It was always rather strange to me that the Omicron variant originated in Botswana as assumed by the world’s knee-jerking politicians and their friends in the media. BizNews community member Barine Steynberg yesterday sent me the answer via LinkedIn.
Consider this: there are just 2.3m citizens of the landlocked country. That’s 0.03% of the global population, or three Botswanans to every 10,000 other Sapiens. To imagine a world-rocking variant would spontaneously erupt from such a tiny fraction of humanity makes no sense. In summer, nogal.
A more rational and now obvious conclusion was this troublesome Covid-19 variant entered the tourism mecca from outside. Which is precisely what Botswana’s Health Ministry told the world on Friday (see below). Unfortunately, none of the supposed leaders of the Free World paid attention.
The right thing now is for the knee-jerkers to apologise for their hasty reaction; thank SA scientists for uncovering the variant; reopen air links to SA; track down the four tourists to their countries of origin; and cancel flights to those hotspots. Don’t hold your breath…
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