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People like to regale me with stories about how they now know actual people who have COVID-19. As if the virus wasn’t serious until one of the 28,000 victims was someone they know.
Today I have been overwhelmed (emotionally) by actual people I know who are not coping. If the idea that people are losing their jobs and dying wasn’t real for you before, talk to your friends. Some of mine are suicidal, have run out of cash and can’t survive this lockdown.
I heard a radio presenter today complaining that he’s sick of hearing about failing businesses and lost jobs. If we have to lose those jobs to save lives, so be it, he said.
JOBS ARE LIVES! If you don’t have an income, you can’t eat, you can’t pay for a roof over your head or health insurance or transport to get to a clinic. You pick up other diseases because you’re weak and you die. Ask any insurance actuary how this works. Poverty leads to death.
This has never been a lives vs money scenario. It is a LIVES vs LIVES scenario. The only science we have in South Africa on the topic proves that more people will die as a result of lockdown than even the worst case scenario modelled by government for COVID lives lost.
I am also tired of pseudo-lefties (who sit in their houses getting their food delivered by those who cannot afford to isolate, whose kids are being educated via Zoom and who are earning pretty much what they were before) telling me I’m in this to protect my “business interests”.
Let me tell you, it’s nice being locked up in a beautiful home overlooking the ocean with more work than I can get through and a safety net of savings, healthcare and a passport. Every new lockdown boosts my “business”. I am not suffering.
If you can’t understand that the regulations that are an inconvenience for you are a matter of life and death for thousands of others, you need to check your privilege.
I fight lockdown because it is killing people less fortunate than me who don’t have a voice. I fight lockdown because it widens the gap between rich and poor. I fight lockdown because I came back to this country to uphold democracy and the rights enshrined in our Constitution.
We can fight COVID effectively by protecting the vulnerable and allowing the healthy to safely carry on their lives. We cannot afford this lockdown - and I mean this not in terms of the price in Rands but in lives.
