Tag: covid-19

Day 41, Part 2 – More Noakes nonsense

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Linking to this post here, which says it all better than I ever could.

Cherry-picking, sowing malicious seeds of doubt, double standards, victim mentality – they’re all there.

And this explanation for taking the time and effort to write it at all:

…misinformation and disinformation thrive when nobody calls it out, and here, the disinformation is potentially dangerous, in that vaccine-assisted herd immunity is necessary for Covid-19 to become a relatively trivial problem for all of us.

Brilliant.

Day 31 – It’s all over

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It might as well be, anyway.

Since the announcement that we would hopefully be moving to “Level 4” lockdown restrictions on May 1st – something that will not be materially different for the vast number of people in SA – the population seems to have given up on their lockdown.

The roads are busy, next door are having yet another braai with their family, and people are wandering past our house in greater and greater numbers.

Literally.

But with Cape Town now one of the SA hotspots for new infections, there’s a real chance that we actually might not be downgraded by the end of the week, or that if we are, we might be upgraded again soon after.

The blame for this will be placed squarely at the door of government, at whichever level – city, province of national – but it will actually be due to the aforementioned fuck-knuckles going around, living their normal lives and pretending that their actions have no consequences for the rest of us.

I seriously don’t know how much more simply anyone can explain it to them. It’s hardly rocket surgery:

Don’t. Go. Out.

and yet… the cars still go by, the people still walk past and the braai smoke still drifts from next door’s chimney.

Day 26 – Really missing footy

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Another day. No football.

I’m getting very tired of seeing this. You could argue that simply not opening up the app would prevent the daily anguish of seeing this message, but then if there was – by some massive stretch of the imagination – a surprise game of togger, you wouldn’t know it was coming.

Can you imagine how awful that would be if you only found out after the fact?

Sadly, it’s not likely to be right any time soon though, so maybe I will actually take a chance and spare myself the regular torture and associated depression for a little while.

Lockdown!

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From midnight tonight, South  Africa is on lockdown.

( a word first coined in this year…)

Meaning that unless we have to go out to buy food or seek medical attention, we have at stay at home. The full rules are here, but for the majority of us, that one sentence sums it up quite nicely.

Bizarrely, there will be no alcohol or tobacco products sold during the 21 days (not legally, anyway), and so huge queues – with no social distancing – formed outside those kind of shops this morning. It does seem bizarre to put the population into lockdown like some sort of guinea pig in some dystopian experiment and then not allow them to access any of their usual goto coping mechanisms.

This will not end well.

Not that it was going to end well anyway.

I went for a last (out and about) run this morning, and got some last minute chocolate in to placate Mrs 6000, just in case there was a late rush.

We managed a late afternoon family dog walk. With the family dog.
The school field was chained up already. We had to walk around the block instead. The beagle was disappointed at the lack of Hadeda-chasing opportunities.

And now, I guess this is it. We stay home unless we have a genuine reason to go out. The situation is changing every hour, every day. But as it stands at the moment, I can’t see three weeks being enough. Nowhere near. Six or eight, maybe.

But who knows? See you all on the other side*.

 

 

* blogging is classed as an “essential service” and will continue throughout the SA lockdown.

Temporary escape

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I mentioned that I had had to leave Cape Town for a urgent trip before we lockdown on Thursday evening.

It wasn’t a decision I took lightly: travel is one of those things that needs to be curbed if we are to stop the spread of Covid-19. But it’s been two months since we’ve been able to get down to Agulhas, and I don’t think we’re going to be able to get down here for probably another two months now, and so I needed to make sure everything was ok at the cottage.

It was… it is. Well, just about. It wouldn’t have been if I hadn’t have come though. We needed electricity putting on the meter, the gutter had been damaged and needed some work. Nothing huge, but nothing you want leaving for however many weeks either. All the minor things that would normally have been done if we’d popped down for the weekend like we used to be able to before real life and sickness and now lockdowns got in the way.

And so the trip was worthwhile and we have had minimal contact with the locals: this is usually a pretty quiet place anyway.

But it was life as usual all the way through – restaurants are open (but quiet), Caledon and Bredasdorp were relatively busy and bustling with shoppers. But not in any way manic.
Struisbaai was also busy – lots of activity in and around the harbour particularly.
In Agulhas, we were the only customers in the 7/11. It was fully stocked, and the guys in there were stocktaking and getting their next order prepared. Nothing out of the ordinary. And that was weird, because normality is now weird.

We walked along the beach here (not Cape Town, so not closed). A few fishermen, same as always. Some birds. Sunshine, light breeze. You wouldn’t know that the world had changed.

Half of me wants to stay here, a million miles from anywhere and seemingly several weeks back from the present. But it will all change. It has to. And I don’t want to be here when it does. This place has always been a perfect escape from the stress of modern, daily life – something it’s proving again right now. I don’t want to see it polluted by reality.

Let me rather return when things have settled – however long that may be.

But right now, I need to get back to the braai. Because some things will never change.