disaster", but they still clung to the narrative that vaccines were needed to forestall the next wave.
Well, Nigeria didn't vaccinate anyone and the next wave came and went harmlessly.
abcnews.go.com/Health/wireSto…
It should be plainly obvious by now, that sub-Saharan Africa doesn't need our vaccines.
Continuing to our push to 'vaccinate the world' speaks to Western hubris and neurosis, not to Africa's needs or wants.
What Africa needs is for the West to regain its sanity.
So, what saved Nigeria? Obvious factors: no old people (median age 19), no fat people (8% obesity), perhaps exposure to / treatment for other endemic disease.
BTW, WHO flunet data indicates that the covid pandemic lasted for just a few months in 2020 in sub-Saharan Africa.
The pandemic came to a close before in this region before a single person was vaccinated.
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