HAS PRESIDENT CYRIL EVER READ AN OPEN LETTER?

With few global exceptions, governments are scratching their heads about how to unlock the lockups into which they so keenly plunged their nations. It can now be seen that the lockup was the easy part both to launch and also to get people to grasp the issue and comply. One didn’t need a faculty of what-ever-ologists to do what mothers have been saying since germs were discovered. “You can’t go and play with your friend. He has a nasty cold.” But now that it turns out that most of us and our friends weren’t and aren’t infected by this terrible virus, we are eager to resume our lives. President Cyril could end the lockdown and all its levels immediately. Most of us will choose to practice social distancing until some unknown future time when we individually feel safer than we do now. But, aside from the opinions that an 8-week lockdown may be quite adequate for achieving medical objectives, there are two extremely important and urgent reasons for terminating the State of Disaster immediately and entirely.

The first is that the promulgated lifting of the restrictions in stages seems to hinge around the thesis that certain jobs are more essential than others. And the second is that politicians are thrilled with the docile compliance from their usually harshest critics and don’t want it to stop as they have a whole lot of other tests of central planning to run. Like for how long can the black market in legal commodities be milked for the benefit of the cadres?

The wilful denial of the hardship now being suffered by the poorest of our land in the absence of those jobs currently deemed to be inessential is breath-taking. To the owner of whatever menial or distasteful task they do to make a living, that task could not be more essential. Ministers say that they hear people’s complaints about hunger but just to wait while they get things organised and issue permits to charity soup kitchens on a daily basis. Humanity and compassion have disappeared in the race to get a share of the relief funds.

It is outrageous that we are not allowed to know who will use what data in order to adjust the level of lockdown. We are told how many people are and have been infected by the novel corona virus as well as the number who have recovered from COVID-19. There is also a count of how many have died. Reportedly, the number of deaths caused by this virus may be inflated because of so-called comorbidities (what a dreadful word). These data points probably form the basis of the secret calculation. Obviously, the quality and reliability of these totals range from modest to dubious on every geographic scale. Nevertheless, poor data is all in a day’s work for numerical epidemiologists  as they churn the numbers to produce a suite of results including the infamous R, the value of which indicates whether the virus is “winning” or “losing”. (Note that in polite company this R wears a subscript of zero, but computer printers are fussy about that sort of thing, so it is omitted here). Presumably at each value of R (or whatever it is) our government will grudgingly crack open the lockdown a bit more. Reversals are possible and have been mentioned for some regions which are “in the naughty corner” when it comes to their numbers.  Tut tut.

I am delighted to see that many respected voices are writing open letters to the Boss who did during his televised non-speech look very harried and tired. Their themes are identical.  We have done what you and your medical specialists asked for. We all learned a lot about infection control and will continue to exercise sense and caution Now give us our lives back please. And you go back to reclaiming all the money stolen by your colleagues and mates in the last decade so you can pay for the care that will be required by the few thousand people who won’t be able to avoid infection.

James Greener

Friday 15^th May 2020

CALLOUS AND CRIMINAL

What now feels like a very long time ago, just after President Cyril had placed the nation into a State of Disaster, that someone asked very sarcastically what possibly could go wrong with the forthcoming mixture of authoritarianism and ignorance. What an excellent question. The answers and our experiences six weeks later, exceed anyone’s worst nightmares. And the dreadful thing is that no one seems to be in charge. There are for example so many ministers deserving to be fired immediately. This week it’s a race between Lindiwe Sisulu whose department of water and sanitation has burned through billions of wasteful expenditure and Pravin Gordhan who is ignoring the advice of his own appointed experts and wants to revive SAA.

More than two weeks ago our President appeared on the TV screens to tell us, his employers, what in his opinion, is and should be going on. That was the speech where he announced a relaxing of portions of the lockdown which would include the sale of tobacco products. On this last item he amazingly was trumped a day later by cabinet minister NDZ citing the support of just 2000 petitioners and Cyril hasn’t been seen or heard of since.  This incident has prompted South Africans to do what they love and that is to send in lawyers to challenge their government (the reverse is also a popular use of taxpayers funds) only to be told that the minutes of the meetings of the National Command Council are classified. What!? The courts are now busy with that one too.

Anyone with an internet connection and a morbid fascination for sifting fake news from the truth can easily while away the days of the lockdown alternately cringing in horror and crying with emotion. There are few highlights but the movie clip of the fit athlete sprinting away from a chubby cop on a beach in the Cape is pure gold. Overseas readers will be interested to learn that our government has declared the beach and the sea itself out of bounds, even to those taking advantage of the daily three hour curfew exercise break in the overall lockdown.  By the way, someone has declared that exercise must involve moving one’s whole body, so yoga and the like won’t do and practitioners of these activities in public have been arrested.

Perhaps the central concern for us all is the lack of information about the data, methods, results and conclusions being used by who to form the strategy to get the country back to normal as soon as possible. The state is the sole custodian and distributor of all data relating to the incidence and spread of the corona virus so it is difficult for anyone else to corroborate the medical conclusions and social engineering attempts being derived therefrom. Much of the world is basing its responses on work published by the infamous Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London. The technique appears to be variations of the lockdown scenario which in South Africa is having the utterly appalling effect of plunging many millions of people into starvation. This is exacerbated by the inability of politicians and officials to curb their own propensity to steal and loot supplies being donated to help the sufferers. Add to which the racist elements in government see this as an excellent opportunity to punish the minority groups. That our leaders appear to see no crisis deserving anything more than a huge military mobilisation is very alarming.

SPORT SECTION: Prof Ferguson already has poor form in interpreting biological data as he was largely responsible for turning an outbreak of foot and mouth disease into a country-wide disaster in the UK in 2001. His current work on the virus is also alleged to be shoddy. Plus the prof has manged to introduce an element of scandal so beloved of the Brits in connection with their heroes. He broke the lockdown in order to visit his lover – who, nudge, nudge is a married woman!

James Greener

Friday 8^th May 2020

IT’S OUR GOVERNMENT THAT IS AILING

The government has not explained exactly why it was necessary to hire a cohort of health professionals from Cuba. These folks arrived to much fanfare quite late one night this week and were whisked off to a fortnight of quarantine. It would be interesting to know if that is what they expected and how they will pass the time without reading material and TV channels in Spanish. The last time we hired a team of foreign doctors they were not thrilled with the rural settings to which they were posted and then there were complaints that neither side could understand what the other was saying. What makes the current incident even more puzzling is that reportedly this country is awash in under utilised and even unemployed local medics. The cost to the nation of this “selfless and generous gesture by our Cuban brethren”, to quote President Cyril, will be more than R2 million per brother. This figure doubtless allows for some cadre commissions. The medics themselves could collect as little as $1000 each for their stint, as it is well known that this doctor export program is a great foreign exchange earner for the Cuban government.

Coming down from a stringent and vindictive five-week Lockdown during which the authorities even tightened the conditions, will not be simple. The complicated, inconsistent and economically suicidal multi-level plan began to decay even before it officially came into effect today. A survey has determined that we all now understand and try to eliminate, as far as practical, interpersonal infection opportunities. The government and indeed the people are no longer much concerned about COVID-19. However, the former is keen to keep and grow the control they have enjoyed while the latter just want to get back to normal as soon as possible. We are quite done with being told what we may not do, eat or drink and are very restive and increasingly rebellious. And now there is a night time curfew. The government is getting scared of us. This is why so many new soldiers have been put on the streets.

It is clear to everyone that President Cyril is no longer in charge of the country and the one-time presidential wannabe, NDZ in effect now outranks Cyril who is being kept in order to provide diversion and light relief. Unfortunately, her camp is home to some of the more clueless and racist ministers. But they are corrupt. The decision to renege on the president’s promise to allow the sale of tobacco product at this level of lockdown has preserved the very useful cashflows being generated by the cigarette (and probably the booze) smuggling operations. The cadres are pleased. The taxman this week acknowledged a revenue of shortfall of R1.7bn because of the ban on legal sales of these “sins”.

The move to a notionally more lenient lockdown level has delivered the very welcome concession of permitting outdoor exercising (including the family dogs) for a short period every day. It is not explained why a time restriction is necessary as it forces all the exercisers out on the roads at the same moment that there are more cars about. Interestingly, the permitted exercising area is a circle of 5km radius (presumably) centred on one’s home, which absent shorelines and the like, permits a route almost as far as a standard marathon. But few will manage that in the 3 permitted hours! Take-away hot cooked food is now available but not from supermarkets and only for delivery not collection. Job creation I suppose.

The trickiest job tackled by your government this week was deciding which language to use when announcing the return to school dates. For some unknown reason they chose not to use the one understood (if not spoken regularly) by virtually everyone listening. However once that was sorted out it is clear that a huge effort had been put into trying to draw up a schedule.  It doesn’t help that several hundred school premises have been savagely vandalised during the lockdown and that the distance learning already in use at privileged schools will never be available for the vast majority of South Africa’s children. For most of them 2020 will likely forever be a gap in their education.

For others, the awarding of the Premiership to Liverpool is a dubious idea.

James Greener

Workers Day 2020