The Coronavirus is a delicate little organism, menaced by mortal peril on all sides. It cannot support an independent existence. It can only survive in the body of an animal host. But most animals’ immune systems will slaughter the fragile little chappie. It can just about survive in a human being, but only under a few limited circumstances. Unless urgent action is taken, Coronavirus will perish. The African National Congress (ANC) seems to be doing all it can to keep it alive and sustain the Covid-19 epidemic.
This is the conclusion I’d draw from the ANC’s lockdown if I were some alien professor of biology, watching the Earth from a distant galaxy. Otherwise the ANC’s erratic decrees and diktats look mad. Lockdown is a double killer. It will extend Covid-19 and allow it to reach the old and vulnerable. And it will smash our enfeebled economy, killing people by poverty.
Of course, it has various delightful side effects for the ANC. It allows the ANC to demonstrate its contempt for ordinary people and its wish to control their lives and invade their privacy.
Real leader
It has given the ANC a chance to show that its real leader is Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, famous for Sarafina II, Virodene and her deep love of Robert Mugabe’s land seizures. When the nominal president, Cyril Ramaphosa, said that cigarettes would be on sale last Friday, she showed her contempt for him and the people of South Africa by kicking him aside and saying that cigarettes would remain banned.
These are side issues. The main issue is protecting the Coronavirus. Here are some of its enemies, and how the ANC plans to deal with them:
Children
Children are the number one enemy of Coronavirus. Their powerful immune systems will smash the little critter. If children gather, they’ll pulverize the virus. You can see this in the tables of mortality by age group for Covid-19. The younger you are, the less your chances of dying. Young children’s chances of dying from Covid-19 are close to zero. It is difficult to imagine a greater threat to Coronavirus than a school. This is a death camp for the virus. The children would quickly spread the virus among themselves and destroy it, preventing it from reaching the old and the vulnerable. The ANC has decided to close schools. Our children will lose a year of their education, and their social development will be stunted, sometimes permanently. The virus will be protected, and the epidemic will last longer.
Outdoors
The virus survives best indoors. Outdoors, when people exhale it, it would fall to the ground and die. Sunlight is harmful to it. The ANC first decreed that outdoor exercise was NOT ALLOWED. Lonely old ladies were NOT ALLOWED to walk their dogs outside. Now, in the latest edict, we are told that we are allowed to exercise outdoors between 06h00 and 09h00, within a 5 km radius of our homes, provided we wear a facemask (to save the virus falling to the ground and dying). For the remaining 21 hours of the day we must remain indoors, comforting the virus. I did venture out on Friday morning on my bicycle, rejoicing in the glorious scenery of Noordhoek, and feeling jolly, jolly grateful to my ANC lords and mistresses for letting me see the fields and sea and mountains. But I was keenly aware that at any time I might be arrested by Minister Cele’s gestapo if Dr Dlamini-Zuma suddenly decided to over-rule Ramaphosa and proclaim that all outdoor exercise was suddenly NOT ALLOWED.
Hot Meals
The Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr Ebrahim Patel, is a Communist – like most of the policymakers in the ANC. He hates capitalism, business, private employers and hot meals. I’m not sure where the last fits into the Marxist canon but perhaps it featured at the Fourth International. Anyway, Comrade Patel just hates the idea of some poor lady in the township selling hot meals to a truck driver. Hot meals are NOT ALLOWED to be sold. Heat kills the Coronavirus, so hot meals would prevent Covid-19 being spread.
Summer
Following from above, Covid-19 likes the cold. In the Northern Hemisphere, the coming summer is dangerous to the virus. Here it is the reverse. The longer we delay the spread of the virus (by ‘flattening the curve’), the more chance that it will survive into winter, where it will flourish and kill more old and vulnerable people. Lockdown will extend the Covid-19 epidemic into winter, when it can accelerate.
Maddest in the world
Not all these mad polices are unique to South Africa. Other governments have followed similar error. But most are beginning to realise it, persuaded by the data that pours in day by day to show that Covid-19 is much less deadly than was supposed, and that lockdown is destructive folly. The ANC admits no such error. Its policies are about the maddest in the world, including a ban on cigarettes and alcohol, just like those of the country whose policies it idolises and follows: Zimbabwe.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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