If this country’s debate continues to sleep through Covid-19, we may all be in for a rough awakening. The debate pays so little attention to the virus that we might assume it no longer matters, either because it has left our shores or because a vaccine is nearly here. Neither is true.
Covid-19 infections are on the rise in SA. While cases are concentrated in the Eastern Cape, they may not stay there for long as people travel between provinces. On average about 1,600 new cases a day were reported between late August and last week. This is about eight times the number that prompted South Korea to warn of a national crisis. The debate here is presumably happy to live with these cases because the people who take part in it are not much affected. Even if a vaccine is rolled out in the US and Europe soon, it is unlikely to get here for a while. When it does, it may be available to very few of us.
All this would be good cause to take Covid-19 seriously. But another reason is that if we ignore the disease a second wave may be more damaging than the first. This possibility has been raised by Laura Spinney, a science journalist whose book on the 1918 flu pandemic, Pale Rider, has influenced thinking on Covid-19.
Spinney points out that the second wave of that pandemic was far deadlier than the first — people who contracted the flu were far sicker and the death rate much higher. The reason, she argues, is that the disease spread easily among soldiers who, because they were fighting World War 1, lived in crowded conditions where public health measures were hardly a priority. Had the virus run up against health protections that made it hard to move among people, it would have been forced to become milder so the fewer hosts it found would tolerate it. The lack of protections meant it did not need to soften its effect to survive.
The message is clear: guarding against a virus not only makes sure fewer people get it, it can also force the virus to become much less harmful to those who are infected. So, if we take the virus seriously we not only reduce illnesses, we help to ensure that those who do get it are not as sick.
If Spinney is right, this country has good reason to worry. It has become clear that the political parties, interest groups and media that shape our debate were never concerned about making sure we fought Covid-19 effectively: they were interested only in whether “normal life” was restricted.
This was underlined recently when President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed the nation on the pandemic. He expressed concern that case numbers were rising and announced that his government planned to deal with the problem by ... doing nothing except scrapping some restrictions designed to curb Covid-19’s spread. No-one in the debate found it interesting that the government had, in effect, left citizens to cope with the virus on their own, insisting that it would be their fault if cases kept rising.
The debate’s indifference to the fate of the many who might be infected is not only a moral problem. It is short-sighted. If we face a more virulent second wave, those who have weathered the storm until now may not stay unaffected. Nor does it make economic sense. The IMF recently joined the voices warning that economies will not recover until the virus is no longer a threat.
The debate ignores Covid-19 and the need for the government to fight it effectively, not only at the peril of those who have borne the brunt so far but of those who look away.
• Friedman is research professor with the humanities faculty of the University of Johannesburg.
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