Hard choices Africa must make in brave bid to crush contagion

Public health officials from Naivasha take temperature readings of passengers along the Nairobi-Nakuru highway in efforts to curb the spread of the coronavirus. [Antony Gitonga, Standard]

Suppose you had the choice between two health policies, A and B. Policy A would result in the death of a lot of elderly people. Policy B would result in the death of a lot of children, especially infants. Which would you choose?

Right now we are facing a choice between more or less drastic measures to slow the spread of Covid-19, a virus which, at time of writing, has yet to claim a life under 10, and claims very few lives under 30, with the risk rising exponentially with age. We are putting in place measures that will lead to malnutrition and starvation for millions of people, and for these horrors, children and especially infants are the most at risk. And many of those infants are born and will die, in Africa.