COVID-19 in SOUTH AFRICA

[average joe]

Is there a vaccination plan for SA?

[Sandstorm]

Is there a vaccination plan for SA?

Good plan

[handyman]

Not sure about this 3rd wave, but I am busy stocking up a decent level of alcohol just in case.

[Sards]

Not sure about this 3rd wave, but I am busy stocking up a decent level of alcohol just in case.

Not sure about any of these waves...

First wave cost me over 500k .... second wave didn't exist and we changed nothing beyond the mandatory.

At the moment have loads of work but to find Stainless steel is a real challenge

[Big Nipper]

Not sure about this 3rd wave, but I am busy stocking up a decent level of alcohol just in case.

Not sure about any of these waves...

First wave cost me over 500k .... second wave didn't exist and we changed nothing beyond the mandatory.

At the moment have loads of work but to find Stainless steel is a real challenge

Are you implying there was not 2nd wave of Covid in SA? Or that it just did not affect your business

[Lemoentjie]

KZN no deaths yesterday. Figures keep dropping.

Seems like almost everyone here has had it already.

If they did, you'd have thousands more dead. Herd immunity with Covid is a fallacy.

Are you looking at excess deaths or official stats? If you haven't, take a look at the difference for SA.

110k excess deaths vs 40k registered Covid deaths.

[Lemoentjie]

Not sure about this 3rd wave, but I am busy stocking up a decent level of alcohol just in case.

Not sure about any of these waves...

First wave cost me over 500k .... second wave didn't exist and we changed nothing beyond the mandatory.

At the moment have loads of work but to find Stainless steel is a real challenge

Isn't there supposed to be a massive steel oversupply globally right now? Although I imagine it's sitting in warehouses in China and India rather than SA.

[FalseBayFC]

KZN no deaths yesterday. Figures keep dropping.

Seems like almost everyone here has had it already.

If they did, you'd have thousands more dead. Herd immunity with Covid is a fallacy.

Not entirely sure about that Sandstorm. I've read that then antibodies may provide immunity and if you get re-infected it may result in a less serious illness.
The drastic drop off in infections would suggest to me that certain areas may have developed some degree of herd immunity. We've only been relaxing lockdown measures here in RSA, schools re-opened on the 15th Feb and 80 percent of the population are going about their business with no real adherence to the protocols.

What else would explain the downward trend in new cases? It's not vaccination or a tightened lockdown.

[Sards]

Not sure about this 3rd wave, but I am busy stocking up a decent level of alcohol just in case.

Not sure about any of these waves...

First wave cost me over 500k .... second wave didn't exist and we changed nothing beyond the mandatory.

At the moment have loads of work but to find Stainless steel is a real challenge

Are you implying there was not 2nd wave of Covid in SA? Or that it just did not affect your business

It's affected the entire industry in that Stainless steel is like gold atm...we are paying a fortune for all the scraps lying around. I often go to my mates factory to sift through his stock and buy out what I can use. Same with other factories that are quiet. Big companies are struggling more with output because of the stock situation. Dealers are milking it atm. But the worm will turn. We have aligned ourselves with a large company and bringing in Stainless steel but its very tough on cash flow which is hand to mouth atm.

The second wave affected nothing more than that. We got more value out of our products by taking a new option which has been immensely popular and put us in demand. By doing specials you add extra value.

I heard of more people affected by the second wave but never touched us and both my wife and I have been heavily in contact with clients and at the office every day.

I have noticed an increase in traffic daily on the roads so that's great news. More people working equals more consumers. But the social impact has been huge. Lots of friends looking for a job...its very sad to see these implications as apposed to the deaths attributed to Covid. Also loads of businesses have closed down. So less paymasters.

I still maintain the social impact was infinitely worse than the impact of the virus

[Big Nipper]

Not sure about any of these waves...

First wave cost me over 500k .... second wave didn't exist and we changed nothing beyond the mandatory.

At the moment have loads of work but to find Stainless steel is a real challenge

Are you implying there was not 2nd wave of Covid in SA? Or that it just did not affect your business

It's affected the entire industry in that Stainless steel is like gold atm...we are paying a fortune for all the scraps lying around. I often go to my mates factory to sift through his stock and buy out what I can use. Same with other factories that are quiet. Big companies are struggling more with output because of the stock situation. Dealers are milking it atm. But the worm will turn. We have aligned ourselves with a large company and bringing in Stainless steel but its very tough on cash flow which is hand to mouth atm.

The second wave affected nothing more than that. We got more value out of our products by taking a new option which has been immensely popular and put us in demand. By doing specials you add extra value.

I heard of more people affected by the second wave but never touched us and both my wife and I have been heavily in contact with clients and at the office every day.

I have noticed an increase in traffic daily on the roads so that's great news. More people working equals more consumers. But the social impact has been huge. Lots of friends looking for a job...its very sad to see these implications as apposed to the deaths attributed to Covid. Also loads of businesses have closed down. So less paymasters.

I still maintain the social impact was infinitely worse than the impact of the virus

Well this just proves there is no cure for stupid

[FalseBayFC]

Are you implying there was not 2nd wave of Covid in SA? Or that it just did not affect your business

It's affected the entire industry in that Stainless steel is like gold atm...we are paying a fortune for all the scraps lying around. I often go to my mates factory to sift through his stock and buy out what I can use. Same with other factories that are quiet. Big companies are struggling more with output because of the stock situation. Dealers are milking it atm. But the worm will turn. We have aligned ourselves with a large company and bringing in Stainless steel but its very tough on cash flow which is hand to mouth atm.

The second wave affected nothing more than that. We got more value out of our products by taking a new option which has been immensely popular and put us in demand. By doing specials you add extra value.

I heard of more people affected by the second wave but never touched us and both my wife and I have been heavily in contact with clients and at the office every day.

I have noticed an increase in traffic daily on the roads so that's great news. More people working equals more consumers. But the social impact has been huge. Lots of friends looking for a job...its very sad to see these implications as apposed to the deaths attributed to Covid. Also loads of businesses have closed down. So less paymasters.

I still maintain the social impact was infinitely worse than the impact of the virus

Well this just proves there is no cure for stupid

South Africa is in a wholly different situation to say UK, NZ or Aus. A waiter in Cape Town loses his job and his family will starve. There is no welfare safety net. Remittances to places like Somalia, Zimbabwe and Nigeria from ex-pat workers have plummeted so social cost of this for poor people is immense. So while Sards statement may not be true for a first world country, it certainly is for people living in a place like Mbare in Zim where people rely on money wired from Cape Town.

[Big Nipper]

If I catch Covid and take it to my parents, who are older than 70, and they both die, I promise you I would probably be devasted

At least try to see the humane side of this, there have been 140 000 excess deaths together with 40 000 deaths in SA, that is close to 200 000 people!

[assfly]

The social (or rather indirect) impact and the direct impact of the virus have been equally devastating, in my opinion.

Yes the disease has taken a lot of lives, more than we know. But there is also the loss of jobs and livelihoods, the impact on tourism, the breakdown of families. There is also the impact on the medical sector, which as diverted attention away from other diseases and ailments. I wonder how many people have died who were waiting on treatment that never came, because COVID wards were filled up.

[Calculon]

If I catch Covid and take it to my parents, who are older than 70, and they both die, I promise you I would probably be devasted

At least try to see the humane side of this, there have been 140 000 excess deaths together with 40 000 deaths in SA, that is close to 200 000 people!

The 50k covid attributed deaths is part of the 140k excess deaths

[Sards]

How many people you know have lost their livelihood.

I know lots. Most unemployed, some on reduced salary

Listen it might sound like I value income over health...the truth is that I value a safe, prosperous country over a country with a growing unemployed population resorting to violence and theft because of socio economic issues

[Sards]

If I catch Covid and take it to my parents, who are older than 70, and they both die, I promise you I would probably be devasted

At least try to see the humane side of this, there have been 140 000 excess deaths together with 40 000 deaths in SA, that is close to 200 000 people!

If you catch Covid that's your problem. And if you are not monitoring yourself well that's on you too.
I do see the human side....I still cannot shake the image of a friend recently and the state that she has deteriorated into because she has been almost a year without a job...the loss of human dignity is a terrible thing. I have also seen a woman prostituting her 13 year old daughter just to get food to feed her family.

[FalseBayFC]

It was never a choice we could make. If we hadn't locked down hard early our hospitals would have been overwhelmed in the first wave. We've rightly been on a war footing since the get go which is the right mentality. We can't afford to go full new Zealand though and I think SA has done as well as can be expected. Contact tracing, quarantine hotels etc ala NZ would never work in SA. And yes Nipper I fully agree with you about protecting lur vulnerable. Its terrible to lose them. Its just most households in SA aren't able to isolate in a bio-bubble due to their economic circumstances.

[Sards]

It was never a choice we could make. If we hadn't locked down hard early our hospitals would have been overwhelmed in the first wave. We've rightly been on a war footing since the get go which is the right mentality. We can't afford to go full new Zealand though and I think SA has done as well as can be expected. Contact tracing, quarantine hotels etc ala NZ would never work in SA. And yes Nipper I fully agree with you about protecting lur vulnerable. Its terrible to lose them. Its just most households in SA aren't able to isolate in a bio-bubble due to their economic circumstances.

We were supposed to be on hard lockdown for a month. Airports should have closed immediately there was a problem identified....so many travellers brought it into the country. We were asleep and got caught out. The 4 weeks hard lockdown should have been enough to prepare our medical facilities we were nowhere...fast asleep...and the extended lockdown did exactly what the goverment hoped it would do...destroy the economy , allow for looting on a grand scale and hurt the Stellenbosch mafia...( wine and beer sales closure and extending to job shedding and extended losses and the hospitality industry in intensive care )...the biggest thing I can take out of COVID is the extent of South Africa's drinking problem.....................that to me needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency.....

[average joe]

You'll never get a handle on that when more than half the country is living in absolute poverty and the only reprieve from their sorrows is to versuip it.

[handyman]

You'll never get a handle on that when more than half the country is living in absolute poverty and the only reprieve from their sorrows is to versuip it.

Yet they will keep on voting ANC or EFF.

[assfly]

First batch of vaccines arrived in Kenya last night.

As usual all the politicians have got their noses in the trough to get done first. But my wife is next in line as a teacher which is great.

They're allowing private hospital to procure and dispense vaccines, so I will probably wait a few weeks and then put my hand in my pocket to get done.

[OomStruisbaai]

First batch of vaccines arrived in Kenya last night.

As usual all the politicians have got their noses in the trough to get done first. But my wife is next in line as a teacher which is great.

They're allowing private hospital to procure and dispense vaccines, so I will probably wait a few weeks and then put my hand in my pocket to get done.

Which vaccine?

[assfly]

Which vaccine?

Oxford-AstraZeneca is the one that arrived yesterday and will be distributed by the government.

[Rinkals]

If I catch Covid and take it to my parents, who are older than 70, and they both die, I promise you I would probably be devasted

At least try to see the humane side of this, there have been 140 000 excess deaths together with 40 000 deaths in SA, that is close to 200 000 people!

If you catch Covid that's your problem. And if you are not monitoring yourself well that's on you too.
I do see the human side....I still cannot shake the image of a friend recently and the state that she has deteriorated into because she has been almost a year without a job...the loss of human dignity is a terrible thing. I have also seen a woman prostituting her 13 year old daughter just to get food to feed her family.

This is where you fail to understand what is going on.

If Nipper catches the virus it's not his problem alone; it's yours too.

If he doesn't actually pass it on through knowing that he has it and taking all precautions to prevent passing it on, yes, you may have a point.

But generally speaking, the bulk of infected people are unaware that they have it and are unwittingly spreading it around. If Nipper passes it on to a co-worker who then passes it on to the driver of the taxi that takes them home, pretty soon hundreds and thousands of people have it.

Bear in mind, too, that the excess deaths that Nipper quotes are deaths that occurred despite lockdown. Without any such measures the likelihood is that many, many more would have died and the impact on Industry and tourism would have been worse.

[Rinkals]

It was never a choice we could make. If we hadn't locked down hard early our hospitals would have been overwhelmed in the first wave. We've rightly been on a war footing since the get go which is the right mentality. We can't afford to go full new Zealand though and I think SA has done as well as can be expected. Contact tracing, quarantine hotels etc ala NZ would never work in SA. And yes Nipper I fully agree with you about protecting lur vulnerable. Its terrible to lose them. Its just most households in SA aren't able to isolate in a bio-bubble due to their economic circumstances.

Agreed.

It's all very well to say that lockdown was unnecessary, but social distancing is difficult if you're ten to a room and hygiene not easy without running water.

[Sards]

It was never a choice we could make. If we hadn't locked down hard early our hospitals would have been overwhelmed in the first wave. We've rightly been on a war footing since the get go which is the right mentality. We can't afford to go full new Zealand though and I think SA has done as well as can be expected. Contact tracing, quarantine hotels etc ala NZ would never work in SA. And yes Nipper I fully agree with you about protecting lur vulnerable. Its terrible to lose them. Its just most households in SA aren't able to isolate in a bio-bubble due to their economic circumstances.

Agreed.

It's all very well to say that lockdown was unnecessary, but social distancing is difficult if you're ten to a room and hygiene not easy without running water.

Thats no excuse.....our thieving goverment is responsible for all of that.....they were too busy stealing our Covid money rather than sorting out hospitals etc.....our lockdown was completely innefective in terms of beating it.....people were still socialising weekends holding house parties and braaing with mates

[handyman]

It was never a choice we could make. If we hadn't locked down hard early our hospitals would have been overwhelmed in the first wave. We've rightly been on a war footing since the get go which is the right mentality. We can't afford to go full new Zealand though and I think SA has done as well as can be expected. Contact tracing, quarantine hotels etc ala NZ would never work in SA. And yes Nipper I fully agree with you about protecting lur vulnerable. Its terrible to lose them. Its just most households in SA aren't able to isolate in a bio-bubble due to their economic circumstances.

We had the correct gameplan, but I don't think we had the people in charge to drive the strategy. Too many stories about corrupt politicians benefiting with PPE and other scams. How can you expect the population to follow the rules and laws when the people charged with governance are stealing and doing what they want?

[OomStruisbaai]

Which vaccine?

Oxford-AstraZeneca is the one that arrived yesterday and will be distributed by the government.

Isnt it the same we got from India. Good if they spread it to Africa.

[OomStruisbaai]

It was never a choice we could make. If we hadn't locked down hard early our hospitals would have been overwhelmed in the first wave. We've rightly been on a war footing since the get go which is the right mentality. We can't afford to go full new Zealand though and I think SA has done as well as can be expected. Contact tracing, quarantine hotels etc ala NZ would never work in SA. And yes Nipper I fully agree with you about protecting lur vulnerable. Its terrible to lose them. Its just most households in SA aren't able to isolate in a bio-bubble due to their economic circumstances.

NZ lock down one week earlier then us. I fly from Lagos during that week and Nigeria scannings and rules were stricter then ours. We had the scanners but they drop tools between 5 and 5.

[Lemoentjie]

New Zealand strategy would never work in SA, it's not a useful comparison.

The fact that our scanners at the airports were worse than in Lagos, is a disgrace though. Nigeria is chaos no.1 and they can still sort it out.

[Blake]

It was never a choice we could make. If we hadn't locked down hard early our hospitals would have been overwhelmed in the first wave. We've rightly been on a war footing since the get go which is the right mentality. We can't afford to go full new Zealand though and I think SA has done as well as can be expected. Contact tracing, quarantine hotels etc ala NZ would never work in SA. And yes Nipper I fully agree with you about protecting lur vulnerable. Its terrible to lose them. Its just most households in SA aren't able to isolate in a bio-bubble due to their economic circumstances.

We had the correct gameplan, but I don't think we had the people in charge to drive the strategy. Too many stories about corrupt politicians benefiting with PPE and other scams. How can you expect the population to follow the rules and laws when the people charged with governance are stealing and doing what they want?

Agreed. Gameplan was solid, execution was lacking. Both from government leaders with a lack of accurate and frequent communication, not leading by example and being corrupt cunts; and also from a small section of the the public being belligerent, uncooperative, hostile and spreading misinformation and undoing the efforts and sacrifices their countrymen made.

In the end we did as well as we could have hoped, and I'm just glad it didn't completely steamroller us in the first wave. I shudder to think what the impact would have been had we not locked down at the time. I'm sure in time some clever actuary or PhD student will do a doctoral thesis on what the inverse outcome might have been if we just left everything open like some one here were proposing. I'll look forward to reading it.

[Sards]

Still want to know. How many families do you know that have lost their income as apposed to families that lost someone. Not a single person in my circle passed from Covid yet I know of loads who lost their jobs, business.

Look. I just don't fear the virus. Never have and won't.

I may be pure capitalist but if you don't have a market you can't sell goods. You can't sell goods you can't produce. You will never have disposable income sitting at home earning half wages. So get off your asses and get the economy moving so I can make some money back.

[Rinkals]

It was never a choice we could make. If we hadn't locked down hard early our hospitals would have been overwhelmed in the first wave. We've rightly been on a war footing since the get go which is the right mentality. We can't afford to go full new Zealand though and I think SA has done as well as can be expected. Contact tracing, quarantine hotels etc ala NZ would never work in SA. And yes Nipper I fully agree with you about protecting lur vulnerable. Its terrible to lose them. Its just most households in SA aren't able to isolate in a bio-bubble due to their economic circumstances.

Agreed.

It's all very well to say that lockdown was unnecessary, but social distancing is difficult if you're ten to a room and hygiene not easy without running water.

Thats no excuse.....our thieving goverment is responsible for all of that.....they were too busy stealing our Covid money rather than sorting out hospitals etc.....our lockdown was completely innefective in terms of beating it.....people were still socialising weekends holding house parties and braaing with mates

It's not a fuckin' excuse.

It's the reality.

And if you think that the situation would be much different even without the high levels of corruption we have, then you are dumber than your postings on here make you appear.

It wasn't the affluent house parties and suburban braais which drove the second wave.

[Rinkals]

It was never a choice we could make. If we hadn't locked down hard early our hospitals would have been overwhelmed in the first wave. We've rightly been on a war footing since the get go which is the right mentality. We can't afford to go full new Zealand though and I think SA has done as well as can be expected. Contact tracing, quarantine hotels etc ala NZ would never work in SA. And yes Nipper I fully agree with you about protecting lur vulnerable. Its terrible to lose them. Its just most households in SA aren't able to isolate in a bio-bubble due to their economic circumstances.

We had the correct gameplan, but I don't think we had the people in charge to drive the strategy. Too many stories about corrupt politicians benefiting with PPE and other scams. How can you expect the population to follow the rules and laws when the people charged with governance are stealing and doing what they want?

I agree.

While the thrust of the measures were correct (in my view), we also had irrational diktats from overbearing politicians which undermined the reasoning behind them and eroded compliance. Outlawing the purchase of children's toys and open-toed sandals, for example.

[Green light echo]

So the gist of all that is SA is a deeply corrupt, dishonest, chaotic country, that is populated by selfish, ill disciplined, greedy, ignorant people.

Righto. Glad to clear that up.

Carry on.......

[Blake]

Still want to know. How many families do you know that have lost their income as apposed to families that lost someone. Not a single person in my circle passed from Covid yet I know of loads who lost their jobs, business.

Look. I just don't fear the virus. Never have and won't.

I may be pure capitalist but if you don't have a market you can't sell goods. You can't sell goods you can't produce. You will never have disposable income sitting at home earning half wages. So get off your asses and get the economy moving so I can make some money back.

Multiple people have lost their income that I personally know. Spouses of close colleagues, my aunt and uncle who run a B&B along the Garden Route, multiple friends who used to be in the Event Planning industry here in Cape Town and a number of family members who run their own businesses...a mechanic, an accountant, retail shopfitter. We actually send some of them some money every month for groceries. So I am under no illusion of how bad it is out there, or how fortunate I have been throughout this whole mess.

I also know how dangerous it is. Personally I have lost a grandmother, and my parents have each lost a cousin. A coworker lost 4 family members from one branch of their family tree in 2 months. Aunt, Uncle and 2 cousins. Only 1 cousin survived - family of 5, 4 gone. Two of my University friends have each lost a parent, and my folks recently let me know that a long time family friend also died of Covid.

I also personally know a number of people that had it, and some were touch and go and had to be hospitalised when they got it...one while pregnant. After discharge she had to be on special baby-safe blood thinners that cost R10k per month! These people were "lucky" to have been able to get open hospital beds when they got sick. If we didn't have the first lockdown I am confident that hospitals would have been overrun, and very few if any of them would have been able to secure a bed and survived. The first lockdown gave doctors some breathing room to figure this virus out, instead of being in firefighting mode 24/7.

My sister lives in Texas where they were fucking around with lockdowns and masks for months (and still are, they just revoked their mask mandate there) and at one point all 4 of the closest hospitals to where she lived were at over 97% of ICU capacity. My brother-in-law who is a Paramedic was on the front lines there. If we had it that bad, with our limited medical infrastructure...chaos.

Who knows what the excess death number would have been if we had second wave numbers of 20k infections per day back in April when nobody knew how to treat this and prep work was still underway. I shudder to think about it.

[average joe]

You cant sell goods to dead people. Look I'm with you on the economical stuff and the damage done will be felt for years. The Quarantine was never meant to beat the virus, it cant and it wont. I said so from the get go. It was meant to get our medical sector ready for what was to come. If you consider that the Chines managed to build a hospital in a matter of days and that we received hundreds of millions of rands in aid monies, the initial 14 days should have been enough. OK so make it a month seeing as we're on African time here.

Most of the people I spoke to recon that some of the "rules" was/is utterly moronic and was put in place out of sheer spite to punish us for something we had nothing to do with. You cant sit on your high throne and tell the voting public that it's because they don't behave, that they cant have a responsible drink because you failed to police a handful of miscreants who cant handle their dop or that they cant visit a beach or go for a jog outside whilst you stole the money that was meant to get us out of this shit. The never ending extended "lockdowns" is the direct result of our corrupt officials incompetence, it's not because of us. But you'll never see a politician stand up and say "sorry guys it's because I fucked up" they'll always look for something or someone ells to blame.

In saying all this though, our economy was a fuckup long before covid. Our public medical sector has been a cesspit of corruption for years. Our police force is full of incompetent, ignorant, criminal fat arses who cant chases and catch a criminal even if their lives depended on it. Most of them cant even read or write FFS. All covid has done is highlight what we all already knew ages ago.

[Blake]

It was never a choice we could make. If we hadn't locked down hard early our hospitals would have been overwhelmed in the first wave. We've rightly been on a war footing since the get go which is the right mentality. We can't afford to go full new Zealand though and I think SA has done as well as can be expected. Contact tracing, quarantine hotels etc ala NZ would never work in SA. And yes Nipper I fully agree with you about protecting lur vulnerable. Its terrible to lose them. Its just most households in SA aren't able to isolate in a bio-bubble due to their economic circumstances.

We had the correct gameplan, but I don't think we had the people in charge to drive the strategy. Too many stories about corrupt politicians benefiting with PPE and other scams. How can you expect the population to follow the rules and laws when the people charged with governance are stealing and doing what they want?

I agree.

While the thrust of the measures were correct (in my view), we also had irrational diktats from overbearing politicians which undermined the reasoning behind them and eroded compliance. Outlawing the purchase of children's toys and open-toed sandals, for example.

100% agree. There is a VERY generous interpretation of events where one could argue that:
- A very early lockdown was a great strategy that failed, but if it had succeeded and we were able to maintain border integrity, we might have been in an Australia situation.
- It was worth a shot to try it before community transmission became too widespread to contain.
- For the lockdown to be effective and limit people's exposure to infections, retail activities had to be restricted.
- But it had to be done without causing panic; so grocery stores and pharmacies obviously had to remain open
- This however, gave a small number of large retailers a government sanctioned monopoly over small, specialist retailers that were forced to close
- In a move to protect the market for these small businesses once they eventually reopened (which was believed to only be 4 weeks later), government attempted to restrict what the large retailers were allowed to sell.

If this was the case, it kind of makes sense to me, but as with all things, Government was terrible at communicating any of their thinking and rationale behind any of the decisions throughout the whole pandemic. And given their track record of corruption and incompetence, everybody assumed the worst...and rightly so.

Same thing with the restriction of outdoor exercising during the first lockdown, and the closure of beaches during both lockdowns. Completely irrational from a scientific point of view. Fresh air on open on beaches is great...if people are responsible. But they aren't, and communicating nuance in regulations is so tricky and difficult to enforce (especially when there hasn't been widespread buy-in) that it is sometimes easier to just be heavy handed but crystal clear with no ambiguity. Mask on when you leave your house, no beaches, exercise outdoors between X and Y hours.

Friends in Germany could enjoy more nuanced, scientific recommendations such as "Masks in enclosed public spaces or when in crowded areas, leaving your house for no more than 60 mins per day" and the people (being Germans) could be trusted to follow the rules and guidelines. That will never be the case here. We are not a compliant nation. Never have been.

[assfly]

Kenya also appeared to get it right (apart from the usual looting by politicians) in the long term.

Never went full lockdown, just a strict curfew and a ban on inter-city travelling during the worst of it.

Definitely helped by the fact that the busy urban centres typically have young populations, with most elders residing in rural areas which are sparsely populated. The second wave definitely hit the rural areas harder though, as those travelling from the cities to visit family ended up infecting them.

[Sards]

Agreed.

It's all very well to say that lockdown was unnecessary, but social distancing is difficult if you're ten to a room and hygiene not easy without running water.

Thats no excuse.....our thieving goverment is responsible for all of that.....they were too busy stealing our Covid money rather than sorting out hospitals etc.....our lockdown was completely innefective in terms of beating it.....people were still socialising weekends holding house parties and braaing with mates

It's not a fuckin' excuse.

It's the reality.

And if you think that the situation would be much different even without the high levels of corruption we have, then you are dumber than your postings on here make you appear.

It wasn't the affluent house parties and suburban braais which drove the second wave.

chill dude...you missed the sarcasm