Day 3 of Level 1: Feeling good, feeling positive, mense!
Day 3 of Level 1 lock down and boy does it feel good
Level one!!!
To quote Schalk Bezuidenhout: “Feeling good, feeling positive, mense!”
(If you don’t follow his hilarious COVID updates on Instagram you should do so immediately!)
Of course, in typical South African fashion, there were still endless moaners in the press and on social media after the President’s address on Sunday night. Man, we are a nation of complainers! Instead of sighing a sigh of relief and congratulating ourselves and (god forbid) the government for getting through this horrendous second wave, we still moan and criticize.
If you look at the consistent criticism you would be forgiven to think that that we have fared far worse than almost all countries in the world – both in terms of measures to control the spread of the virus, but also in terms of procurement and roll-out of the vaccine.
This week I coincidentally had a number of conversations with contacts from abroad. Needless to say, every time COVID came up. First, I chatted to a German contact, who had decided to hang out in South Africa for the next six weeks “because things are handled so much better here”.
Since mid-December, Germany has twice renewed a total lockdown with bars, restaurants, theaters, and gyms remaining closed until later this month. Despite this, Germany still had almost 4 000 new infections on March 1.
There is also a drama developing with vaccinations. Just over two weeks ago, 1.45 million doses of the AstraZeneca Vaccine were delivered to Germany. Yet, weeks later, less than 280 000 of those doses have been used. Turns out the Germans have shunned the vaccine – not because they are anti-vaccination, but because they believe that this AstraZeneca vaccine (produced by a British-Swedish company) is inferior to the German-produced Pfizer BioNTech one. So, hundreds of thousands of vials of vaccines are standing idly in fridges, since many health facilities had to stop their vaccination drives. (Latest update I read, Germany had only administered one dosage of a vaccine to 7% of its population).
Across the border, friends in the Netherlands describe things as dire. The Netherlands have seen unprecedented rioting from citizens frustrated with the lockdown regulations. Although some of the restrictions were recently lifted, their curfew remains until mid-March. This has led to a court case that resulted in the lower court ruling that the curfew was illegal and an infringement on the rights of freedom of movement. The state appealed the earlier judgement, and a higher court overturned the judgment, saying the government was indeed within its rights to impose the curfew. However, this has caused much confusion.
In the meantime, there were still almost 5 000 new infections per day on March 1 and despite a highly sophisticated medical system, only 5.5% of the population having received their first dosage of the vaccine.
The news from friends in Ireland wasn’t much better. Many op-eds over the weekend severely criticized the government for its handling of the epidemic. After the usual return of thousands of Irish for Christmas- especially from the UK- Ireland became the country with the highest infection rate per capita in the world. This resulted in a total lockdown beginning early January – with no bars or restaurants allowed to trade. (And let me tell you, not being able to get your regular pint is a BIG deal in Ireland.) Amongst other restrictions, schools have remained closed and no one is allowed to travel beyond 5 km from their homes. This is expected to last until April.
On Saturday there were violent clashes between the police and anti-lockdown protesters in the center of Dublin. Despite being a tiny country, Ireland has also only succeeded in administrating vaccines to 8.4% of its population.
In fact, Denmark is the only country in the EU that has been able to immunize more than 10% (10.4% to be precise) of its population. This is part of a bigger crisis of vaccine procurement playing out in the EU.
It is estimated that the EU will only get about a quarter of the 100 million dosages they were promised by the end of March. This is partly due to delays in manufacturing. However, many countries are furious at what they believe is a bungling of the collective procurement process on the European level. In Sweden (another country that has seriously messed up the COVID response), there is even talk of leaving the EU.
In response, the EU is trying to get some control over the vaccines that leave the EU after being manufactured there. (Welcome to our world, guys!!) They are particularly annoyed at the number of AstraZeneca vaccines going to the UK, blaming the company for giving the UK (which has been in total lockdown since December) preferential treatment.
However, according to reports, the EU still hasn’t fully paid up and they signed their procurement contracts only in December - 3 months after the British. (Sounds familiar, right?)
So mense, it turns out, that we are not doing so badly nor are our problems unique. In fact, we are much better off in terms of lockdown regulations and our infection rate than most countries in Europe, and not much worse off when it comes to vaccination roll-out.