LETTER: SA will be stigmatised and punished

Well, that didn’t take long. Well done, over-ambitious SA scientists. (“SA back on UK’s travel red list over new Covid-19 variant”, November 25).

It doesn’t matter whether the World Health Organization (WHO) has opted to give new variants generic names — it will still forever be known as the “Delta” variant that “was first detected in India” or the “(insert Greek letter here)” variant “that originated in SA”.

This new WHO naming convention is pointless and countries will be (and SA now clearly has been in less than 24 hours) stigmatised and punished as a result.

SA is a country that cannot seem to stop scoring own goals at every turn, even when it tries to be transparent and do the right thing. Even the few smart people we have left seem to be desperately lacking in wisdom.

Mark Khoury 
Via BusinessLIVE

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