Remembering Covid – and looting that followed

Three years ago yesterday, South Africa seemed like the set for a post-apocalypse movie: businesses were shuttered, the streets were empty, people huddled in their houses as armoured vehicles, soldiers and cops patrolled the street.

The stage 5 lockdown severely restricted the movement of people and forced many businesses to close – all in the name of trying to deal with an unprecedented pandemic, which had already claimed tens of thousands lives around the globe and had made its appearance inside our borders less than two weeks previously.

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The government used brutal force to enforce the lockdown and the mandatory wearing of masks in an effort to slow down the march of the virulent initial strains of the coronavirus.

Although the lockdown was harsh and counterproductive in many senses, it did buy the medical authorities time to prepare for the devastating peaks of the waves of the disease – Covid – which took hundreds of lives a day.

That is the undisputed reality of the pandemic and no amount of trying to reimagine history by the newly resurgent anti-vaxx campaigners is going to change that.

Lest we forget: ambulances were queuing up at private and government hospitals; triage to separate those patients with no hope of survival was done in hospital parking lots; patients sat in chairs in ICU wards because there were not enough beds; hearses lined up at hospital mortuaries.

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Officially, 102 595 South Africans had died of Covid, but the “excess mortality” figures – for deaths above normal predictions – are at least three times higher than that. Many people died before getting to hospital and in rural areas, so the excess death figure shows just how horrific a toll the disease exacted on our country.

There were many mistakes made in how we tackled Covid as a country. The ANC government relished the opportunity to flex its authoritarian nature, while some of its cadres relished the opportunity to loot funds intended to combat the crisis.

Lockdowns and other restrictions further battered an economy already in distress, increasing the numbers of jobless people as companies went to the wall.

Vaccinations, when they arrived in the first quarter on 2021, did make a difference – not only in reducing transmission of the virus, but also in the severity of infection and, importantly, significantly reducing the number of deaths.

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This, too, is not up for discussion, no matter what the anti-vaxxers’ views are. Vaccines worked – and they still work. What are the lessons we should learn from the pandemic?

Firstly, we must continue to be guided by the science and to trust medical experts. While they are not infallible, they are a lot better than getting your advice from YouTube or Facebook and from people who have a financial interest in pushing their anti-science conspiracy theories.

We should also appreciate our medical personnel, the majority of whom went above and beyond the call of duty – some dying that we might live.

Remembering is important: much as we must never forget those who died or the sacrifices, we should also not forget that there were some in the ANC who callously used a national tragedy as a way to enrich themselves.

Corona was not the only virus which plagued South Africans during the pandemic.

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