Coronavirus - South Africa
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@pakman said in Coronavirus - South Africa:
You've got the wrong end of the stick here, by failing to appreciate the significance of the word relatively.
Interested to know if you're aware of any African public transport system to rival NYC subway or London Underground in terms of major population density.
You've clearly never seen the matatu system in action. It's basically a game of how many people can you fit in a Toyota Hiace.
In terms of density, it's easy inline with a lot of the worlds mass transit systems.
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@SidBarret said in Coronavirus - South Africa:
@pakman said in Coronavirus - South Africa:
@SidBarret said in Coronavirus - South Africa:
I woke up in foul mood this morning, so I apologise for my tone...
That is apparent!
Yeah, we are still waiting for the scientist to confirm whether the buffalo I depend on to get to work can be a carrier of covid.
I can kind of accept that people don't know how Africa operates; I have made the point in this very thread that news coverage of Africa poor. But it still astounds me that someone would make a statement like the below, in thread where the lack of good information is being discussed.
A relatively low reliance on public transport is likely to be the Continent's get out of jail card, given PT (including air travel) is main conduit for CV transmission
I can't speak as an expert on transport in all of Africa, because you know, I am not a transportation economist and Africa is fucking big place. I was even trying to find a headline figure on how many people depend on public transport in Africa, but again, serious researchers avoid generalising across such a large and diverse area.
https://medium.com/impact-engineered/the-african-commute-city-transport-trends-cf369e5106bd
Do I need to find a reputable research paper to suggest that Africans rely heavily on public transport? For the purposes of an rugby chat forum, probably not. What I can confidently comment on is the situation in South Africa and less confidently on Southern and Eastern Africa that people are massively reliant on public transport to get around.
But this rant isn't even about whether Africans rely on public transport or not - it is about the way that people just casually assume that they know something that they are clearly pig ignorant about.
Do I blame @pakman for making a stupid comment? Yeah I kinda do, but that would not motivate me to spend thirty minutes to write whatever the fuck this rant is. What did motivate me to write this is nicotine withdrawal and the stupid narrative about Africa as a societal and economic blackhole where everything that happens is either due to some white guy coming to save us, political corruption or economic backwardness. It is fucking insulting and has these beliefs have real consequences on how people make long term decisions.
You've got the wrong end of the stick here, by failing to appreciate the significance of the word relatively.
Interested to know if you're aware of any African public transport system to rival NYC subway or London Underground in terms of major population density.
This is not how logic works.
It's not your logic it's your misunderstanding the meaning of the sentence as whole, of which 'relatively' was an essential component.
I have given evidence (my own experience and a quick google), if you disagree with it, please refute it and we can continue the discussion.
You are putting a hypothesis forward with zero support expressly stated in your post, which means we need to guess as to what underpins your claim and my guess at that support is rather unflattering.
I have no issue with you claiming that there is correlation between use of public transport and spread of the virus, it makes sense that it would. If you left it there, it would have been fine (if irrelevant to the topic under discussion). I am not commenting on that part of you comment.
You said
A relatively low reliance on public transport is likely to be the Continent's get out of jail card
The claim is not true. You were comfortable making this statement based on god knows what. These sort of statements seem to be fueled by very poor reporting of the continent.
I don't know how familiar you are with London or NYC transport, but an enormous volume of people are carried in and around from a quite wide geographical area. It's like a CV superhighway.
Even Los Angeles relatively is much less reliant on public transport.
I certainly know that the volume of people traveling on buses in and around Nairobi and Cape Town is massively less than London, NYC, etc.. Can't speak for Lagos and some of the other big cities.
Your next comment is a great example what I am referring to.
A bit like trains in India! I think it boils down to the volume of people traveling on public transport daily. In Europe, the areas where public transport volumes are lowest have very low CV numbers. Public transport is the main conduit. Add in air transport hubs and no wonder the big cities in France/Spain/Italy/UK have been hit so hard.
You are willing to differentiate between urban and rural areas in first world countries, but somehow an entire continent can be dealt with as unitary whole. Its bullshit, lazy and stupid. Stop doing it.
No one said it was a unitary whole. I was making a generalisation, and seeking, albeit not explicitly, to compare with the key Western nations (in Europe and N. America).
I very much hope the relatively low levels of CV impact across Africa (both urban and rural, whilst acknowledging the differential impacts) continue. Statistics in the US and Western Europe would suggest that black Africans are substantially more susceptible to the virus than Caucasians.
Latest:
But early days, and the so far positive stats may just be because of the earlier stage of the pandemic at which African countries are.
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Dropping to level 3 Monday 1st with last year of junior school and last year high school returning. -
@mantissanet Those stats are overall right (except for the last one)?
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@Bones said in Coronavirus - South Africa:
@mantissanet Those stats are overall right (except for the last one)?
Western Cape jumps out a bit to me, too. Cruise liner visit?
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Correct... last column daily new cases ...๐ฌ
And no I donโt think cruise liner contributing as far as Iโm aware. Hard to say as a layperson why WC so much worse ... and naturally politicians playing ping pong with reasons and blame while people keep getting infected.
I think we are doing ok considering some very different circumstances to NZ but the elderly and other vulnerable groups are probably looking at more severe permanent changes to their lives than the rest.
Limited domestic air travel going to be allowed again too and borders still closed. And most importantly ...I can buy BEER again from Monday ๐ป๐
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@mantissanet said in Coronavirus - South Africa:
Correct... last column daily new cases ...๐ฌ
And no I donโt think cruise liner contributing as far as Iโm aware. Hard to say as a layperson why WC so much worse ... and naturally politicians playing ping pong with reasons and blame while people keep getting infected.
I think we are doing ok considering some very different circumstances to NZ but the elderly and other vulnerable groups are probably looking at more severe permanent changes to their lives than the rest.
Limited domestic air travel going to be allowed again too and borders still closed. And most importantly ...I can buy BEER again from Monday ๐ป๐
Any update?
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