People are really getting fed up with this lock down 
I am very undecided, but would love to be able to go to work!
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Well we have managed to survive 50 days. But I cant anymore, honestly Im not dealing well anymore
If I hear/see one more comparison of COVID-19 to seasonal flu I am going to buy a Predator drone and violate the Geneva Convention.
The DA can really get stuffed now.
Discourse says I’ve already linked, but I’ll link it again: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-24/is-coronavirus-worse-than-the-flu-blood-studies-say-yes-by-far
Here’s the money shot:
In a Twitter thread from February that a reader pointed out to me this week, University of Oxford infectious disease epidemiologist Christophe Fraser estimated that the actual infection fatality rate (which I will refer to from now on as IFR) of seasonal influenza is 0.04%.
Fraser also speculated that influenza expert Lone Simonsen “may have more accurate numbers.” So I emailed Simonsen, a professor of population health sciences at Roskilde University in Denmark who has worked at the CDC and National Institutes of Health in the U.S., to ask. Her answer: Fraser’s estimate is spot on. Simonsen believes that the IFR for the coronavirus will eventually turn out to be on the low end of current estimates, possibly as low as 0.2% or 0.3%, but emphasized that this is “still far greater than … for seasonal influenza.”
The emphasis is mine.
As an aside: One of the big mistakes being made in these debates is that people are confusing / comparing IFR (infection fatality rate) to CFR (case fatality rate).
Now let’s talk about what a 0.2% IFR means.
The problem with statistics is that people don’t seem to want to do the arithmetic to actually understand them.
We have around 60 million people in South Africa. I have seen statistics which say that 70% or 80% of people will need to be infected by the coronavirus for us to achieve “herd immunity”. Let’s take the lower number so we can see what the best case scenario is…
70% of 60m = 60m × 0.7 = 42 million.
So, based on our current understanding of epidemics, we can say that at least 42 million people in South Africa will have to catch SARS-CoV-2 for us to achieve herd immunity.
Now how many will die if we get the low-low price of 0.2% for the IFR?
42m × 0.002 = 84,000
At least Pediatric Heart Surgeon Susan Vosloo somewhat high-balled her estimate of the number of deaths at around 200,000.
Do you know how many people die from Influenza globally?! 290,000 to 650,000. She is talking about South Africa’s COVID deaths alone making up 31% of the upper estimate of the number of flu deaths of the world.
And Influenza is the scariest viral killer on Earth right now. Well it was, until COVID.
Now let’s say that the 0.2% IFR is wrong and it does end up being closer to 1% for COVID-19…
42m × 0.01 = 420,000
Do you see what a big difference the uncertainty makes?
Would you like those people to form an orderly line at the hospitals so long? Would you like them to flood the hospitals all at once, or would you prefer the case load to be staggered so that our hospitals don’t become totally overloaded?
And another thing: These are just the people who will die. What about those who could survive if they had access to a reasonably equipped ICU?
What about those who will die because they can’t get a ventilator because all the critical COVID patients are taking them up?
Sorry, yeah, I get passionate about this, because it is scary as hell that even medical professionals are being dragged into the trap of comparing COVID to flu.
Clarification edit: It is probably necessary for me to state that I think some of the lockdown regulations are ridiculous. The ANC/NCCC should have known that the curfew alone would have sent alarm bells ringing and had freedom-loving journalists crying “Police State! Police State!” in every op-ed.
The fact that the restrictions on e-commerce were only lifted 40+ days into the lockdown is ridiculous, the 3-hour window within which to exercise outside the boundaries of your property doesn’t make sense. The continued ban on tobacco and alcohol is giving diminishing returns as people turn towards illegal means of getting the stuff. The ban on hot food is nonsensical, especially now that take-away delivery has reopened.
Second edit: Check out this cool thing, which I think is useful for giving a nuanced view about the outbreak —
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Clarification: It is probably necessary for me to state that I do think that some of the lockdown regulations are ridiculous. The ANC/NCCC should have known that the curfew alone would have sent alarm bells ringing and had freedom-loving journalists crying “Police State! Police State!” in every op-ed.
The fact that the restrictions on e-commerce were only lifted 40+ days into the lockdown is ridiculous, the 3-hour window within which to exercise outside the boundaries of your property doesn’t make sense. The continued ban on tobacco and alcohol is giving diminishing returns as people turn towards illegal means of getting the stuff. The ban on hot food is nonsensical, especially now that take-away delivery has reopened.
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Cross-posting this since it is an intersection of racing games and COVID-19 (sentences you didn’t think you’d type five months ago)…
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I’m heading back to work starting today. I don’t know what hours I’ll work yet as I won’t be able to work the night shifts due to curfew and transport issues. I told my boss I can’t work nights when he brought my permit to my house yesterday and he said we have to figure out who works when amongst ourselves, as long as there is always someone there during operating hours.
For today I’m going in from 9:00-17:00 and then we’ll see after that.
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Good luck, stay safe!
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The creed of this year: “2020, stay safe!”
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Mum has gone this morning for her covid test - so lets see - chances are if she is negative then all of us at home was safe 
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I’m going to have to get a covid test before they allow me onto site.
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Apparently here the nasal swab has been taken away - or at least mum just got a throat swab
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What site is this from?
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WC numbers - Im weirdly optimistic - our recoveries has almost caught up with active cases, and of almost 6k people infected 470 are in hospital and 143 in icu
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And mum tested negative so that means we are at least covid free
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Good news
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