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Beedledee Beedledum's avatar

if you watch or listen to Dr. John Campbell, this was explained. Africans do not carry the neanderthal gene, as many europeans and US people DO - which increases your chance of having serious effects of covid. so before you move, find out if you have the gene.

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Tom's avatar

I expect many Africans are taking hcq as prophylaxis for malaria. I always took it on my trips to subsaharan Africa. They take a lot of ivermectin too for river blindness.

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JW Writes's avatar

Almost no one who lives there takes anything as prophylaxis for malaria - they sleep with nets, get malaria, then treat it. I’ve been working in Uganda for 14 years and have never seen either HCQ or ivermectin at a pharmacy. (We picked up some ivermectin in Panamá this spring but I couldn’t find any to buy in Uganda.) When the govt threatened teachers who didn’t vax (and they only had hundreds of thousands of doses anyway, not millions) many just quit. They’d closed the schools and kept them closed for almost 2 years (beginning of April ‘20 until Jan 28 ‘22) so most had had to get other work to survive. (So now the already terrible eduction “system” is much worse...) I work in Uganda’s largest slum, in Kampala, and don’t know anyone who got any kind of Covid vax. I told everyone I could not to get it, but they were highly skeptical anyway. They don’t get childhood vaccinations so it’s not part of the culture and they don’t trust them much overall. Their bodies also have a lot of much more serious illnesses to fight like typhoid and malaria. (2 kids in one of the rural schools we work with have died just over the Christmas break from malaria.) One friend and his wife got Covid, and an elderly pastor friend, and that’s it that I know of. And NOT because they do anything at all for prevention. They can’t afford it.

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eyes open's avatar

Cool and informative report!

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ISL's avatar

There is a great correlation between no covid and IVM regularly used in central Africa, but high covid in S Africa and the Sahel/Sahara where it is not. Convinced the Japanese medical authorities to allow IVM as treatement.

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Jean Anderson's avatar

Possibly also to do with parasites being more common. A study from Ethiopia (iirc) showed higher helminthic loads correlated with lower severity covid.

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Tom's avatar

I’d guess ivermectin might help with several of those parasites.

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