Coronavirus - South Africa
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Hi All
I see there are thread for New Zealand and Australia. I have checked but I don't see any focus on South Africa so I thought I would just fill you in how things are going on this side of the Indian Ocean.
I know I tend to write long winded posts and if that's not your thing it is probably best to skip this post.
At a glance
South Africa had its first confirmed case on the 5th of March with the government declaring a state of emergency on the 15th. South Africa has been in lock down since the 26th of March .
Our scorecard reads -
"As of 27 April 2020, there were 4793 confirmed cases and 90 confirmed deaths, from 178470 tests" (per Wikipedia)
So, em, how are we doing?
Not that bad to be honest. Our death rate is at about 1.5 per million, which pretty good considering. The government deserves credit for acting swiftly and decisively. The state of emergency was triggered immediately upon confirmation of local transmissions and the lockdown has been successful containing the spread (even if you don't trust the testing figures, the death rates are extremely low considering the prevalence of HIV, TB and Hypertension in the community.
Lockdown
It's pretty brutal, only essential goods and services are being allowed and essential is defined extremely narrowly.
No cigarettes, no booze, no hot food or take aways.
Your kettle broke? Bad luck.
You need a padlock to secure your girlfriends house that was being renovated when lockdown happened? Tough shit.This has obviously done tremendous damage to the economy, but personally I have been blessed to have been insulated from the worst of it. I work in the back office of a large bank and we were largely working from home prior to all of this happening so it hasn't made much of difference there. My family are either retired (the loss on the stock exchange is paper losses at this stage), in similar positions as myself or working in essential services. We will have to see how badly it all plays out, but at this I can't really add anything except the macro economic data which is pretty bleak.
Ramaphosa announced last week that some restrictions will be lifted, but our lockdown will still be stricter than what we've seen in Britain and the US. Some alcohol sales and home deliveries through online retailers will only be allowed after the next round of easing of restrictions.
In the meantime I am teaching myself how to homebrew cider - its drinkable, but needs more time for the sugar to ferment, hopefully the second batch due next week will be better.
The media
I have found the media coverage on the big international news stations impossible to watch. Each one has done the same segment multiple times now and it goes like this -
"Though Africa has been spared from the brunt of the virus so far, it is inevitable that everything is going to go to shit. (shows Lagos and some local issue happening in Nigeria) Obviously with these problems happening, how can the people of Nairobi be safe...blah blah blah..."
Its infuriating. The journalist are telling the story they expect to find, rather than doing any analysis of what is actually happening. Hell they might even be right, but the process by which things go to shit is worth reporting on. Instead we get something that any high school senior could write from home with a couple of pictures of poor black faces tagged on.
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Hi Sid. How is the lockdown being policed? Is it just the main urban areas? I assume it would be almost impossible to maintain it country-wide. I have a friend in Zim and she tells me it is complete chaos - over and above the normal chaos by a significant margin. All that with no real data either.
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Though the article is more positive than I discussed in my post, it basically makes the same mistakes.
Three countries are mentioned in the piece; South Africa, Egypt and Kenya. Does the authors know how far Cape Town is from Nairobi, because I do because I've driven it. Its 7120km by car and if you do it at leisurely pace it will take about two and half weeks.
I don't know how much trade there is between Egypt and South Africa, but it is hell of lot less than there is between South Africa and Britain. The situation in London has a far greater affect on South Africa than Egypt and the fact we nominally share a landmass is all but irrelevant.
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How is it being policed? Here in Cape Town the police do random patrols and people are chased off beaches/parks etc. There are a couple of roadblocks where you need show a permit to travel.
Where I live is a middle class suburb and adherence to regulations is pretty high (no-one out jogging/walking their dog etc.). My girlfriend's house is in an area with a much more working class character and adherence seem to be lower (more people on the street loitering etc.)
I can't comment on other areas because I haven't been able to leave my house in 5 weeks, but according to the news people are generally trying to adhere as best they can (with exceptions). The real struggles seem to be around minibus taxis and public transport which doesn't lend itself to social distancing.
As for Zimbabwe - I can't repeat this enough, it is different country with very different challenges, and I have basically the same insight as anyone here about what is happening there. The best analogy I can think of right now is that Zimbabwe and South Africa has about the same relationship Britain has with Romania - there are a lot of Zimbabweans living and working in South Africa and fair bit of domestic trade (people shopping in South Africa and sending it home and South Africans tourists visiting Zimbabwe), but they are very different countries.
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@SidBarret said in Coronavirus - South Africa:
In the meantime I am teaching myself how to homebrew cider - its drinkable, but needs more time for the sugar to ferment, hopefully the second batch due next week will be better.
Start a thread if you want to chat on this and maybe pick up some tips from folk. I've brewed a couple, no expert, but produced something pretty drinkable that I enjoyed. Super easy too
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@SidBarret said in Coronavirus - South Africa:
It's pretty brutal, only essential goods and services are being allowed and essential is defined extremely narrowly.
No cigarettes, no booze, no hot food or take aways.Yeoawch!!!!! No hot food or takeaways, I understand, but no booze!! What a way to help give up smoking
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@SidBarret you shouldn't need to. Pitch a whole lot of good yeast, and you should be done in under a week. You can drink it flat - otherwise you're into secondary fermentation which is interesting with ciders.
Seriously consider throwing more apple juice onto the yeast cake that develops. It should be sanitary and good to go, and will ferment like a mofo.
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@SidBarret said in Coronavirus - South Africa:
Yeah I'm Cape Town - though my wine reserves ran out three weeks back....
I'm pegging you as either a very bad planner or a drunk. I'm rather hoping for the latter, we would get on so much better.
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@Catogrande Bit of both. A cruel little trick was played on us. When the lock down was originally announced it was scheduled to run for 3 weeks, but was then extended by a further 2 weeks and then booze sales were extended indefinitely.
We stocked up for three weeks, finished it in 2 and now we're just waiting (hence the my apartment smelling like a brewery, which it kinda is)
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@SidBarret said in Coronavirus - South Africa:
@Catogrande Bit of both. A cruel little trick was played on us. When the lock down was originally announced it was scheduled to run for 3 weeks, but was then extended by a further 2 weeks and then booze sales were extended indefinitely.
We stocked up for three weeks, finished it in 2 and now we're just waiting (hence the my apartment smelling like a brewery, which it kinda is)
That is not the way to keep the population onside. At least dear old Boris over here recognises that alcohol sales is an essential service. Mind you that might be a little self serving.
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@Catogrande Yeah, it's a bit of a double edge sword - alcohol is banned to stop people doing stupid shit (and to close down the supply chain), but we have seen some looting of liquor stores and depos.
The police minister is super keen on the prohibition and there has been notable drop in violent crime over the lock down period (see the FT article above).
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@SidBarret said in Coronavirus - South Africa:
Though the article is more positive than I discussed in my post, it basically makes the same mistakes.
Three countries are mentioned in the piece; South Africa, Egypt and Kenya. Does the authors know how far Cape Town is from Nairobi, because I do because I've driven it. Its 7120km by car and if you do it at leisurely pace it will take about two and half weeks.
I don't know how much trade there is between Egypt and South Africa, but it is hell of lot less than there is between South Africa and Britain. The situation in London has a far greater affect on South Africa than Egypt and the fact we nominally share a landmass is all but irrelevant.
Recognise that SA is worlds apart from Central Africa, but was an article I'd happened to see.
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.