September 30, 2021
Sitting to ensure you don’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. 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 millions and millions of South Africans. Like today, most of the work on developing those antiretrovirals was publicly funded research - paid for by taxpayers.
