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South Africa is failing on #Covid19 because it's leaders want to operate like a first world country. Interesting takes by Prof Friedman. https://theconversation.com/south-africa-is-failing-on-covid-19-because-its-leaders-want-to-emulate-the-first-world-142732
The first reason South Africa has been unable to stem infections is that its strategy always assumed a severe epidemic was inevitable. It's hard to fight anything if you assume you are bound to lose.
This followed advice from South Africaâs medical scientists, almost all of whom embrace the view of an inevitable severe epidemic despite the fact that scientists in other parts of the world have helped to prevent great damage.
SA's points of comparison on the pandemic were not Asia and parts of Africa WHERE INFECTIONS WERE CURBED, but rich countries of the global North, many of which were overwhelmed. They also assumed that while some countries might be able to prevent a severe outbreak, SA could not.
South Africa could have contained COVID-19 had it done what its government said it would do: create an effective testing and tracing programme which would identify people with the virus, trace their contacts and isolate them if they were infected...
The government likes to boast about the large number of tests its many community health workers have conducted. It talks much less about why testing has not stemmed the virus: a bottleneck at the National Health Laboratory Service.
Testing can only contain COVID-19 if results are received speedily so that the contacts of infected people can be traced. The laboratory backlog meant that testing and tracing could not work no matter how many tests were conducted and how many health workers were hired.
By contrast, Senegal, a far poorer country, knowing that it had no laboratory service that could have coped, developed a test which cost only $1 and produced results very quickly.
So, South Africa believed it had capacity which it lacked. It also assumed that a laboratory which operated like those in rich countries was the most effective way to test for COVID-19. And so, unlike Senegal, it failed to come up with a solution fitted to its needs.
Behaviours needed to stem COVID-19 are very difficult for most South Africans- those who live in urban townships and in shacks. Overcrowding makes physical distancing very hard, clean water may not be available for hand washing, people are forced to travel in full minibus taxis.
"The government could have chosen to work with people in these areas to find ways to protect themselves. But it did not try, it relied on instructing people to do things they clearly could not do." Think Mbalula and his, "When you get in the taxi... " utterances.
Instead government adopted an elitist approach: "To South Africaâs elite, of which the government is now a part, people in low-income townships lack sophistication and maturity: poverty is confused with inability. And so there is no point in working with them."
This conclusion 
: "Many South Africans like to think the country is unique in sub-Saharan Africa. Its contrasts of wealth and poverty certainly are one of a kind. Its response to COVID-19 shows how much this prevents the government from doing what it needs to do."
: "Many South Africans like to think the country is unique in sub-Saharan Africa. Its contrasts of wealth and poverty certainly are one of a kind. Its response to COVID-19 shows how much this prevents the government from doing what it needs to do."
