Omicron's Response Was... Racist!
How America and the Western World's response to Omicron was awfully disasterous
Omicron has devastated the world. Countries have shut down their borders to travelers from southern Africa. In the US alone, cases have jumped from around 400,000 daily cases in October to nearly 1 million cases now. Currently, Omicron makes up 58.6% of COVID cases in the US.
It was clear from the beginning that Omicron would pose a great threat to the globe, so it seems understandable that countries would shut down their borders to southern African countries. The US banned many non-citizens from 8 Southern African countries, including Botswana, South Africa, and Malawi. Other countries also followed suit. The UK, France, Germany, and a whole host of other countries, also imposed new restrictions that banned travelers from Southern African countries but if you look at those measures closely, travel restrictions have been performative, dumb, and often racist.
For one thing, there was evidence that Omicron was circulating around the Netherlands over a week before South Africa announced the discovery of Omicron. In addition, if Omicron was already so contagious, and the virus can have a nearly two-week-long incubation period, there were probably already cases in your country before you shut down the country from foreign travelers.
In fact, many health officials, including the WHO, warned against closing borders because it wouldn’t help stop the variant from getting into the country, but it would cause significant disruptions.
Those disruptions were absolutely massive. South Africa wasn’t able to get tourists into their countries, helping further destroy its already paralyzed economy. With people unable to fly in and out of Southern African countries, families wouldn’t be able to visit each other. Family trips were cut short, and people were scrambling to get to their destination before the travel restrictions came into place
Xenophobia
These travel restrictions also have to do a lot with xenophobia (I know Tucker Carlson is about to do a segment about how crazy I am). When western countries first noticed that COVID was coming from southern African countries, they immediately banned travelers from those countries. However, when other western countries got Omicron cases, those countries did get travel restrictions imposed on them.
This double standard has led Malawi, a country that had travel restrictions imposed by the pandemic, to rightfully accuse the US and European countries of “Afrophobia.” You can’t just promptly close your borders only for southern African countries, while countries around Europe and the US also have Omicron variants.
Ultimately, after several weeks though, the US and other countries did finally lift travel restrictions, but not after it caused undue harm to south African countries and did nothing to stop the Omicron variant.
Book Recommendations
Before we go, I want to give a book recommendation. I’m currently reading “A World Safe for Democracy” by G. John Ikenberry.
In International Relations theory, there are two broad schools of thought: Liberalism and Realism. Liberalism emphasizes that countries can work together through international organizations to achieve big things. Realism, on the other hand, emphasizes that the world stage is anarchic, which means that there is no authority to regulate the national government. It argues that countries only work in their own interests to preserve themselves on the world stage.
“A World Safe for Democracy” is about Liberalism. It first introduces the basic tenants of Liberal Internationalism: Openness and Trade, Rules and Institutions, Liberal Democratic Solidarity, Cooperative Security, and Progressive Social Purpose. It then explains the history and the different forms of Liberal Internationalism. It ultimately then introduces and proposes a solution to the current crisis of the current world order.
The book is quite a bit complicated, but it provides a really good introduction to the basics of Liberalism, and it makes you better understand the philosophy behind America’s foreign policy decisions around the world.
That’s it. This is the last article for the year, and we’ll be back next year. ■