Interesting graph

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From a famous mathematician.

Your chances of sharing a space with someone who is Covid positive, based on a given prevalence of Covid in the local population and a given number of people in the space:

So (using the arrow as an example), when 7% of the local population have the virus, if you share a space (supermarket, pub, restaurant, SA taxi) with about 20 people, there’s a 50% chance that at least one of them will be Covid positive.

For those that are interested in the maths, I’ve calculated the probability of at least one person in the room having Covid as 1-(1-p/200)^N Where p is the population prevalence as a percentage and N is the number of other people in the space.

In the UK at the moment, prevalence is somewhere around 4%: 1 in 25 people are positive. And that means that if you are packed tightly in any given space together with any more than about 90 people, there will be at least one of you who is positive…

Oh. Oh dear.

And yet there are still no precautions of any sort being put in place. Quite bizarre

Of course there are a few terms and conditions to Kit’s graph.
Some people might isolate if they are Covid positive. Some people might be Covid positive but asymptomatic. Some people might not have bothered getting tested, so they won’t know if they’re positive or not. All of these might affect the assumed prevalence.

And then, of course, just because you share a space with someone who is Covid positive doesn’t mean you’ll get infected (although, see headline above). That will depend on the size of the space (and therefore your proximity), the amount of time you and they spend in the space, the ventilation in the space and – of course – whether either (or both) of you is wearing a mask.

But it’s a super useful tool for just showing how likely any of us is to be sitting next door to someone who is positive. Lovely stats. Only mildly scary.

Called it (volume 8,459,216)

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Not claiming any points for this: one just gets used to seeing what’s going to happen long before it actually happens. Low hanging fruit.

Remember I ended last night’s blog post with this:

Well, this lunchtime, there was this:

Who could have guessed?

[entire country raises hands]

The “unlawful strike” was supposed to have ended, and unions had/were supposed to have told their members to get back to work:

Sadly, it seems that this just hasn’t happened. But who’d begrudge them another day or two off?

[entire country raises hands again]

Obviously, everyone is blaming everyone else, but to reject an 7% pay offer that hasn’t even been made yet seems pretty brave, defiant, and – most of all – really fucking annoying. And once again, it’s the South African public that are bearing the brunt of it all. And it’s difficult to put into words how hated those “workers” are right now.

So that’s another 8 hours of power cuts today.
No braai tonight. I’m getting dinner on now and warming it by gas a bit later.

Who’s playing at Montreux?

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Lots of people: it’s a big festival. But three that I specifically want to see: a-ha (which is how I ended up on the Montreux website), Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, and Gabriels who have been doing some really amazing stuff lately.

And, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, all their sets will be available for livestreaming… live… as they perform.

a-ha are on at 11pm tomorrow (Friday) evening, Nick Cave 11pm on Saturday and Gabriels at 8:30pm on Wednesday the 6th July. All for free. Gratis. Mahala.

Click here for more details and for more free streams of other artists at the festival.

Happy Alternative

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There might be Stage 6 loadshedding tonight, and it might coincide with our dinner time, but on the plus side, it’s been a cracker of a day in Cape Town and we are lucky enough to have an alternative to the electric oven, and plenty of wood to power it with.

And so, making the best out of a frankly somewhat scary situation, we’re going to lob some steaks, some pork kebabs and some chicken (for the vegetarians) on the braai this evening. There will also be a salad and some garlic…? bread…?. It could actually be a very pleasant evening.

We’ve been promised “just” Stage 4 tomorrow (the Stockholm Syndrome is kicking in just as they had hoped), and so it does seem at the moment as if South Africa has survived another near miss.

But you never say never in this place.

Stage 4 and up in Cape Town – what does it look like?

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Much alarm, but no real surprise, as the message came through that we can expect Stage 6 (six) loadshedding this evening.

Loadshedding – or rolling blackouts – is the process by which the country cuts off power to different areas at different times because there isn’t enough electricity to go around. The alternative would be not cutting areas off and literally overloading the grid, leading to uncontrolled blackouts and general Armageddon. You can’t just switch the grid back on after an uncontrolled blackout. We could be down for days or weeks.
Oh, and each stage represents 1000MW that we’re short of what we require. So to be missing 6000MW is quite something.

It’s not a good scenario.

In Cape Town’s 23 loadshedding areas, each loadshedding period lasts for 2 hours, plus an additional half hour during which the power is restored. You might get one loadshedding block per area in a Stage 1 or 2 day, and up to three blocks per area in a Stage 3 or 4 day. But once you get beyond that, it gets a bit different.

So what does life in Cape Town beyond Stage 4 look like?

Yes, it’s complicated, but there are plenty of timetables readily available. If you have electricity to be able to access them, of course. It pays to be prepared.

And it pays to cut your electricity usage when you have it. If we were all to do that, we might be able to reduce demand. But even then, it’s all very much out of our hands.

Fugly situation.