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CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA-APRIL 07,2020: An overview of the deserted places of Cape Town in the midst of closure (Photo by Gallo Images / Jacques Stander)
There is no point in debating the merits of the initial three-week blockade or its extension. What we now need is an evaluation of our return on investment.
The most difficult part of dealing with the coronavirus pandemic is the period between infection, the spread of the virus to others, and becoming ill or showing symptoms. Similarly, there is a lag between disruption and the world’s response to the pandemic, which now amounts to blockades of different levels of severity, and our underlying assumptions about the world we live in.
Apparently there is also some delay in understanding the purpose and objectives of the blockade itself. We should be clear. The lock in itself does not save lives. Assuming the South African blockade is successful (everyone stays home and complies with regulations), it gives us time to decide what to do with the pandemic, while infection rates remain seemingly low.
We should be clear. This pandemic will not end until we achieve herd immunity through infection or a vaccine is developed and becomes widely available. Collective immunity is the final strategy of all countries. We must remember that the 1918 “Spanish flu” virus strains (the H1N1 pandemic) and the 1957 (H2N2 pandemic) are still in circulation today, but they are not particularly lethal as most of us are partially immunized .
The most optimistic prognosis for a vaccine is around 18 months from now: The Covid-19 Vaccine Development Landscape. There is no conceivable scenario in which the entire country remains locked up for much longer than its current extent until April 30. Our effort to contain the disease will continue for at least another year beyond that date.
For now, different responses from countries have resulted in some sort of early classification of their efforts to stop the spread of the pathogen. There are those countries that have responded early with decisive action on implementing some version of a blockade, and there are those that responded much later on the curve of increasing the infection rate.
The initial result of these decisions seems to be clear: those who acted early and firmly seem to control the disease, and those who did not now face enormous numbers of fatalities and health systems beyond the breaking point. Countries for which we have reliable data that appear to have worked well tend to be at least one of homogeneous or consensus-based societies, small or remote places. Countries that appear to perform poorly are larger, more diverse, multicultural, metropolitan, open, and with an individualistic cultural and economic orientation.
Within countries, most infections, and certainly those requiring hospitalization, tend to be in the largest metropolises and immediately in the surrounding areas. In Italy, it was the industrial region of Lombardy; in Spain, Madrid and Barcelona; in the United Kingdom, London and the new epicenter in the USA. USA It focuses on New York City.
Taiwan, South Korea, New Zealand and various European countries show that it is possible to restrict new infections and flatten new infection curves and provide guidance for others. The failure of the political leadership in not taking the threat seriously enough is another matter. An obvious failure is the slapstick behavior of the President of the United States, Donald Trump. However, within the US USA There is a big difference in the progress of the disease in New York State, New York City in particular, and California, which appears to be working as well as the best jurisdictions in other parts of the world. Can we ask how New York Governor Cuomo or New York City Mayor de Blasio did not follow South Korea’s example?
Maybe we should hold the trial for a while yet. This pandemic finds us as it finds us. One thing we can learn is that a detailed 2019 study by Johns Hopkins and The Economist’s Intelligence Unit that sought to rank different countries in terms of their pandemic readiness and that ranked the US. USA And the UK in first and second place, respectively, is wrong: World Health Security Index 2019.
New York City is probably the most dense, dynamic, diverse and energetic city in the world that attracts people from all over. As the song says, “If you can do it here, you can do it anywhere.”
New Yorkers live in densely populated high-rise apartment buildings, commute or commute using the public transportation system, and eat outside. It is a perfect environment for the coronavirus to spread even after social distancing measures have been implemented. So why couldn’t New York have taken the example of South Korea? Well, because it’s New York, not Seoul.
What places New York on most of our lists of places to visit and experience also made it particularly vulnerable to the spread of the virus. Seoul, perhaps cruelly, is the opposite. Perhaps the suburban sprawl and its reliance on private cars to get around Los Angeles had as much to do with its apparent success in containing the spread of the virus as the shutdown measures in place in California?
Save a thought for Singapore. It is a highly disciplined place with authoritarian rule backed by widespread vigilance. Made the decision to close early – Coronavirus: Most workplaces to close, schools will transition to full home learning starting next week, says Prime Minister Lee – and seemed to have the infection under control. But now he’s back in full lockdown for the second time. The problem for Singapore is that its very existence is based on its being a trade / shipping hub. That’s what it does, and therefore it will be constantly plagued with new imported infections until there is a vaccine.
There is no point in debating the merits of the initial three-week blockade or its extension. What we now need is an evaluation of our return on investment. What can we reasonably expect to have gained with the time we acquired?
First, we would like to understand how the lock itself works. This can be assessed with respect to the epidemiological measure of whether the infection rate slowed down or stopped. But there is a more important measure that is less about data points, graphs and tables. What was the impact on people living in different communities? What are the social and mental health implications, including gender-based violence? What works in traditional suburbs and formal settlements of different kinds? What works in informal settlements and in some rural areas?
There is considerable evidence that the government is not interested in the answers to any of these questions. An example of this is the decision to ban the sale of liquor and cigarettes. Now, alcohol consumption and smoking are very important health problems and rightly deserve attention. Alcohol abuse is linked to high levels of violence and carnage on our roads, which puts enormous pressure on our health system. But the ban on the sale of these items promoted by the arrogant and downright careless Minister of Security and Security “General” Bheki Cele threatens the entire effort. The fact that it is enforced by a police service with a reputation for corruption is a matter of major concern.
It simply pushes another part of our already illegal society into hiding on the black market. The blocking experiment is too important in itself to bear the opportunistic burden of personal views of some ministers on the sale of liquor and cigarettes.
How is the support of the poorest communities best secured for restrictive measures? And how is this best done with the presence of the police and security forces? The harsh tactics we have seen even in the shadow of the Marikana disaster suggest that the government is unwilling to learn. If President Cyril Ramaphosa has forgotten, perhaps he can ask his old friend Roelf Meyer what happens when heavy-handed military force is used in communities that have decided they don’t want the military around.
The second thing we want to know is what preparatory work has been done to prepare for the post-closing period. This would include implementing a testing, tracing, and tracking regimen. If all or almost all of those who have been infected are identified during the shutdown process, then it should be possible to implement a viable testing, monitoring and isolation regimen. It remains to be seen how it would be implemented and how it would work in practice.
We are not alone; The United States has yet to face exactly how it can get out of its blockade: Coronavirus economic plans are clear: no return to normal in 2020. We know that testing, tracing, tracking, and isolation can only work with an intrusively massive surveillance protocol and accepting these intrusions in your privacy. The regulations to provide this are already in force, see: Coronavirus: South Africans concerned about privacy of cell phones.
This goes back to the police minister’s alcohol and cigarette ban that simply creates another unregistered sector of the economy. How is it that a square seeks extraordinary levels of vigilance through a regime of testing, tracing, tracking, and isolation while establishing regulations that create another illegal black market that does not want any kind of state surveillance of its activities?
Whether the government plans to keep the epidemic under control will be clarified when the details of the testing, monitoring, tracing and isolation plans are revealed. If these do not include fully funded and staffed programs, then we should understand that these efforts are simply providing coverage for the actual but undisclosed herd immunity policy through a somewhat controlled process of coronavirus infection.
Recent reports based on the government’s reluctance to disclose information: Adriaan Basson: government treats information like cigarettes in times of crisis – and presentations by the acting director general of the health department show that the current blockade and its extension are primarily aimed at giving the government more time to acquire ventilators, personal protective equipment and field hospitals to prepare for an inevitable crisis in September : SA government plans Covid-19 to peak in September, but doubts remain over data.
A pandemic with a 1% death rate stopped only when we reached 60% herd immunity will represent up to 65% of South Africa’s total death rate: South Africa death rate, 1950-2019. It is easy to imagine that this result would lead to a major adjustment in our social and political structures. The truth, however, is different. South Africa has already experienced its own HIV / AIDS pandemic without any apparent harm to the ruling party. Recent polls in the United States show surprising momentum in support of incumbent politicians: Poll: COVID-19 Americans’ fears explode in four devastating weeks.
It is difficult to understand all of this, but since most of us will get to the other side, we must be careful to thoughtlessly sacrifice our constitutional rights and democratic values to the pandemic. We have to start thinking about what happens when all this is over. DM
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