Hello 2021, goodbye 2020!

• The editor writes:

May I start by saying welcome back everyone and a happy 2021?

With a new year comes a sense of great positivity and excitement, but man, 2020 was tough … probably the worst year ever!

To put everything into perspective, 2020 sucked for me because I never thought that I would experience a pandemic.

The first pandemic I heard about was recorded in the history books – the 1918 influenza pandemic. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, better known as the CDC, “… it was the most severe pandemic in recent history worldwide during 1918–1919”.

It’s said that the virus was first identified in military personnel in the USA during the spring of 1918 and it is estimated that one-third of the world’s population at the time (about 500 million people) became infected with the virus, resulting in at least 50 million deaths worldwide.

Although South Africans were aware of the Covid-19 pandemic and expected it to arrive some time or other, it officially hit our shores during March 2020.

According to Dr Zweli Mkhize, Minister of Health, the first positive case was diagnosed on 5 March. He said, “The patient is a 38-year-old male who travelled to Italy with his wife. They were part of a group of 10 people and they arrived back in South Africa on 1 March, 2020. The patient consulted a private general practitioner on 3 March with symptoms of fever, headache, malaise, a sore throat and a cough.”

By the end of that month, our president announced a state of disaster and full national lockdown. From here we were bound to our homes by law and stuck between a rock and a hard place as we could not go to work. Ever since some, if not many, have lost their jobs, and even their lives. To date (5 January 2020), South Africa had over 1,1 million positively diagnosed cases and over 30 000 deaths.

So how did it affect me?

Let’s go back to the beginning.

After lockdown had come into effect my wife, our child and I had absolute zero contact with the outside world for about 21 days, if not more. We did not even leave the house to buy groceries during this time in fear of what was outside. Soon after the president’s announcement of the imminent lockdown, we stocked up on items such as pasta, rice, non-perishable foods, meat (for the freezer), cold drinks and even medicine, and stayed at home.

Only after a couple of weeks I dared to set foot outside the house and buy groceries for my family. Even then the groceries were sanitized thoroughly before they were put away in our cupboards. From apples (bagged) to long-life milk, I sanitized them with wipes and hand sanitizer. No one was allowed to touch them before I had carried out this operation. I don’t really know if that was healthy but one had to be extra careful.

The bad …

Of course being at home with one’s family is nice and cozy, but it was hard not being able to see anyone else. Not another family member, friend, nobody …

My son couldn’t even see his beloved grandparents at all and one had to rely on technology, such as a WhatsApp call, to communicate – which was just not the same as personal contact. We also had to braai all by our lonesome.

There were also no music festivals and/ or concerts to go to; travelling was restricted and my beloved sport on TV was suspended, delayed, and/ or cancelled. In the midst of the pandemic, one also woke up to the news that violent crimes against women and children continued, farm murders were at their peak, and general crime was a daily occurrence.

One had to dig deep, financially

With our industry only allowed to operate under Level 4, people lost their jobs and you feared that you might be next. Fortunately this was not the case for me but I had to take a cut in my salary and my wife too had to be satisfied with just half of her salary. Yes, it’s something, at least we have jobs, but there’s no doubt that we had to dig deep. Others were not so lucky.

The good …

Besides remaining in good health, on 21 September – a day before my birthday – restrictions were lowered to alert Level 1 and I could enjoy many of the things I was unable to in the preceding six months or so.

A month later my wife turned 30 and were we able to throw a mini bash to celebrate her milestone birthday along with some friends and family. We even had a nice holiday with my parents at the coast and in the bushveld that month. Man, we needed that!

Going forward

As the country experiences a second wave of Covid-19 infections and fears of another Level 5 lockdown are emerging, one only hopes that should this be the case, one would at least be able to keep one’s job to provide for one’s family.

How did you experience 2020? Email us at krugersdorpnews@caxton.co.za/ randfonteinherald@caxton.co.za.