Covid-19 can be conquered, with the right people

The newspaper headline grabs my normally dulled attention span: “Joburg has nil incidence of the disease”.

Hey? I read it again, and yes, it’s in black and white.

The opening paragraph even more arresting. “Johannesburg’s conquest is another of those great clinical triumphs showing what can be done when scientists, government and public combine.

“The virus was dreaded like a medieval plague, not only because it has struck down so many, but because of its cruel and highly dramatic effects.

“But yesterday it was reported that its incidence has been reduced to nil by the mass immunisation campaign.”

It goes on to say the virus joins the lengthening list of diseases folk need no longer fear if they take reasonable precautions –“smallpox, now negligible in South Africa; leprosy, almost whacked with sulphone drugs; and yellow fever has been kept out of the country by strict border control”.

More and more this sounds like fake news. In a way, it is. Okay, let’s come clean. Believe it or not, the article appeared in The Star, when still owned by a law-abiding company, dated Wednesday, 12 December, 1962 – nearly six decades ago.

And the virus referred to was polio. This disease caused paralysis, forcing the use of crutches, wheelchairs or victims to be put into an iron lung, a large tank respirator that pulls air in and out of the lungs. Many died.

The point I’m trying to put across, having read and re-read the yellowed newspaper account, is that the success was due to close cooperation between the main players, starting with the scientists (who’ve the knowledge), the government (with infrastructure and funding) and the citizenry (taking the prescribed preventive measures).

The coronavirus – not unlike polio – can be stopped in its tracks. And there was no politicising the situation for self-gain.

Today, there are far too many unrelated interventions by a government struggling to look the part, but too incompetent and corrupt to come close.

In the ’60s Johannesburg stilled the tide. It obviously possessed the right people to accomplish what appeared an impossible task.

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