https://photoblog-a3l.pages.dev/tags/covidvaccination/ Recent content in Covidvaccination on The Singemonkey Hugo en-us Thu, 30 Sep 2021 19:35:25 +0000 https://photoblog-a3l.pages.dev/posts/2021-09-30-sitting-to-ensure-you-dont/ Thu, 30 Sep 2021 19:35:25 +0000 https://photoblog-a3l.pages.dev/posts/2021-09-30-sitting-to-ensure-you-dont/ <p>Sitting to ensure you don&rsquo;t have a rare adverse reaction to the COVID vaccination at the Cape Town International Convention Centre - turned into a massive vaccination hall. Sadly, vaccination has slowed down a bit. At its peak this facility does thousands per day with friendly efficiency. It reminded me of a similar massive save by science.</p> <p>In the early 2000s, working for a tuberculosis organisation, I was fully expecting that great halls like this would be used as mass hospices for people dying from HIV/AIDS. At that point, millions of South Africans were being diagnosed, but there was no treatment available. The first antiretrovirals could only delay the disease - not stop it. But then a triple therapy was developed that thrashed the hell out of the lethal virus. Due to having a conspiracy theorist as president (sound familiar anyone) even that lifesaving treatment was denied to South Africans until 400,000 had died for no reason (at a conservative estimate). But once that maniac was deposed, health minister Aaron Motsoaledi rolled out the largest HIV treatment programme on Earth, saving literally <em>millions and millions</em> of South Africans. Like today, most of the work on developing those antiretrovirals was publicly funded research - paid for by taxpayers.</p>