On the first day of the lockdown, the streets and taxi ranks in the Durban CBD are empty. Picture: Shelley Kjonstad (ANA) On the first day of the lockdown, the streets and taxi ranks in the Durban CBD are empty. Picture: Shelley Kjonstad (ANA)
We let the first window of opportunity to stop and defeat the Covid-19 virus slip away.
That is the bad news.
We’ve all seen what followed: harrowing tales about healthy people wilting away in the hands of committed but overwhelmed, exhausted and petrified health professionals in places like Italy, doctors joining the long and growing patient - and death - lists, and so on.
The good news is that all of us - all 8 billion or so of us in this world - have another window of opportunity.
Thankfully, more and more of
our leaders around the globe are taking action. Already, by yesterday, more than 3 billion of the beleaguered 8 billion world population are under lockdown.
The extra good news is that
South Africa’s coronavirus scourge is still very much relatively containable. It, fortunately, simply got to our shores much later, way after countries such as Italy and the US got hit.
We must also count our blessing in the form of our president, Cyril Ramaphosa, who has been a marvel to watch and follow.
Ramaphosa has shown leadership.
Now we need to see the followership from all 58million of us necessary to stop the virus.
The bad news is that not all of us covered ourselves with glory on Day1 of the national lockdown.
Clearly, some of us didn’t get the memo. This was even after the news broke in the morning of South Africa’s first reported deaths from
the pandemic.
#StayAtHome
Related Topics: