Tag: lockdown

Day 273 – Absolute Zero

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Every now and again, thanks to the way that I have numbered my lockdown posts this year (remember Day 1?), a number comes up which clearly has a bigger meaning than just how many days we’ve been “stuck inside”.

273 is one of those.

And that’s because -273.15ºC is Absolute zero. Not the terrible alcohol free vodka, but:

the lowest limit of the thermodynamic temperature scale, a state at which the enthalpy and entropy of a cooled ideal gas reach their minimum value, taken as zero kelvins. The fundamental particles of nature have minimum vibrational motion, retaining only quantum mechanical, zero-point energy-induced particle motion.

Yeah. That.

There’s also a theoretical temperature called Absolute Hot, but since that is equal to

141,678,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Kelvins
(or approximately 141,678,499,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,726.85ºC)

I’m rather hopeful that we won’t need to address that in Days of Lockdown.

At least not any time soon.

Day 265 – The last bit of real life?

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For a while, at least? Maybe.

Holidays start today in SA. Not officially, and not for everyone, but The Day of Reconciliation (that was today) does generally mark some sort of beginning to the summer holiday season.

The festive period is always a bit weird: it’s hot and sunny, which it clearly shouldn’t be at Christmas time and all our routines are swept away for a few weeks: Kids at home. Me at home. Dog at home. Wife at work. Playdates, restaurants, shopping, general socialising.

Fun.

This year: nope. It’s everybody at home (even though the wife is still at work). We’ve got a couple of (outdoor, socially-distanced) things that still have to be done and then and we’re all holing up as the second wave hits Cape Town. Early days, but it does already appear to be much more severe than our initial problems in May, June and July.

President Ramaphosa swung into action once again with targeted measures aimed mainly at reducing superspreader events. And I get it – to a certain extent – but once again, there does seem to be a degree of irrationality when 100 people are still allowed to gather indoors, but all the beaches in KZN, the Eastern Cape (definitely outdoors – I’ve been there) and the Garden Route are closed.

Better policing and enforcement of the regulations would be a much better way of going about things, but our police force is understaffed, overwhelmed, dysfunctional and aggressive. And while I can understand why you can’t just close some of the beaches in a given area (because then everyone would just go to the ones that were open), this is a lazy catch-all which has understandably angered many people – and merely driven everyone to other venues in the tourist areas: at least some of which will be indoors.

In KZN, the beaches are only closed on those days on which the majority of poorer people traditionally go there. And yes, the beaches on those days are horrifically overcrowded and would likely be very unsafe from a Covid point of view, those people are now going to stay in their horrifically overcrowded residential areas which are very unsafe from a Covid point of view. This doesn’t help much at all.

We’re in the Western Cape, where our beaches are still open – bizarrely only between 9am and 6pm – concentrating the crowds as much as possible. But it’s unlikely that we’ll be spending much time there.

It’s going to be a surreal summer: no extended family, limited travel, no socialising.

It’s a pain. It’s sad. It’s irritating. But it is just one year.

Day 252 – Here it comes…

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I’ve been predicting this for a while.
It’s not like I needed a crystal ball and some fake psychic powers. I just had to look around me.

Jury’s out as to whether this is our final, (final, final) warning or whether we’re about to head into some sort of new, stricter lockdown, but since no-one actually heeds any of the warnings anyway, we might as well just admit defeat now.

As pointed out by a 6000 miles… reader, even the Plett Rage event is going ahead. Literally thousands of 18 year olds thrown together for several (or more) days of high energy, high alcohol, high other stuff partying in one of the small town major Covid hotspots in the Southern Cape.
And it’s not just going ahead – it’s sold out:

What – as the question goes – could go wrong?

I’ve got no more answers for you. At this point, we’re just doomed.

Happy Holidays!

Day 250 – 250 days of lockdown

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And there we go. Another 2020 milestone.

Whoop-di-doo.

We’re 250 days into our South African lockdown and we’re actually no better off than we were on Day 1.

That’s not to say that things haven’t improved in the intervening period: they certainly did get a lot better. It’s just that over the last few weeks, they got a whole lot worse again.

Why? Because people thought that the pandemic was over, got sloppy with handwashing, mask wearing and not congregating in large groups indoors and surprise, surprise, we’re facing a new resurgence of Covid-19.

Ugh.

So what now, as SA heads into summer holidays, with the major holiday towns of the Southern Cape overloaded with virus? A stricter lockdown with all the dreadful economic effects at their most important time of the year? Or just heading face first into a second wave with hospitals overloaded during their busiest period?

I don’t have the answers, but I do find it very sad that over eight months since we all hid away in March, we’re once again facing this crappy virus and these crappy decisions.

Day 245, part 2 – More Covid things that won’t work

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Western Cape Premier Alan Winde is asking the local public to just follow some very simple guidelines and rules:

The virus is not gone but will be with us over the holidays and beyond. Therefore, we need to remain safe and protect each other…

…in order to slow down the spread of coronavirus.

That plan that clearly won’t work because no-one ever follows the rules in South Africa.

But then we bring you news from The Homeland, where the government is asking people to:

use their common sense

…when planning family gatherings and Christmas parties.

And that plan that clearly won’t work because no-one in the UK has any common sense.

 

People (sometimes rightly) complain when a government steps in with draconian rules and regulations, but if we’re absolutely honest, when things are left up to the general public, it’s almost always utterly crap and if that happens with this second wave, it’s going to result in a massive disaster both here and there.