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It would very hard to mobilise and basically try change the state of the world in the month or two at the beginning of 2020 before COVID hit hard. Healthcare systems take years to build, and I don't think the collective West even has that kind of industrial capacity considering that they've outsourced everything to China over the past few decades. The West would've had to start actually caring years ago, instead of delivering ineffective aid packages.

During the height of the AIDS pandemic in the 2000s there was much optimism that the massive influx of foreign aid in response could be used to build better health systems. Bits and pieces of evidence do suggest health on the continent has improved. But it’s very disappointing that most countries on the continent still do not have the vital registration systems in place to measure mortality with decent accuracy. This is one of the most important measures of how a population is doing.

Yeah, but a lot of countries in the world simply do not have the capacity or capabilities to do so. While most first world countries did have that capability, and simply chose not to lockdown properly so the line could go up, many other countries in the third world didn't even have the infrastructure to track cases and deaths, never mind doing proper targeted lockdowns. This article explains it well with regards to Africa.

Apparently Waltz also shat the bed during the VP debates, which have had more importance this time round since Trump is so old, so people on the fence or slightly leaning towards Trump were interested in how his potential replacement presented themselves. It seems that Vance won them over.

Imagine losing a debate to JD Vance of all people. How embarrassing.

No one in the world knew what was going to happen next.

I don't think that's true, it was fairly obvious to those doing research that COVID was not going to disappear after a half arsed 2 week lockdown, and that the lockdowns were going to have to be extended for quite a while. The virus was spreading at an exponential rate and reaching new countries every day, and some kind of "worldwide lockdown" to eliminate COVID forever was never going to be feasible.

Apparently 100 000 Ukrainian soliders have deserted their positions, as they don't want to face certain death. This statement came from a pro Western ex BBC journalist in Ukraine, who compared Ukrainian morale to that of Nazi Germany between June 1944 to January 1945.

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This is what a lot of epidemiologists predicted would happen at the start of 2020. That with the eventual pressures of vaccines, immunity to previous variants, the large amount of death in vulnerable populations during the initial waves of the pandemic, etc, that COVID-19 would eventually reach a point where it's an endemic disease, with a similar to slightly higher fatality rate than a strong influenza and pneumonia season. It's actually surprising how close the numbers are in the US, the CDC currently has influenza and pneumonia deaths estimated at around 47 000. Essentially saying that with COVID-19 spreading to so many countries so quickly in early 2020, that there would be no way to get rid of it completely, as a lot of countries simply do not have the capability and/or resources to track the spread of the virus, never mind lock down effectively. Though I am pretty sure that they didn't expect the countries that had the ability to lock down, to just not do so... (Looking at most of the West here, sans Japan and New Zealand)

This is pretty bad news for those with immunosuppressive conditions and those over the age of 65, as before COVID they already had to worry about an endemic disease that could cause serious harm to their health and long term illness, with low annual vaccination rates, in influenza/the flu. Now they have to worry about two illnesses simultaneously that can do this, in both COVID and influenza. A bad position to be in.

Humanity as a collective really did not perform well here. Only China, along with a few other countries like Vietnam and New Zealand, had effective lockdowns. Which leads to the current predicament, where hundreds of thousands of people globally are going to die every year to a new endemic illness.

At least South Africa had been under an arms embargo for over 20 years back then, and US sanctions were only a few years away. Israel still gets billions of dollars from the US in arms deals, and US sanctions seem to be an eternity away.

Unsurprisingly, Israel was one of the only countries that didn't follow the arms embargo, and went through backdoors to help apartheid South Africa obtain nuclear weapons and modernise their Mirage lll fleet of fighter jets.

"We have to support South African expansion and it's control over Namibia to prevent Cuban and Soviet proxies in Angola from taking over the region. South Africa has the right to defend itself against terrorist activity from the ANC internally, as well as defending it's territory in Namibia."

• Tim Waltz during the year 1984, probably

As of 2020 would be more accurate wording. And 914 000 people have left South Africa between 2000 and 2020. So the amount of people that choose to emigrate to Israel is a very small fraction of the total amount of people leaving the country, around 1.25%, probably lower because of the extensive co-operation between apartheid South Africa and Israel in the past, so some probably moved to Israel before 2000. Though I have met an Afrikaner Zionist before, and they were as disgusting as you would expect. I hope the government prosecutes any of these people if they dare to return to South Africa.

The most popular destinations for South Africans leaving the country are other settler colonies like Australia and New Zealand along with the USA, the original colonist countries like Great Britain and The Netherlands, and other sub-imperialist countries like the UAE. In fact, there are over 114 000 South Africans living in the UAE. The more socially liberal people that are prepared to deal with the cold tend to immigrate to the Nordic countries, but the weather and culture is usually too big an obstacle for most.

And yes the "every house with a pool, and a big backyard, in a fancy boomed off suburb or security estate, with a live in ~~servant~~, sorry uhh a ~~maid~~, sorry again the correct term nowadays is domestic worker, along with a gardener", is the lifestyle most upper class South Africans are used to. It's why so many of them continue to live in South Africa even when we didn't have electricity for 8-12 hours a day. They know that they will never be able to obtain such a lifestyle anywhere else with their current skillset. Only the super rich live like that in the first world. No one in the Professional Managerial Class in Europe or the USA can afford to live like that. South Africa is one of the only countries unequal enough to make that a reality.

"Die groot krokodil" (the big crocodile) PW Botha, and "Pik" (short for "pikkewyn", means penguin)" Botha are probably the most egregious examples. Yes, they are two different people. And yes, Afrikaans surnames are pretty repetitive, lots of Botha's, Van De Merwe's, Van Wyk's, Du Toit's and Du Plessis' who are completely unrelated to each other.

Ronald Reagan organised a phone call between Republicans who were on the fence about supporting sanctions against apartheid, and Pik Botha, who was seen as a reformist moderate within the apartheid government, with the goal of getting these Republicans to be oppose putting sanctions on apartheid. Apparently Pik Botha was so racist that these Republicans ended up supporting sanctions against apartheid South Africa. The moderates and reformists of the apartheid regime were too racist for Reagan era Republicans. Think about that for a second...

Two separate scientific studies have put the lower bounds of the death toll in Gaza at well over 100 000, which seems to be a much more realistic assessment... Can't remember what the upper bound figures were, those would probably be above 10% of the population of Gaza...

Yeah, personally I think depleted uranium should be banned for military use, but there is no international law banning such weapons.