Day 16
20 days to go
One day at a time
Day 17
19 days to go
Deja vu!
Day 18
18 days to go
Day 19
17 days to go
Last night there was a pretty open and detailed technical session held by our Minister of Health (Zweli Mkhize), where the chair of his COVID-19 advisory committee Salim Abdool Karim did most of the talking.
It was very informative. This is probably what I’ll be spending the rest of the day summarising.
Link to the summary when you are done please - I am taking the covid info in, in very small bites so as not to trigger my anxiety
agree. summary would be great .
Here are two of the topics Karim covered so long. My next two articles are awaiting editing and publication.
That second article should really be read with the next article of mine that hasn’t been published yet.
Karim was warning that when the lockdown is relaxed, we’ll see a third wave of community transmitted infections in South Africa.
But we can’t stay in lockdown forever, so the only way to deal with that is to make sure we’re properly prepared for it.
The preparations include those mentioned in the second article:
- Building of field hospitals
- Procuring necessary supplies to help hospitals cope with the increased case load
- Ongoing screenings by community healthcare workers
- Contact tracing
My next article, which has not been published yet, summarises the steps that Karim is saying we should take as the lockdown relaxes:
- Keep up good hand hygiene and physical distancing.
- Keep the borders closed and/or keep certain travel bans in place.
- Consider keeping restrictions on large gatherings in place. Funerals in particular have been a hotspot for coronavirus transmissions.
- Voluntary partial lockdown for the elderly and people with co-morbidities, to limit their exposure.
In short, just because the lockdown regulations get relaxed does not mean it’s over! Far from it!
The issue I have is that specifically = people think if they lift the lockdown it is over.
Its not, but we cannot stay in an extended lockdown like some countries. But even places like Canada and UK where there is gov help, but not forever. This is a disease that kills. But it is killing the poor and people with no funds faster than the disease itself. But we do not get to see those numbers.
I personally know of 1 person who was given a positive diagnosis even though he has been under isolation at home and at the hospital before the outbreak for at least 2 months thanks to being a cancer fighter undergoing hectic chemo.
They still cannot tell him if he is positive for corona or if he is just a carrier. Ironically he is feeling and testing healthier than before this and that is with chemo.
This is not magically gonna dissapear.
Yep. That’s what one of my next articles its going to be about. “After the lockdown: Not business-as-usual in South Africa”.
Even Abdool Karim said that we have to relax the lockdown at some point, even if the risk of the virus is not over.
Bill Gates put it excellently in his interview with Trevor Noah. The world has changed forever. Until there is a vaccine, COVID-19 will be a constant threat. And hopefully governments around the world have woken up to the warnings epidemiologists have been giving them for years.
Hopefully the next thing we can get governments to take seriously is climate change, followed by even more poorly understood threats like a Carrington Event.
It’s up!
Day 20
16 days to go
Almost would have been done with the original lockdown
Any information on a vaccine or cure for this yet?
Well there is the hard knock life way of catching it getting extremely sick and developing antibodies once you survive.