21-12-2020, 16:54
“South Africa, through the World Health Organisation-led (WHO) COVAX facility, has committed to securing 5.7 million doses to cover at least 10% of the population at a cost of more than R2-billion. The Department of Health (DoH) envisages that a vaccine will be available by mid-2021.”
Then, aside from the complex issue of which 10% of the population will get the vaccine, there is the question of administrative equipment, not to mention storage. Vaccine hopes are false hopes IMHO - here at any rate – by the time they are eventually rolled out, most people will either have had the virus or it will be ineffective due to these new variant strains which we also have now, driving our second wave. (I know it’s not the same thing at all, but we have a similar problem with TB. You can be immunised against the regular strain but not the multi-drug resistant TB. Nothing can stop that. Last year’s TB deaths in South Africa = 58,000.)
I think we’re going to be living with Covid-19 for a very long time. Even countries that think they've banished it are going to have to face that it will creep in somehow, somewhere, especially since it now appears you can be pre-symptomatic and infectious up to 3 days before manifesting any symptoms.
There are some strange anomalies too. The daughter of someone I know tested positive for C-19 while living in the same house, in close proximity to both her parents and 90 year old grandmother, none of whom has contracted it, which seems really weird. Still so much that is not understood. Fascinating that out of 160 000 000 tests less than 87 000 Chinese have tested positive - India, by comparison has done 162 000 000 tests with a positive result of over 10 000 000??!!
We are very much a combination of first and third world. The majority of our population simply cannot practice social distancing – it’s a physical impossibility, and it's all very well telling people to wash their hands, but there are around 4m people living in urban informal settlements who do not have direct access to running water – they have to fill up buckets from a communal outside tap and use communal toilets. Then there is transport and the dreaded mini-bus taxis. No way those are only going to carry passengers at half capacity, and people will use them because they need to get to work or quite literally starve, and their options are severely limited because the bus and train lines are inefficient (not to mention the taxi mafia causing chaos when they detect competition). That said, the primary cause of the spread seems to be social gatherings, parties and other events in confined spaces – and hospitals, which is just terrible!! Health care workers are having a horrible time. They are truly amazing beings.
On the whole, I'd say most people that I see in my daily life are compliant in wearing masks and sanitizing at shops etc., but it's also clear that fatigue has set in and that there is less care than before. Who knows where it will all end??
Just seen a communication about flight cancellations – seems like by tomorrow there may be a European travel ban in place. Swissair, Lufthansa and Turkish Airlines pulling out of flights to SA, so far.
https://www.nicd.ac.za/new-variant-of-sa...iThpv_D1U0
Then, aside from the complex issue of which 10% of the population will get the vaccine, there is the question of administrative equipment, not to mention storage. Vaccine hopes are false hopes IMHO - here at any rate – by the time they are eventually rolled out, most people will either have had the virus or it will be ineffective due to these new variant strains which we also have now, driving our second wave. (I know it’s not the same thing at all, but we have a similar problem with TB. You can be immunised against the regular strain but not the multi-drug resistant TB. Nothing can stop that. Last year’s TB deaths in South Africa = 58,000.)
I think we’re going to be living with Covid-19 for a very long time. Even countries that think they've banished it are going to have to face that it will creep in somehow, somewhere, especially since it now appears you can be pre-symptomatic and infectious up to 3 days before manifesting any symptoms.
There are some strange anomalies too. The daughter of someone I know tested positive for C-19 while living in the same house, in close proximity to both her parents and 90 year old grandmother, none of whom has contracted it, which seems really weird. Still so much that is not understood. Fascinating that out of 160 000 000 tests less than 87 000 Chinese have tested positive - India, by comparison has done 162 000 000 tests with a positive result of over 10 000 000??!!
We are very much a combination of first and third world. The majority of our population simply cannot practice social distancing – it’s a physical impossibility, and it's all very well telling people to wash their hands, but there are around 4m people living in urban informal settlements who do not have direct access to running water – they have to fill up buckets from a communal outside tap and use communal toilets. Then there is transport and the dreaded mini-bus taxis. No way those are only going to carry passengers at half capacity, and people will use them because they need to get to work or quite literally starve, and their options are severely limited because the bus and train lines are inefficient (not to mention the taxi mafia causing chaos when they detect competition). That said, the primary cause of the spread seems to be social gatherings, parties and other events in confined spaces – and hospitals, which is just terrible!! Health care workers are having a horrible time. They are truly amazing beings.
On the whole, I'd say most people that I see in my daily life are compliant in wearing masks and sanitizing at shops etc., but it's also clear that fatigue has set in and that there is less care than before. Who knows where it will all end??
Just seen a communication about flight cancellations – seems like by tomorrow there may be a European travel ban in place. Swissair, Lufthansa and Turkish Airlines pulling out of flights to SA, so far.
https://www.nicd.ac.za/new-variant-of-sa...iThpv_D1U0
"The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us." ~ Bill Watterson