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Published: April 15th 2020
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Covid-19
An unseen enemy lining up planet Earth. “Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.” – Elie Wiesel There is no doubt social media has had a strangely perverse impact on this whole Covid-19 pandemic. There is an incessant and daily bombardment of information from all directions and it is not too dissimilar to a tsunami of epic proportions threatening to drown all in its path. We have access to this gargantuan flow of information but do we have the ability to process it all? I doubt it as all it seems to do is fulfil our desire to
know, because it is in all of our natures to try and understand things especially when there is no thread of prior experience to tap into. So, what do we have other than a massive flooding of so called “information” and noise leading to the scary question;
who the hell do we trust?” This frantic charge is fuelled by the digital information age as it creates a perfect conduit for the many medical scientists, epidemiologists and their kin to offer instant, endless “expert” opinions and advice on a pandemic no one saw
Covid-19
New York now the epicentre of the pandemic. coming and which no one, right now, fully understands.
Leading our own home-made data avalanche was Professor Karim, who heads up the SA Covid-19 Advisory Group. No point banging on about the content as many would have heard or read what he had to say. Suffice to remind ourselves; we are only in Stage 4 of the 8-stage process to manage and defeat this invisible enemy. Bottom line is simply that this 3
rd week is critical in determining if we are slowly getting the upper hand. The weekly infection rate has to show a drop in averages against prior weeks. This means knuckling down as a nation and following lockdown protocols as painful and inconvenient as they may be. But the seeds of discontent are becoming noticeable. Why would any community anywhere on planet Earth want to burn and damage schools on the scale seen here in the last two weeks? The looting of bottle stores as shown on social media clips left one searing question; where were the police? Images of large gatherings of people in many informal settlements is clearly a problem but then again, when people live that close to each other, how do they practice
Covid-19
The face says it all. Boredom abounds on unprecedented levels. social distancing?
The relentless daily bombardment of information will not slow down as social media streams have provided a turbocharged mechanism to get it out there effectively and super quick. The trick is to be selective about what to read and watch. Easier said than done! In the midst of all this hubris there is some seriously good stuff which catches one attention and I share with you one of the information gold nuggets I have found intriguing.
The first one is relatively good news and is based on an article in
News24 written by Frans Rautenbach, an advocate and labour lawyer based in Cape Town, author of “South Africa can work.” His article “There is reason for cautious optimism about SA’s fight against Covid-19” is enlightening for one single reason; it is based on a very well researched trend analysis which in turn spins off different scenarios.
In brief, his conclusions based on analysis of this and other extensive data in his article; (1) Most of the infections and deaths in the first quadrant (Spain,Italy, France, Holland, Switzerland) occurred north of the 44 deg N latitude based on the high death rates in the north of
Covid-19
We have been blessed having Olivia with us. Bright and bubbly with daily projects. This one the outcome of a make up session and posing for the camera. Italy and Spain. Greece was a mystery given its laid-back lifestyle but he points out it lies south of the 40 deg N latitude. Not really as cold as the other countries in that group. (2) Looking at the fourth quadrant which included warmer countries like Singapore, Japan, Poland,Russia and Hong Kong, one sees far fewer deaths. Does a warm climate cramp Covid-19’s style? (3) The number of annual tourists per capita seems to be a factor. All countries in the first quadrant have more than one tourist per year for every inhabitant. Contrast that with the fourth quadrant with lower tourist numbers. The more the number of tourists, the greater the infection rate. (4) The number of hospital beds per capita is relatively high for quadrant 3 which includes former East Bloc countries Hungary, Czech Rep and then Greece, Canada, Finland, South Korea and this links with better infrastructure including ventilators and other ICU equipment. Not the case for Italy, Spain and the UK. (5) The incessant message has been test, test and test some more! Japan and Poland have very low testing numbers but their death rates are relatively low. Testing is important but needs to be targeted and in a successful country, the greater the number of tests done should show up in a lower infection rate. South Africa has a low rate of confirmed cases at the same time that testing is being ramped up. (6) BCG vaccination. He points to the correlation between relatively low rates of infection in those countries that applied universal vaccination against TB and those which didn’t. The jury is out on BCG as recent tests and articles suggest this is not the case. It may not be the “sliver bullet” we can bank on.
So, what does this all mean for South Africa? We have low tourism numbers and travel bans imposed mean there have been no foreign inbound flights for almost 3 weeks to date. We have our warm climate and even though we are heading into winter, our temperatures are mild compared to most of the European region. The bad news is the very high immuno-supressing diseases (HIV, TB, lung diseases amongst others) which clobber South Africa, India, West and North Africa and which suggest high susceptibility to Covid-19 infection. To date, this has not happened, but the prospect of this virus jumping the “socio-economic divide” is frightening. His conclusion, “cautiously optimistic” that South Africa will be OK but the real fight lies in the economic destruction underway and taking up yet another battle in the near future.
A quick update on the “conspiracy fires” which continue to burn fiercely. The
oil cartels have finally agreed to cut oil production but there are questions being posed as to whether it’s a case of “too little, too late.” The oil price has in fact dropped post the announcement. Good news for economies and consumers. The
Chinese remain firmly in the cross hairs as there are an increasing number of leaders speaking out against the manner in which China suppressed information about the Covid-19 outbreak right from the start in November 2019. The USA has announced that they will not make further contributions to the WHO because of the tardy manner in which they responded to the pandemic
and for being biased towards China. There you go; another tactical rocket fired and keep in mind the USA chipped in US$400 million in 2019, the largest donor by far.
The apocalyptic economic impact Covid-19 will have is now receiving more and more attention and could turn out to be a much bigger event in our lifetime than the virus itself. Consider just the impact on East Africa which, prior to the arrival of the virus, was experiencing a locust infestation of biblical proportions. Their problem is that the ban on international flights has meant they have run out of pesticides to fight the locust plague. Crops being destroyed on a massive scale. Hunger and starvation looms for an estimated 4 million people.
One question or bullet which is difficult to dodge is simply; will World leaders take note of the facts emerging about China’s role in this pandemic and take some form of action to bring them to account? Worth further research!
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Megan
non-member comment
The virus continues its relentless path...
Thank you, Tim, for another thought provoking, well researched analysis of the current situation we find ourselves in. The South( African scenario is extremely interesting in that we seem to be on our own unique trajectory, defying trends all over the world. But, as Prof Abdool was anxious to point out, we will at some stage be swamped with infections, given our demographics. We have, however, managed to buy time in order to prepare for our tsunami. The virus won’t go away, just more people will hopefully become immune, or a vaccine will be produced. His advice is that, long term, vulnerable people...the over sixties and those with underlying health issues, will need to take responsibility and self isolate as far as possible for the foreseeable future. The economy, schools etc need to open and society cannot lock down endlessly. Interesting indeed! The photo of Liv is just gorgeous. You are fortunate indeed to have her with you ??