T8191

I continue to wonder how accurate the SA statistics are ... https://www.worldometers.info/corona.../south-africa/

I would have thought C-19 would have spread rapidly (and lethally) through the townships. Or do the stats just reflect in-care deaths, whilst hundreds more are just ‘he died at home’ with minimal analysis and recording? The totals seem rather low, given the poor living conditions of so many.

Meanwhile the histograms show an almost unremitting rise in cases and deaths. A sad picture ... at least UK is finally showing a decline in both categories.

Ditto

Tickets (not on SAA though) are already available for sale as early as next week... https://www.businessinsider.co.za/fl...-june-1-2020-5
What I was trying to say is that nobody even knows for sure what will happen next week, let alone in 6-8 months.

mattp1987

Oh sorry, I wasn't trying to argue. I appreciate your local insights. I was just adding two more articles I found to support the idea that it's all up in the air, so to speak, right now.

Ditto

As just about everywhere else the government is struggling with the number of tests, it went about as high as 20K/day, but the public sector have a backlog of 7+ days, and half of those tests are done in the private sector, IIRC only about 18% of the population have a private health insurance, so that might give you an idea on how accurate those stats can be.
What's even more worrisome is that with some home-affairs offices being closed, death certificates aren't being issued and it isn't even possible to know how many more people died compared to last month or last year...

Recently the NICD started posting more detailed analysis which might shed some more light - https://www.nicd.ac.za/diseases-a-z-...lance-reports/

johan rebel

And the business rescue practitioners ostensibly in charge of running that muppet show say there no way that's going to happen.

SAA rescuers pour cold water on plan to resume domestic flights

Johan

johan rebel

Take a wild guess!

Even in sophisticated, affluent and well-run democracies with efficient and well-funded bureaucratic institutions and authorities the figures are pretty dodgy. South Africa is a country that can't even provide anywhere near accurate stats on homicides and traffic fatalities, or much else for that matter. C-19 is surely entirely beyond them.

Just for starters, what constitutes a C-19 death anyway? If there is such a thing as a workable and uniform global definition then I haven't heard about it. Sweden, for example, counts everybody who dies within 30 days of being diagnosed with C-19 as a covid fatality. Theoretically that means that an asymptomatic patient who was only diagnosed by chance in a tracing sweep, but then gets run over by a dump truck 29 days later, will statistically become a C-19 fatality. Most people with C-19 aren't squashed under the wheels of a truck, but the vast majority who die are elderly, most with host of comorbidities. Sorting out primary, secondary and ultimate causes of death is a nightmare and a minefield, to which various countries will have all sorts of different approaches. Sweden avoids the issue altogether, at the expense of accurate stats. How South Africa handles this I do not know.

Johan

johan rebel

Their one and only goal must be complete and utter destruction of their tourism sector.

If other African countries start welcoming foreign tourists with open arms well before SA gets its act together the result may well be a longterm loss of market share.

Johan

rdh0924

My wife and I have a trip to Victoria Falls, Chobe and South Africa (Cape Town and Garden Route) booked for early January. Based on the Africa News report, it seems this trip isn't feasible? We're flying through Qatar Airways (through JNB) en route to VFA and then flying out of JNB on the way home via Swiss Air/United.

I'd hate to pull the plug this early, but we're hoping to travel somewhere in early January as it's one of two times a year that work for both my wife and I. It's still early enough to get our miles redeposited and find biz saver availability somewhere else. I know it's a gamble booking any trip, considering we don't know if a second wave of COVID-19 will take place in early winter, but I'd rather have a trip booked somewhere that is at least tentatively allowing international business travel.

Thoughts?

Flame3601

I would not trust that Afrika News article saying no SA international borders opening up by 2021 earliest, it is an interpretation of out-dated information along with that One Mile @ Time article that is an interpretation of that interpretation. Things change quickly for the better or for the worse without much notice, a lot of firm strict changes have been allowed to happen early than expected, my point will always stand strong South Africa can not miss out on the tourist season this year from October onwards even if it isn't very fruitful - every penny counts.

One thing that is going to be interesting is that the Western Cape has always been firmly controlled by the Democratic Alliance unlike every province in South Africa that is run by the ANC, the ANC hate this and this is prime time to go on a power trip and regain or enforce their policies under the blankets of "corona virus". It will be interesting to see what happens in the Western Cape as currently Cape Town is the biggest hotspot for Corona virus, so will not be surprised if the Western Cape falls back to level 4/5 with maybe a few other hotspots. An interesting talk on a radio station today stated that the ANC have a total everyman for himself situation lined up with a top secret level 6 if things do go really wrong ( basically you do not leave your house at all no matter what and if you need something the army come to you under certain conditions). A common trend is for someone, like a supermarket worker, to get sick and have a corona virus test and come back positive, then they test everyone at the supermarket and turns out half the staff have it but they have no symptoms and feel perfectly fine, if not great. Schools go back for grade 7/12, this will be interesting to follow in regards to infection rates at school and overall spread factor. We aren't seeing the death rates or crazy infections numbers that was expected at first. Another worry is there is now a shortage of testing kits and growing backlog of testing, this something that should be watched, the shortage seems to be a western cape thing ( I wonder why, cough ANC)

Things are moving back at a steady rate to normal, things are slow though, but nearly everyone i know from different walks of life is that the people of SA just want to go back to work and reopen the economy ASAP and will follow social distancing and protocols with pleasure, but if catching corona virus is a serious risk to you then stay home and allows those who are willing to go out go. A real anti-government trend is starting to emerge even from those who never had a whiff of anti-government sentiment.South Africa is good friends with China and been reported that China have been having talks with SA on how to handle lockdowns and how to also use it to their advantage, SA is part of BRICS so I am sure china is also paying their way and SA is happy to go along with this.

SanDiego1K

Flame3601 really appreciate your perspective. It's good to have some on the ground reality. Should game parks reopen before yearend, I'd love your perspective at that time as to the health risks we would take should we choose to travel to the Kruger or Addo area.

johan rebel

Denmark and Norway recently reopend their schools, and early indications are that this has had zero impact on the number of corona infections. When both countries locked down, their health authorities saw no reason to close schools, but the politicians decided to shut them anyway. Sweden only closed it senior highs, all other schools remained open, without any social distancing requirements. The number of C-19 fatalities in the country in the under-21 cohort is exactly one (1).

Johan

Smiley90

even if kids aren't dying, they can still spread the virus to family members who are more susceptible.

Sweden also now has the highest death rate in the world: https://news.yahoo.com/coronavirus-s...144650769.html

not sure I'd take them as an example of what TO do...

johan rebel

"It is highly irresponsible for any government to make important decisions not supported by data and statistics. This explains the previous disappointing one-dimensional plan that does not take the realities on the ground into account and indicates that the re-start of tourism is to take place only in December 2020, by which time the tourism sector would be decimated".

Source

Johan

johan rebel

As I wrote, preliminary indications in both Denmark and Norway are that that is not happening. There are good reasons to believe that will hold true in the longer run too.

"Kirsty Short, a virologist at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, led an as-yet unpublished meta-analysis of several household studies, including some from countries that had not closed schools at the time, such as Singapore. She found that children are rarely the first person to bring the infection into a home; they had the first identified case in only roughly 8% of households. By comparison, children had the first identified case during outbreaks of H5N1 avian influenza in some 50% of households, the study reports.
“The household studies are reassuring because even if there are a lot of infected children, they are not going home and infecting others”." (source)

Of Sweden's fatalities, 50% have occurred in nursing homes, and another 25% are eldery people who were receiving in-home care (i.e. people who in many other countries would have been placed in nursing homes). This constitutes a severe indictment of Sweden's way of caring for the eldery (although many other countries have had even worse outcomes). There are lots of reasons for this high number of fatalities, (e.g. the fact that the old and ill who isolate themselves at home can be visited by several dozen different carers in the course of a week), but coughing and sneezing kids is highly unlikely to be one of them. If nothing else, nursing homes have been closed to visitor of all ages for months.

In my local community our one and only school never closed. I see all the kids romping arround outside during recess, as well as in various gardens and yards after class. I'm not the least concerned. We haven't had a single case of C-19, even though our children haven't been confined indoors for weeks on end. Instead of being scared, traumatised, deprived of fresh air and excercise, they are leading normal lives and getting a proper education to boot. Good for them!

Johan (with apologies for going way OT)

Ditto

What works in Denmark and Norway won't necessarily work in South Africa, there have already been cases reported in schools as they prepare to open June 1st, meaning staff members who are spreading the virus, undoubtedly when they will teach a class with dozens of pupils some of them will spread the disease, the demographics is just way too different to be a fair comparison.
Not to mention, outbreaks in schools are already happening in some other parts of the world - https://www.ynetnews.com/article/C764E8PLD

One big challenge in South Africa will be that infections are already on the rise, and I somewhat doubt we will ever get detailed information/statistics as to how much re-opening of schools contributed to it, I highly doubt the government has the means to correctly identify those.