Despite anxiety, confusion and ignorance at ground level, there’s been much ululation about the decision by President Cyril Ramaphosa, his government, medical “experts” (we hope) and other people (mainly so-called captains of industry, it seems) to lock down the country for 21 days from Thursday night at midnight.
As of this morning, the official number of confirmed Covid-19 cases has risen to 709, due to a rush of test results coming in; and it seems that it is this rising tally that is the spectre hovering above Ramaphosa, Minister of Health Dr Zweli Mkhize and the government.
The thrust of our government’s lockdown is to slow the tally by forcing people not to infect each other; and of course, the spread of the virus locally is exacerbated, as Ramaphosa noted, by two main issues. The first is that “our health services” will be stretched “beyond what we can manage” – i.e., our hospitals will not be able to cope, and sick people will therefore not be treated; second, there exist large numbers of people with “suppressed immunity because of HIV and TB, and high levels of poverty and malnutrition”.
What we have done here – or will do from Friday – (“All shops and businesses will be closed”), is to shut almost everything down.
Let’s unpack the “wisdom” behind this decision a little, however.
This step is more extreme than anything yet taken in the UK, Germany or Australia, let alone those countries/states which have best controlled the epidemic – despite their proximity to China – such as South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Singapore.