(Seems forgot to post when written, but still seems to apply)
Day 101 of lockdown and can anybody please tell me what's going on? Here, just another day just like yesterday, still with no end in sight. ...Some saying a hoax, some saying end of days, - and a million opinions iin between. Seems to me, no one has a clue how to act. And nothing known has ever divided us as a species, quite as effectively.
If it is a hoax, why are so many getting sick and dying, easily visible in hospitals and burials. Okay granted, compared to other known diseases and other causes, peanuts. But in seven months?
Quite apart, many other diseases taking big numbers are treatable or not infectious.
Covid may be tame statistically, but considering just how infectious it is, surely we should be estimating and catering for projections of population penetration, and work percentages off these estimates rather than basing on screenings and current trajectories?
The billion dollar questions: Is mankind in more serious trouble than we are led to be believe? Is herd immunity a reality? Will it kick in? When will this end, and how do millions survive from now until then?
When it all began here in SA in March. As we soon found out, it had been bubbling away elsewhere, where those in the know who should have known, were caught with their pants down.
Meanwhile down here in SA, lockdown was announced and the country was galvanized as if national pride meant free lotto payouts in the pipeline. This was a war and Corona was the enemy.
So where then was the rallying of the forces, galvanizing the nation? In WW2, the US was getting burgers and Coca-Cola to the front lines, and businesses turned their efforts towards the war effort.
And here, now and everywhere, leaders coming out of the stocks like Avengers, but soon falling into disarray at best, making questionable decisions without doubt. It is obvious the cigarette saga cares not if people smoke, only in closing down the legal cigarette trade. Everyone knows where to get cigarettes - at ridiculous prices. Are we led to believe the police are the only ones who don't? And then a cop gets bust with hundreds of thousands in cigarettes. Makes one think…
I mean where does a war government kick the war effort and real economy into disarray, and in so doing demotivate and alienate the nation on so many fronts, to pave the way for an entire contraband marketplace including cigarettes and related products, restaurants, B&Bs, and many many others? Where does a war council institute legislation which turns out not only to be illegal, but has turned just about every citizen into serial lawbreakers, not because of criminal intent, but because it is either impossible to comply, everyone is desperately trying to survive, or believe these draconian new impositions to be unjust or orchestrated for sinister and questionable reasons…
But back to the war. Cigarette bans have cast discredit on valid interventions to constrain infections and has made the nation mistrust leadership.
I mean in war, who sends kids to the front line? We have very little idea how to prevent or treat. Without a vzc one to prevent infection or medication to cure, Corona virus is quite literally out of control. We know that infection is spreading like wildfire, yet we are told to send our kids in to face the eye of the storm. Has this really been thought through?
If trajectories of projected penetration are correct, is this decision any less than human targets clustered into strategic targets during war?
Knowing the rampant spread, are we to herd our young ones into virus incubation pits at schools? Despite the valiant efforts of school administrators, staff and parents, they are playing against a hopelessly stacked deck. Hoping to restrain the spread of the virus while letting kids back to school is as futile as trying to push toothpaste back into the tube. Once it's out, it's out and lots behind it. It just cannot be undone.
I realize the dilemma facing decision makers. The impoverished do not have access to electronic gear so are at a disadvantage.
So the alternative is simply to accept the casualties and process the stats when they die? We are asking the wrong questions. The solutions require a paradigm shift tp making a move to fix, from putting band-aid strips iver gunshot wounds
We have all seen this coming for six months now, and this is the best that the greatest minds on the planet can do? We don't even have a convinced jury whether the whole hoohaa is real or not.
I do not know the answer. I can only go on what seems reasonable. So let's summarize what we know.
I first became aware of Corona being reported online, in Wuhan China, in December last year, and shared some posts.
Come January when numbers were really beginning to grow, I couldn't believe no one was taking note. Anyway, I thought they probably knew more than me.
Always suspicious about these kinda things, I started doing some digging and discovered CDC was pretty active in Wuhan. Other interesting facts about CDC are their massive budgets, staff contingencies and associates - a major slice of which seem to be military.
Anyway whether man-made or other, a topic of another day, a panglean it seems somehow did the dirty with a bat. And then through ingestion, body fluid transfer or other, some unfortunate soul in a wet market in Wuhan became the first human host. The rest as they say is history.
But soon rumors and Conspiracy theories begin to surface. Is it a hoax? Two percent fatality within those infected? That is like a flu. Why all the drama?
But isn't it exactly that, whuch makes Corona so terrifying. If it had been like Ebola or the Bubonic plague, China would have been isolated in days. But it was deadly to some, mostly weakened, with preconditions or with compromised immune systems.
In other words, if anyone had ever wanted to create a perfect depopulatuon intervention, Corona ticks all the boxes - not because of fatality stats, but on how deep it is likely to seep into global populatins
Corona kills, but generally only the frail. If you have a precondition, your chances of dying increase exponentially. So as things are now, these deaths cannot be attributed to Corona. But it begs the question, would the individual have died from the precondition without Corona? Summarizing this point, it was first seen as seemingly an insignificant enough virus to be ignored - until it had circled the world before anyone serious woke up and wiped the sleep out of their eyes. If you were that mad scientist bent on destroying the world, what a great idea!
And then being highly highly contagious, by breathing the same air as others, touching others, socializing and even touching surfaces. The virus is so contagious through so many different interfaces it has effectively forced society to stay out of each other's faces, family, work and play - at the risk of going down and becoming a statistic if you take your chances.
Then we know of the incubation period where a victim may be infected but be asymptomatic. Not sure on contagion during incubation state - seems to be many opinions, but supposedly the virus can incubate in a host for up to two weeks before displaying symptoms. Jury is also out whether an asymptomatic host can transmit.
Then considering that C19 reflects some symptoms pretty close to flu, it became really easy to confuse and misdirect. A perfect storm, and the world retaliated in surprising kind.
The implications are obviously mind blowing if constructed or not, but again for another day.
Finally, although recoveries seem to suggest patients with the immunity and strength to fight Covid19 may respond to symptomatic treatment, the health profession is the first to admit they are stretched to their limits and out of their depth.
One cannot blame the pious for wondering if Corona were some sort of divine intervention, to slow the human race down. We chill, we might make it, we head back to the rat race before the course is run or the guns to fight back are discovered, and we up the chances of epic casualties from an unseen enemy while effectively unarmed.
So what am I saying: crawl into our moles and wait to for this to pass or die, because the only other option is to go out, get infected and die anyway…
Of course not. It is out of the question to simply resign to hibernate through a Corona winter. But as said earlier, thinking needs to change. Instead of working around present inconveniences trying to get back to where we were before, we should be looking to re-engineer our lives and offerings for the long hall. How does your life work at home, socially and at work. We are already too far down the rabbit hole to ever go back. In any event, what this has done for virtual enterprise in 6 months would have taken years.
So the big question is how. How physically, and who pays. This answer should be through leadership. So Mr President, can we please stop the shennanigans for a year or two and do something that people will always remember you by. Start by pulling us together as a people. Start by making business leaders walk their PR talk. Make role players grow a conscience and integrity - by seeing you and your A-Team as role models setting example. Stop ignoring the words of all your people, and win our trust and support again, so we can all face it from the same side, together.
The earth is peppered with ancient ruins of lost civilisations, many of which we have no idea what happened to them. They simply disappeared almost as though the earth or history simply devoured them. What is obvious is they must have experienced something catastrophic.
Could any of those old cultures have been where we are now? Something catastrophic happened and in rage and fear they turned on and tore each other apart.
Based on the two facts that Corona is so infectious and there is still no way to kill it, I think we are only experiencing the beginning, and as much as I hate to say it, human life on biblical scales is at risk until a working vaccine is engineered. How world leaders and we as citizens not if our countries but humankind react. And tearing at each other's throats us just the wrong thing at the wrong time. Be considerate, take it serious, plan your world for the king haul, and above all, unite to fight.
