South African Covid-19 News and Discussions

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sand_man said:
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.
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Testing everyone and isolating is by far the best method if a country can do it. Not possible with our country's demographics and resources.
 
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Brian_G said:
@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 )
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We have been in a "suggested" lock down situation now for about 3 weeks. Non essential businesses have been closed for most of that time. People are still allowed to go out and our apartment neighbors (youngsters) had parties all of last weekend. That's the problem with an unenforced lock down. It is still helping a lot. The problem is that if you don't get it under control then you end up like New York or Italy. And those guys have some serious lock down's in place now anyway.

If you look at New York State as an example. They are about 2 weeks from the apex and they are seeing 10k new cases a day with hundreds of deaths. They will run out of ventilators in 6 days. They are already loading bodies into freezer trucks outside of the hospitals. They have been on lock-down now for about 2 weeks and will be on lock down for at least another 4 weeks. At the end of this, they are probably going to lose a lot of doctors and nurses too. If they didn't go all out on the lock down then the only other option that they have is herd immunity but that would kill millions because the hospitals couldn't cope.

You don't see the pain from this thing until weeks later. People are running around infecting others and by the time you start realizing that you have a problem, you are already in deep trouble.

Life will not be the same until they have a vaccine for this thing. Every time they release the taps (decreased social distancing), they are going to get another ramp up in cases. The only thing that will help until there is a vaccine is better testing for the virus and better antibody tests.

Already the economic fallout has been huge but there isn't really another option because the other option is to have millions of people die while you build up herd immunity. SA has a chance to get ahead of the curve. If they miss it and the virus starts going in the informal settlements then things are going to be very grim there for a while.
 
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Brian_G said:
@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.
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We currently well behind the anticipated trajectory re infection rates. We've done well, but again, I can stress it enough, it's only been 3 weeks since patient zero in SA(well, alleged anyway, some speculate it's been here for months already). Given the 5-14 day incubation period and the modest amount of testing done to date + the 2 super spreader events in the form of panic shopping and grant collections, we could see massive numbers in the next month or so... Really hope I'm wrong...

I have no idea about mutations, I believe there is a S type and a L type with the L type being the more aggressive form. Biologically, viruses tend to burn out by themselves... diminishing viral load resulting in milder and milder person to person infections. It gets watered down so to speak. Also COVID doesn't exactly thrive in sunlight, heat and humid environments. Might also explain how SA is behind the curve but going into winter isn't going to do us any favours...
 
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sand_man said:
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.
Click to expand...
In the states we are doing about 110k tests now per day and it's no where near enough. Abbott have released a new test that will let their baby machines do another 50k tests here per day and that still won't be enough.

The tests only work when you have a limited number of cases and you have better control of the situation and an obedient population. In South Korea they were actually tracking cell phones, etc. They also did a large number of tests with a limited number of cases to track and isolate every one that was affected.
 
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SpiderMonkey said:
We have been in a "suggested" lock down situation now for about 3 weeks. Non essential businesses have been closed for most of that time. People are still allowed to go out and our apartment neighbors (youngsters) had parties all of last weekend. That's the problem with an unenforced lock down. It is still helping a lot. The problem is that if you don't get it under control then you end up like New York or Italy. And those guys have some serious lock down's in place now anyway.
Click to expand...
This is something of great concern, and I agree if better controlled it would certainly help a lot.

But this is a real problem here - for instance we have the taxi example, if the gov. didn't give in to them then how would most(?) essential workers have got to work and would we have ended up with non-functioning shops.
In reality, this country doesn't work right anymore and I certainly have less than f-all faith in it. However, should they manage to improve the joke conditions I will eat Adolf's hat.
 
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sand_man said:
We currently well behind the anticipated trajectory re infection rates. We've done well, but again, I can stress it enough, it's only been 3 weeks since patient zero in SA(well, alleged anyway, some speculate it's been here for months already). Given the 5-14 day incubation period and the modest amount of testing done to date + the 2 super spreader events in the form of panic shopping and grant collections, we could see massive numbers in the next month or so... Really hope I'm wrong...

I have no idea about mutations, I believe there is a S type and a L type with the L type being the more aggressive form. Biologically, viruses tend to burn out by themselves... diminishing viral load resulting in milder and milder person to person infections. It gets watered down so to speak. Also COVID doesn't exactly thrive in sunlight, heat and humid environments. Might also explain how SA is behind the curve but going into winter isn't going to do us any favours...
Click to expand...

It's been pretty cold and gloomy with some rain in Sandton over the last few days. Then there was that case that was found in Alexandra about a week ago. Conditions seem ideal for it to spread here right now.
 
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Brian_G said:
This is something of great concern, and I agree if better controlled it would certainly help a lot.

But this is a real problem here - for instance we have the taxi example, if the gov. didn't give in to them then how would most(?) essential workers have got to work and would we have ended up with non-functioning shops.
In reality, this country doesn't work right anymore and I certainly have less than f-all faith in it. However, should they manage to improve the joke conditions I will eat Adolf's hat.
Click to expand...
The approach that they are taking here is to minimize contacts. You are never going to get rid of them but you have to try and limit them to keep the cases manageable. I saw a chart that showed the number of cases with normal contacts vs cutting down the contacts to 25%. We are talking a huge difference. The problem with SA is the "What next?" question. They can't keep the lock down going indefinitely. There isn't going to be a vaccine for another 18 months. They can move to voluntary social distancing but with the number of high risk groups, it' s still a stuff up. Right now it feels like they are desperately trying to keep it out of the informal settlements and praying for a miracle. I am praying that they can pull some sort of rabbit out of a hat.
 
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Brian_G said:
This is something of great concern, and I agree if better controlled it would certainly help a lot.

But this is a real problem here - for instance we have the taxi example, if the gov. didn't give in to them then how would most(?) essential workers have got to work and would we have ended up with non-functioning shops.
In reality, this country doesn't work right anymore and I certainly have less than f-all faith in it. However, should they manage to improve the joke conditions I will eat Adolf's hat.
Click to expand...
Yip, again SA's unique set of challenges making effective containment near impossible. How do you practice social distancing in a township with a population density of 6400 per km2? How do you practice good health and hygiene without running water? We on a hiding to nothing...

On the plus side, our hot and humid climate has possibly bought us some time, the NICD is a lot more competent and equipped to deal with this Pandemic than many would know. They've had plenty of practice tracing and monitoring the likes of Malaria, TB and HIV. Our population is young and therefore falling into the category of those least likely to be severely effected (unfortunately that advantage is offset by HIV prevalence).
 
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This lockdown shutdown of business will be the trigger for SMME liquidations in a different way: For those businesses who have been limping along with severe cash flow problems before COVID-19, not only will the lockdown hurt them even more, but COVID-19 will be the reason why the businesses go into liquidation - the justification by the owners.

What I am getting at is, there is a lot of pride in owning your own business. There is also a lot of shame in having to close/liquidate your business. But with COVID-19 comes a reason to pull the liquidation trigger while being able to look back and say "we were trading ok, but just couldn't survive the 3 weeks of zero turnover and we had to call it a day as a result". The embarrassment factor disappears...
 
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Geoff.D

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Agree. There are plenty of SMMEs who sick and tired of the labour issues and this gives them a beautiful excuse to get out.
 
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I have suspicions that it has already spread quite extensively and the number of asymptomatic or mild cases is large. This has been confirmed to some extent in the UK and other places where they have started antibody testing.

Antibody testing should be ramped up here so that the recovered and immune can be identified - so that they can return to work. At any rate, this should be one of the early goals.
 
Brian_G

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The problem is mass testing options aren't accurate... yet. (Some discussion and articles yesterday(?) about it.)
 
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