South African Covid-19 News and Discussions

[Forum Reader]

I'll put a marriage certificate online and post a link for y'all. Go wild.

And that's why we can't have nice things in SA. Too many people trying to one up the system.

 

[sand_man]

Then how do you explain the remaining low death rate? For some areas it's been months.

Give it 3 weeks. Remember SA's first case was reported on the 9th March. We yet to see the impact on HIV positive individuals of which SA has close to 8m!! Some speculate our HIV+ population will suffer in the same fashion that Italy's elderly are...

While we seem to have initially contained infection rates, the panic buying 3 days prior to lock down and monthly grant collections are 2 super spreader events that will ensure those infections rates head north at a rate of knots!

 

[yebocan]

Give it 3 weeks. Remember SA's first case was reported on the 9th March. We yet to see the impact on HIV positive individuals of which SA has close to 8m!! Some speculate our HIV+ population will suffer in the same fashion that Italy's elderly are...

While we seem to have initially contained infection rates, the panic buying 3 days prior to lock down and monthly grant collections are 2 super spreader events that will ensure those infections rates head north at a rate of knots!

yep ... !

 

[The_Mowgs]

So have we. Just really upset that panic buying causes us to experience a shortage. Flour gets invaded too easily by bugs these days so we don't buy more than we can use in a week if we can help it.

Why not put it in the freezer?

Nevermind, saw you responded later.

 

[Brian_G]

Give it 3 weeks. Remember SA's first case was reported on the 9th March. We yet to see the impact on HIV positive individuals of which SA has close to 8m!! Some speculate our HIV+ population will suffer in the same fashion that Italy's elderly are...

While we seem to have initially contained infection rates, the panic buying 3 days prior to lock down and monthly grant collections are 2 super spreader events that will ensure those infections rates head north at a rate of knots!

Sadly I will probably end up having to agree with you given those local health conditions, and we have those many others with TB to add to that. But I'm convinced that worldwide it's an abuse (or at best a panic reaction).

 

[pinball wizard]

And that's why we can't have nice things in SA. Too many people trying to one up the system.

I see you're maybe still new enough here that you don't know when some of us are joking.

 

[The_Librarian]

Flour gets invaded too easily by bugs these days so we don't buy more than we can use in a week if we can help it.

Put wax candles in the flour. Keeps those bugs away.

We did it with the mielie meal. No bugs in there. The smell of the wax candles will not transfer.

Which reminds me, gotta buy extra candles.

 

[Lupus]

Then how do you explain the remaining low death rate? For some areas it's been months.

There will be people pointing to Italy and Spain as look at the high death rates, but those are specific regions and it might actually be the lockdowns that helped make the deaths worse, as before if they were running out of beds they would've transferred to another hospital.

 

[wingnut771]

Esasy. Traffic flows are so bad that cars all slow down automatically at pre-designated spots independent of actual conditions without driver intervention. Instantly, the traffic jam appears.

lack of following distance:

 

[Drifter]

Put wax candles in the flour. Keeps those bugs away.

We did it with the mielie meal. No bugs in there. The smell of the wax candles will not transfer.

Which reminds me, gotta buy extra candles.

It's not an essential item. Can't buy.

 

[SpiderMonkey]

So have we. Just really upset that panic buying causes us to experience a shortage. Flour gets invaded too easily by bugs these days so we don't buy more than we can use in a week if we can help it.

Don't stress, it takes a week or two and the shops start getting stock back in. Paper stuff will take longer. The key thing is that the shops need to start limiting certain items. Bread/Milk/Meat to 2 items each or something like that.

 

[sand_man]

Sadly I will probably end up having to agree with you given those local health conditions, and we have those many others with TB to add to that. But I'm convinced that worldwide it's an abuse (or at best a panic reaction).

TB patients stands at around 300k if memory serves so minuscule when compared to the HIV+ populous.

I think every country is unique and this one size fits all approach to flattening the curve IE lockdown isn't going to work for everyone. SA has a unique set of challenges, the slums we call townships, the HIV+ population, the TB population, the non existent public health care sector, it's potentially the perfect storm.

I concur that the global response to COVID has been a tad heavy handed! The media fueled mass hysteria hasn't helped matters. If you look at the figures in isolation. A million cases, over 200k resolved, 50k dead, in the context of the global populous of nearly 8 billion, that's barely a scratch!

But you can't look at the figures in isolation cause COVID is unique. Of the 8 billion people on earth only 200k have some sort of immunity to the virus (those that have had it and recovered). That means the rest of us are susceptible to it! We know it is highly contagious, we know it has an unusually long incubation period, we know asymptomatic individuals can spread the virus, we know it can survive on surfaces from between 3 hours and 3 days, maybe longer, we know for the vast majority of individuals it is relatively harmless while for others it is potentially fatal, The indigent, the old and infirm, those with underlying health issues. We know that treating those who are fatally effected is resource and labour intensive! We know that a trickle of patients eventually escalates into a tsunami, overwhelming healthcare infrastructure in a relatively short space of time...

So yeah, with an effective cure/vaccine months (maybe years) away it's a tricky virus to deal with.

 

[SpiderMonkey]

I'm starting to think it is just like bad flu after all. After all these weeks the supposed death toll is still lower than that has been at its worst.
So if that ends up true, why the reaction we've had?... Politicians will tell us it was caution, but I've seen too many clues that seem to say it's a power game - exactly by who and why is anyone's guess in this now over-screwed up "melting" world.

*puts on tin hat* ;- )

I can assure you that this thing isn't just like a bad flu. There are a few things that make it really bad:

1. It spreads like wildfire. The flu has a R rate of about 1.4. That means that every person with the flu infects 1.4 other people. Covid-19 has an R rate of 2.4+. You get the picture.
2. This relates to (1) above. There is a long incubation period and a lot of people don't show any symptoms while still being contagious.
3. It destroys your health care system. This is the big problem. About 20% of people need to be hospitalized and 1/3 of those need to be on a ventilator. If you can treat everyone then the mortality rate is fairly low as you can see with South Korea. The problem is that you can't treat everyone so you end up with a mortality rate closer to 10% because you don't have enough ventilators or ICU beds which is what is happening in Italy.
4. People with comorbidities are at a much higher risk. This is a big problem in SA with the HIV infection rate and the TB infection rate. It's quite possible that millions of people could die in SA without drastic measures.

All the countries that have tried to grit it out have gotten into big trouble. The only ones that have come out relatively unscathed are the ones that have had strict lock downs. The countries that have tried to grit it out have ended up having to go with lock downs anyway. Compare Italy and South Korea. They both had their first case on the same day.

Another big problem is population density. Look at NY and how quickly it spread. Now thing what would happen in an informal settlement.

 

[Brian_G]

@sand_man , what you say makes a lot of sense. I'm not suggesting we ignore it at all, but given the months that have passed I don't see it becoming more dangerous on the wider scale, and weeks ago experts had said they don't believe it can mutate too badly either.

 

[SpiderMonkey]

I concur that the global response to COVID has been a tad heavy handed! The media fueled mass hysteria hasn't helped matters. If you look at the figures in isolation. A million cases, over 200k resolved, 50k dead, in the context of the global populous of nearly 8 billion, that's barely a scratch!

In every case where they haven't been heavy handed there has been a catastrophe and they have ended up with longer lock downs. As a country, you can't take the risk because you will end up with your healthcare being decimated and lots of deaths.

 

[Brian_G]

@SpiderMonkey , not going to debate it further. No doubt much of what you've said has a part to play, but some of us feel it's being over-exaggerated in the confusion.

In particular I will just post this copy of something similar recently discussed in the main international thread (source: https://mybroadband.co.za/forum/thr...19-updates-discussion-2.1074317/post-25207015 )

You realise you're only counting the tested confirmed cases right? We don't know the full extent of how many people have this.
The number is also really high thanks to Italy, Spain and Iran. China is under 4%, the US is 2.3% hell we are at 0.3% and New Zealand is at 0.13% see why panicking over the death count is a bit silly right now?
We don't know the true number of people infected, if the R0 is 2.2 than the reported number is off by a large factor, if it's 4 as some said earlier than its off by an astronomical amount.
Think of it like this for every infected person they've infected 2.2 who has gone along and infected 2.2 and they've gone along and infected 2.2 and and. Do you really think 1 million is the actual number?
Realistically it would be the 100s of millions worldwide with a R0 of 2.2 and it was spreading from China before they locked down.

 

[sand_man]

In every case where they haven't been heavy handed there has been a catastrophe and they have ended up with longer lock downs. As a country, you can't take the risk because you will end up with your healthcare being decimated and lots of deaths.

Yeah, lock down is the de facto approach but South Korea chose extensive testing, isolation and contact tracing as opposed to lock down. It's worked for them so far. They also put a mask on anything and everything that breaths.

 

[gottagoon]

Cele and SAPS living the dream:

Police clarify that lockdown arrests are actually already at more than 17,000 | The Citizen

'We have no issues arresting people if we need to, so don't give us a reason to,' says Bheki Cele.

citizen.co.za

 

[sand_man]

@SpiderMonkey , not going to debate it further. No doubt much of what you've said has a part to play, but some of us feel it's being over-exaggerated in the confusion.

In particular I will just post this copy of something similar recently discussed in the main international thread (source: https://mybroadband.co.za/forum/thr...19-updates-discussion-2.1074317/post-25207015 )

Yeah, take a look at this, supports that theory to a large degree...

 

[pinball wizard]

It's not an essential item. Can't buy.

Evergreens sold me some today. I didn't need, but as per my post in the absurdity thread, I test the absurdity...