We’re also to blame for Covid-19 spike

It is easy to get angry, looking at soaring Covid-19 deaths (more than 58 000 at last count), about how the pandemic response has been handled by the government.

Stringent lockdown provisions were imposed right at the beginning of the infection curve, more than 15 months ago.

The reason? President Cyril Ramaphosa assured us, on the advice of his experts, that this would slow down the virus reproduction rate enough to buy us time to strengthen our medical institutions so that they would not be overwhelmed by sick and dying people.

Did that happen? No, it did not.

In some provinces, medical facilities were taxed to the limit – and, in cases, pushed well beyond it – in both the first and second waves of the pandemic.

A large part of that was because the resources which could have gone towards improving hospital facilities – increasing beds, acquiring oxygen supplies and ventilators – was cynically looted by the ANC and its cronies.

Even health workers on the front line at some point did not have enough personal protective equipment. Some died because of that. Other patients died because the facilities were inadequate.

As Gauteng leads the country in the spiking third wave, it beggars belief that the health authorities have closed down the emergency fields hospital established as Nasrec and which would care for an extra 500 patients.

Not only that, it cost R3.5 million to “decommission” the facility. However, we can only go so far in blaming the government, or even rapidly mutating versions of the virus, for this looming catastrophe.

South Africans are not sticking to the health rules: there is very little social distancing, large gatherings still take place, people still get drunk and fill our hospitals; we don’t wear masks and we don’t sanitise as we should. We’re also to blame.