Show you care and wear a mask

Our graphic on Page 3 today should give everyone pause for thought. The number of Covid-19 infections is heading skywards… in a repeat of what happened earlier in the year when the first wave hit us.

People just don’t seem to take the disease as seriously as they did earlier this year and it doesn’t seem to scare them. That’s why many don’t even bother wearing masks and have reverted to the old ways of getting up close and personal.

Part of that is probably a natural reaction to all that has gone before. South Africans, at the best of times, don’t like being told what to do. And, while the government may have had good intentions with the various lockdowns – which aimed to slow down the spread of infections – the way the disaster regulations were enforced was often brutal, capricious and illogical. And, then, when infections did go down, nobody thought to link the restrictions with that, perhaps believing the worst was behind us.

The current situation has not been helped, however, by the large numbers of educated and outspoken people who have been querying many aspects of not only the pandemic itself but also the official reactions to it.

Some of these questions and criticisms have been valid: lockdowns may have well caused huge suffering and even more deaths. Other complaints, though, border on conspiracy: these range from doubt about the safety of upcoming vaccines to a belief that the pandemic is a hoax controlled by some vague global “deep state”.

The reality is that people are getting sick and they are dying – almost 23 000 so far in SA.

Whether we like it or not, it is our behaviour which can turn the tide. Wearing masks, social distancing and sanitising are not signs of oppression, they are signs of caring.

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