Picture for illustration purposes. Photo by Dimitar DILKOFF / AFP)
Amazingly, amid the obituaries, the sorrow expressed on social media and the horrific images and stories in news outlets and on TV, there are still Covid deniers out there, maintaining that the results of contracting coronavirus are negligible because “it’s just a flu…”
No amount of fact based argument will convince these people that this pandemic is not, somehow, all part of a dastardly global plot, the worst part of which is happening right now, as people who are “sheep” are tricked into taking vaccines which are, supposedly, still experimental and whose negative effects will only be felt in years to come.
To those in the tinfoil hat-wearing brigade, the latest figures from Statistics SA will be dismissed as false… but to those with common sense, the numbers are an alarming confirmation of how deadly Covid was and continues to be.
Stats SA says there has been a “significant increase” in the national death rate.
More than that, the Covid mortality has reduced the statistical average life expectancy in SA by three years (from 62.4 last year to 59.3 this year), and by 3.8 years for women (from 68.4 to 64.6).
The last time we saw life expectancy figures drop like that was in the Aids catastrophe
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