Spotted online.
And relevant, given the upcoming move to Level 2 and the precautions people should still be taking.
Just say no… but how?
I’m certainly not happy to share indoor spaces (here’s why), and so far, I’ve always alternated between “direct” and “too indirect”, but “I’m not setting foot in your haunted plague box” might just be my new goto line from now on.
As SA celebrates a move to Level 2 Lockdown from Tuesday morning, including a welcome return of alcohol and tobacco sales, I’m mindful of a couple of points that I feel shouldn’t be overlooked.
Firstly, please don’t let the joy of having your creature comforts back make you forget that the SA government response to coronavirus has generally been shoddy, unnecessarily opaque, often illogical and completely riddled with corruption.
And secondly, please don’t let the the joy of having your creature comforts back make you forget that the virus is still very much around, and that similar policies of opening up economies have resulted in spikes in Covid-19 cases and returns to heavier lockdowns all over the world.
We have the power to control this to a certain extent: continuing to wear masks, regularly washing our hands, socially distancing and not sharing indoor spaces are all simple things the public can do to limit the spread of the virus, and are even more important now that we are generally going to be out and about more.
Things might seem like they’re getting back to normal, but they’re actually not normal at all.
Please don’t forget that.
In a country where everything – everything – gets touched by the thieving hands of Government corruption, it’s good to know that someone is finally standing up and fighting corruption. That someone is… [checks notes] er… [checks notes again] er… apparently, it’s… The Government.
This image, appended to the bottom of this tweet:
Government remains committed to building an ethical State in which there is no place for corruption, patronage, rent-seeking and plundering of public money. Report any suspected corrupt activities. #AntiCorruption #FightingCorruption Read more: gov.za/anticorruption
reminded me of [an analogy I decided not to use*] or the Pope encouraging people to come forward and root out Catholicism.
It’s literally everywhere (corruption, not Catholicism) (although…) from the President’s office down.
They say a fish rots from the head, but there’s smelly sludge all over the gills, fins and tail in this case. (Can you tell that I never did more than basic fish biology during my studies?)
R4.8 million for someone to go door to door and tell people about Covid-19 – R2640 per person. A cool ten and a half grand if there’s a family of four at home when you call.
There’s R29.7 million “missing” in KZN.
The R500 billion coronavirus fund was obviously just too good an opportunity to miss:
So:
And I should probably just not mention the Eastern Cape Scooter Fiasco*.
These examples were not hard to find, at all. And one could argue that at least someone is documenting, recording and reporting them. But mostly, nothing ever happens about these cases, and even on the odd occasion when it does, the perpetrators are re-employed by their equally corrupt colleagues (and/or political party) soon afterwards anyway.
So where is the punishment?
So what is the point?
But then for the government – arguably the most guilty entity for both the enabling of and looting of public money – to tell us that “Fighting corruption is everyone’s business”?
I’ve honestly never heard such utterly hypocritical bullshit.
* 100 words in was just too soon to invoke Godwin’s Law.
** I actually saw The Eastern Cape Scooter Fiasco on the Friday at Reading in 2007. Great drummer. Energetic performance.
I’m not going to spend too much time on this, because it is fairly straightforward stuff, unless you’re an idiot.
One of the things that companies and organisations do is train their staff. That’s so that their staff and systems can become more proficient at doing whatever it is that they do. It’s not rocket science (although I guess that rockets scientists also do training stuff – it’s pretty much ubiquitous).
If I think of a profession that trains regularly, I think of firefighters. Remember passing the local fire station with its four-storey tower build specifically for training, as a kid?
Here’s my local one:
The UN and the WHO are organisations that train their staff. One of the things they train their staff on is how to deal with global pandemics, because that’s the sort of thing that the UN and the WHO are involved in dealing with. They work with other organisations (governments, the EU, the CDC etc) and other experts in planning for these sort of things so that – hopefully, at least- communications, sharing of data, logistics and the like can all be put in place more quickly and more efficiently in the event of an actual global pandemic, whether it is one that came from a wildlife market in Wuhan or from a terrorist organisation releasing a pathogenic organism.
Yep. Believe it or not, the global response to this virus could have been even worse, were it not for the training that the UN and its friends have been doing for years (because we’ve known for years that something like this was coming, remember?).
They simulate what they would have to do in a situation like this.
They don’t actually do it.
Much as the boys and girls from Rivelin Fire Station simulate fighting a house fire as described above. They don’t actually come round to your place, dowse it in petrol and light it up, just to see if they can get you out from an upstairs window before you succumb to smoke inhalation and/or horrific burns.
That would be real*, not a simulation.
If you read this thing going around on Whatsapp:
… as being the “smoking gun” evidence that this pandemic is just a massive experiment on the entire population of the planet, carefully orchestrated by shadowy figures who control our world leaders, then I’m telling you that you’re wrong.
How careless of the UN and the WHO to have accidentally published it in a (still) globally available document. You’d really think that they’d have tried to keep this information to themselves, wouldn’t you?**
“Oops.”
If you then, having been wrong above, make a 1 hour and 40 minute (!!) Youtube video (and no, I will not share the link) about this being the “smoking gun” evidence that this pandemic is just a massive experiment on the entire population of the planet, carefully orchestrated by shadowy figures who control our world leaders, then [choose appropriate deity], you are clearly beyond any help that I (or possibly anyone else) can give you.
Life is hard enough right now without this sort of tinfoil hat-ism.
Really. Get a grip.
* also, that would be arson…
** yeah, but that’s exactly what they want you to think…
People react to different things in different ways.
As Rudyard Kipling famously wrote:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs…
Then you would be good as the first responder to a multi-vehicle pile up*.
You need someone who can organise and mobilise and prioritise in that situation.
But that’s not important here.
Unless you are reading this while driving, in which case, it might be important soon.
I can understand why people react with frustration and disappointment to the recently reinstated alcohol ban. I also reacted this way (even though I also understand the alleged rationale behind it).
I get why people don’t agree with the ban on the sale of tobacco. I don’t agree with it either.
But I can’t understand why people won’t wear masks. It’s so simple. So obvious. So straightforward. It’s so easy. I cannot see the downside.
Maybe the resistance is because of the other rules and regulations over which you have less control? Pushback against a government that one feels is taking things too far?
I know, I know – there are a lot of other underlying issues here. No time for those right now. Or… maybe… ever.
But wearing a mask isn’t difficult and it has benefits for everyone – even slowing the spread of the virus and potentially getting those other “draconian” measures lifted sooner.
Being asked to wear a mask is a no-brainer.
It shouldn’t elicit stuff like this:
u wot m8?
You don’t need me to point out just how many things there are wrong with this (spoiler: I’m about to list a few, anyway). It simply doesn’t make any sense.
Where has this toddler been that everyone is wearing masks all the time? Why was everybody (and clearly, I mean everybody) wearing masks in Dubai for a couple of years before the coronavirus outbreak? What happened to this toddler’s parents? Why haven’t they taken him for tests? Or is he in hospital for those tests? Did they not discover any other underlying medical or psychological condition? How did they pinpoint it on the mask thing? I mean, it isn’t like the toddler could have told them, is it? How many toddlers are there in Dubai? How many toddlers are there in the world? Why is this toddler the only one affected in this way?
And then the big ones:
Why would someone make something like this up?
And why would anyone believe it?
I don’t know why people react to different things in different ways. For example, I don’t know why I reacted to this tweet by sitting in front of the footy last night and writing a 1000-word, fictional feature article about this Dubai toddler.
But I did.
Maybe it was that I needed answers to those questions above.
Maybe it was that the football was rather dull. I don’t know.
Anyway. Please go and read it and share it. Just for the lolz.
And please wear a mask. Thanks.
* Rudyard didn’t write that last line.