George Dunn of Sheffield Beach writes:
After almost 50 days of lockdown, what have we achieved?
Two hundred people have died – an incredibly low figure when one considers that the majority of the population are unable or unwilling to adhere to the rules of social distancing and hygiene, due to the fact that they live in terribly cramped conditions, do not have access to basic amenities etc.
It is important to put this death toll into context, when you consider many first world countries with a similar population size of about 60 million, which have all recorded more than 30 000 deaths over a similar lockdown period, while adhering to the rules.
These countries have made the decision to get the population back to work and the economies opened up.
By contrast our “power enriched” politicians are as usual unable to make such a decision.
The lack of understanding of basic economics has never been their strong point.
Consider the fact that practically every SOE is bankrupt, yet still our politicians want to throw more taxpayer money at them, instead of closing them down.
Where is this money coming from?
SARS has predicted that they will lose over R285 billion in revenue due to this lockdown.
Businesses are on their knees.
A huge majority will never reopen.
People are being retrenched and many, many people are going hungry.
Stupid restrictions are placed on the sale of tax-generating items, whose sale within the same stores as food would cause no more of a Covid-19 risk.
Therefore, the question to be asked is: is the death toll due to the virus worth the damage the lockdown has caused to every South African?
If the lockdown is not lifted almost immediately the government will be faced with a level of civil disobedience never experienced before.
The population was told initially that the three-week lockdown was to get the hospitals and health service ready.
This was then extended, but after this length of time if they are still not ready, they never will be.
Ironically prior to lockdown, there were about 100 people dying every day due to murder, road accidents etc, equating to 5 000 deaths within the same period.
What will this figure be when people are dying of starvation?
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