Not only does Ireland have the highest incidences of Covid, it also has the highest vaccination rate (94% of the adult population) in Europe. The UK and Germany have high rates of vaccination and cases of Covid. It’s hard to make sense of those numbers, perhaps even harder than making sense of the politicization of the disease itself. As you point out in your response, the world owes a debt to South Africa for, not only the work identifying new variants, but their open sharing of their data with the rest of the world. Imposing travel bans and any other form of economic backlash seems—to me at least—to be insanity.