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Covid-19
The EFF with their special brand of politics....let's see what and how much we can destroy!Who would have thought as the month of June 2021 winds down that Covid-19 would by now not have disappeared? On the contrary, as we move into month seventeen of this catastrophic pandemic, this pesky virus has mutated into a monster by way of the variants constantly evolving and the scary reality that the most recent of them, the Delta variant, spreads far more easily and rapidly than any of the others to date. There is little doubt that for many of us there is a numbing acceptance that we are a long way off of getting the better of this virus and thus seeing our lives return to normal. The numbers don’t seem to matter anymore given that there is a sort of “we’ve seen all this stuff before in Waves 1 and 2.”
The numbers do count! They are a call to the reality of just how serious our predicament is and there is no better place to research the numbers than the World Health Organisation website. As of 10.12am on 30
th June 2021 there have been, globally,
181,3 million confirmed cases and 3,9 Covid-19
Zuma joins a long list of thieves....one hopes! million deaths (2.2 percent of confirmed cases). Total vaccinations are 2.66 billion which is roughly 33 percent of the global population. Numbers are often just numbers but in the context of the global population, a 2.3 percent infection rate is very low and we can be seriously thankful that the death rate is as low as it currently stands. The intriguing number in my humble view is how many people have been infected with the Covid-19 virus and didn’t even know. Various scientific theories abound and the number could be somewhere between five and twenty times the reported confirmed cases. The lingering question then is; does this speed up the herd immunity factor which happens when a critical number of the population has been infected? That critical number is unknown and the conventional view is that this needs to run in parallel with vaccinating as many citizens in a country as possible. This is where it gets really interesting as there is no doubt that the first world countries are way ahead of the lesser developed countries and the continent of
Africa, in particular, is in desperate trouble.
As of 17
th June 2021, cases across
African countries
Covid-19
Brand new Beijing Daxing Airport. A total area of 18 square miles and almost the size of Manhattan Island. The terminal alone is about the size of 130 football fields. Chasing super power status? are rising by twenty odd percent per week (that number could be way higher given poor recording and reporting in many countries). There is a mirroring of what happened in
India, where
their Third Wave was a disaster, given the massive overcrowding in many of the continent’s cities. The core problems are poor responses by governments and desperately low vaccination rates.
Tanzania, by way of example, has to date not shared data with the WHO and is now compelled to do so having taken a massive loan from the IMF to help them tackle the pandemic. A typical case of too little, too late.
South Africa is the
most advanced country in Africa and our pandemic management situation lags the outliers such as Rwanda and Botswana. We are currently in the grip of a Third Wave tsunami with infections rising daily by
18,000 cases and
60,000 deaths to date. There is no doubt that our infamous “National Command Council” did not pay heed to warnings and recommendations from the scientific and medical experts who advised that the Level 4 lockdown should have been imposed 2-3 weeks earlier than was actually the case. The procurement of vaccines was seriously botched up and to date only
2.3 million people (3.8 percent of the population) have been vaccinated. It is ludicrous to hear the President advising the citizens of this country in his periodic “family meeting” that the vaccination plans are progressing very well and by such and such a date a specific number will have been vaccinated. These promises are never met and at the current rate it seems impossible that even sixty percent of the population will have been vaccinated by March 2022. The scary reality for many of us now is that we know of numerous friends who have contracted the virus and even worse, folk we know are dying as our medical facilities are overflowing. Multiple millions were spent on field hospitals which now lie dormant due to extremely poor management by health authorities who conveniently play the “blame game” stating that there are not enough health workers to employ. Absurd! In the midst of this mayhem our ex-Health Minister, “Sleazy” Mkhize, had to step down due to allegations that he too couldn’t resist dipping his grubby little fingers in the cookie jar. Needless to say, he remains on full pay with all the perks and benefits of his lofty position intact. The outcome of the investigation into his dodgy dealings should be disclosed soon but I would hazard a guess there will be no punishment and he will instead, be rewarded with a posting somewhere as a Foreign Diplomat. This is how the ANC keep their kin on the gravy train. Contrast this circus with what happened to the health secretary in
England. This guy, Matt Hancock, married with three kids got into a tight clinch with a married woman. No problem at that point one may deduce, except this woman then mysteriously appeared on his department’s payroll. Bang! Matt was then forced to resign confirming that in any normal society there simply have to be repercussions when politicians go rogue. The chaos in this Covid-19 storm takes a new twist in South Africa almost daily. The
Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), led by one Julius Malema, then decide there are fertile grounds to sow their own brand of destructive politics. Their mantra is simple; “we demand, we will take, we will destroy” and so they decide to lead a mass march on our Virology Association demanding that vaccines are imported from Russia (Sputnik V) and China (Sinopharm). Never mind that there is scant research on their efficacy as vaccines with reports that the Chinese version is only 60 percent effective. Never mind that a mass march is illegal in the context of lockdown rules.
What of countries where massive vaccination programs have been carried out?
America, for the time being, seems to have won the battle and shrugged off the Covid-19 yolk with life returning to near normal across many states. They have gone from being one of the worst infected countries on the planet to this state of “near normal” and one needs look no further than the effectiveness of their massive vaccination program resulting in 323.7 million vaccines
(roughly 95 percent of their population) being administered to date. President Biden, somewhat surprisingly, is pushing his various law enforcement agencies to pursue with vigour investigations into what really happened in
Wuhan, China where the virus originated. By some co-incidence, from a timing perspective, an Australian researcher, Dr Danielle Anderson, who was the only foreign scientist working at Wuhan around Covid-19 emergence time, steps forward and debunks all the conspiracy theories stating “What people are saying is just not how it is.” In the mean-time the Chinese will remain tight lipped and will take no notice of the threats of sanctions and so forth should they not co-operate.
A big story gaining traction concerns
Ivermectin which has had a, mostly, very bad press to date. Finally, the outcome of 60 independent studies have been published in the
American Journal of Therapeutics. Broadly speaking the 18,000-word comprehensive research analysis reveals: (1) There was 76 to 85 percent improvement for early treatment and prophylaxis (2) As much as 81 to 96 percent lower mortality was observed for early treatment and prophylaxis. Ivermectin does not replace vaccines and other measures to avoid infection. In this same article the following is quoted verbatim: “The WHO’s analysis predicts that 2 million fewer people would be dead if Ivermectin was used from early in the pandemic, they recommend against use outside trials.” Try and make sense of that statement which merely confirms the massive media bias against Ivermectin. Anyone up to the challenge can read the full story on
www.ivmeta.com South Africa experienced its biggest breaking news story for a long, long time this week when the Constitutional Court ruled unanimously that serial law evader,
Jacob Zuma, would need to spend 15 months in prison for refusing to appear before the State Capture Commission of Enquiry. It gave most of us long suffering and highly sceptical citizens, renewed hope in our justice system. Not so fast, there are always caveats when it involves our pathetic coterie of dysfunctional politicians! Jacob has to present himself to the police for incarceration on Monday 5
th July but already that is looking increasingly unlikely with theories raging that he could do a runner (he was supposed to be off to Zambia to bid farewell to recently deceased Kenneth Kaunda), his supporters will simply lock him down in his Inkandla compound, President Ramapromisa provides him with a Presidential pardon or he submits some instantly developed medical condition to seek pardon. It is tragic, it is laughable and heaven knows what the rest of the civilised nations on this planet must deduce when they cast an eye at the skulduggery, theft and corruption going in sunny and chilly South Africa. One of our inherent problems in South Africa is a phenomenon afflicting many of us and that is “chronic disassociation” which simply means citizens are numbed to a point of resignation and “couldn’t care less.” We simply bury our heads in the sand not wanting to know about or discuss the creeping destruction of our beloved country. There is this belief that “it will all get better” despite the horrific levels of destruction and sheer incompetence staring us in the face. Thankfully we have a brace of incrdible journalists who have bravely and accurately written books about the many facets of corruption and sheer impunity of many rotten politicians few of whom have been arrested, charged or imprisoned. In addition, we have investigative journalists publishing daily updates on the big corruption stories such as Eskom and the implosion of State-Owned Enterprises. Importantly our judiciary remains independent and fearless given the judgement handed down for Zuma. There it is warts and all!
“People don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.” – Frederick Nietzsche
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Sri Sairam Subhayata
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