In the UK, shoppers are required to wear a surgical mask. But the assistants behind the counters are not. That apparent utter failure of logic points up the fact that no one really understands very much about this virus that has so changed all our lives in 2020. Every day the internet carries new claims by, for the most part, smart and well-meaning researchers about what they think their data has revealed. The topics range from the fiendishly intricate micro-biology of the bad bugs, to conclusions drawn from the tsunami of statistical counts of everything from deaths to the phone numbers of shoppers and guests in the pub. A moment’s thought about even this last simple record-keeping makes one wonder how the originators think it will work. The man at the Wimpy tells me that he has been told to file these precious records for a year.
But despite the mistakes and miscounts, the indications are that the worrying statistics like infection rate and morbidity counts are in decline, so perhaps this virus thingy is in retreat. It cannot be because we are developing the so-called herd immunity condition. This can be declared only when a huge proportion, probably greater than 70%, of a population is immune to infection. The textbooks suggest that this generally happens only when an effective vaccination is in use and despite the worldwide jingoistic claims, no such thing is yet available.
The huge danger is that governments are going to claim that their lockdown protocols have caused this slowdown in infection rates and therefore are going to insist on retaining their powers to control freedoms. Hard core conspiracy theorists are sure that the local regulation requiring everyone to wear a mask has been a hugely successful attempt to get people to wear a “badge of compliance”. The claimed efficacy of both the lockdown and the masks is unproven and likely false.
How banks actually work, and in particular how the SA Reserve Bank works (hint: not at all like the others) is a mystery to those of us brought up on cartoons of the wild west where the chief plot line was robbing a bank of sacks of cash. Hopefully, MP and EFF office bearer Floyd Shivambu’s imminent doctoral thesis on “South Africa’s transformation policies, legislation and practices as well as ownership and control of JSE-listed companies” will devote a chapter to this topic. Then we can see why he wants to nationalise the Reserve Bank, -- a topic he returned to this week. Has he perhaps earmarked the Governor’s job for himself once he can tag PhD to his name?
Despite having an investigation, the Pretoria Municipality (Tshwane to the cognoscenti) still cannot decide whether there are 1400 or 7000 so-called ghost “employees” to whom it pays a salary each month. Whatever the number is, the wise suggestion that they should not be fired has been made. Firstly, because they are about as productive as the living employees and secondly, they won’t be stealing anything. Just start by firing the ones who pitch up for work and work down that list until the townspeople begin to complain that things are not working. Oh, wait!
Each January the good, the great and the probably dodgy of world economics gather in the snowy enclave of Davos in Switzerland. There, in cosy luxury paid for by taxpayers and shareholders, they warm the cockles of each other’s hearts with theories and stories of how brilliant their models and decisions are. Only, in 2021, the folk who plan this thing have taken advice that the threat of the virus will even then be too large to let the world’s elite meet in one place. What does that say about our own meagre level 2 and 1 scenarios that far out?
The nation that holds the Rugby World Cup has still not managed to arrange a provincial tournament. Another oddity was a “friendly” soccer match between two topflight European clubs where a “lucky” 300 or so fans were permitted entry and crammed into adjacent seats and rows in a stadium capable of taking tens of thousands. And not a single mask.
James Greener
Friday 28th August 2020
