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Dec 19, 2021·edited Dec 19, 2021Liked by Melanie Newfield

Thanks for this article Melanie - so much of what you have written here is recognizable - my husband and I lived in Nigeria for 5 years mid to late 90s. He’s soon to become involved with a COVAX project in PNG and he will specifically be looking at vaccine hesitancy issues there so will find this interesting - thank you

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Thank you Fiona. The more I hear about Nigeria, the more I realise what a fascinating and complex country it is. And PNG is another fascinating and complex country where vaccine hesitancy seems to be a big issue, although in that case I don't know anything about the history behind it.

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Great piece! I like the way that you took the time to interview some people; that takes a lot of work and dedication!

I'm not sure if you'll find this interesting, but I asked an economist about a CNN piece saying that there isn't enough money to continuously vaccinate the world: https://twitter.com/JoinAndrewNow/status/1478735467361222663.

His response was: "We can—shots cost around $2 each. We can spend $32 billion a year (0.04 percent of global GDP) on vaccines, if that's needed to keep people alive."

There's another point, namely that vaccinating the world protects us as well, since mutations that happen in Nigeria will eventually come back to the rich countries. So there's even a purely self-interested reason to want to vaccinate the world.

By the way, if you're interested then let me know your thoughts on this: https://join.substack.com/p/how-do-you-turn-views-into-signups. I'm not sure if it's a brainstorming session that you'd benefit from, but if so feel free to jump in!

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