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Level 3 lockdown: roll out the mortuary vans

Last night President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the lockdown would be reduced to level 3, including the Western Cape which has highest infections, in a bid to get the economy moving again.

Reducing restrictions to level 3 may be pragmatic, as it's being called, but see the infection numbers rise again. Government gave in - the rational among us are glad the decision is not ours - to the end lockdown movement. The awful decision of staying alive and keeping one's job, and for companies profitability, has been made. A bad decision, but not an easy one.

But one can be certain when infections and deaths rise - "bring out the mortuary vans" as the director-general of health Dr Anban Pillay said in yesterday's Sunday Times to a question about the economy - and overwhelm the health system and society and economy tries to cope, the end lockdown cabal - the elite, privileged and executives - shall be silent, hiding as always in their bunkers. 

Government will be blamed, as they are now for imposing the lockdown which has saved lives. No sympathy shall be extended to the sick and for dead - the brown and black workers on the factory and shop floors and in supermarkets which are the vectors for the disease.

We shall not wait long to find out. I wonder what the end lockdown advocates including media (News24, Tiso, Biznews, Politicsweb), DA, IRR, FMF, Allan Gray and overnight expert commentators shall say then. In their complicity, nothing.

Having got what they wanted, employers are obligated to issue workers with full PPE, not only masks and sanitisers as they've been doing, and ensure proper distancing which many are not at present, or face criminal prosecution. The virus is not going to go away soon.

No country except the US (of course) has done what SA is doing: ending lockdown while the infections curve, especially WC, has not flattened. It may be a calamity. I hope, but fear not, the country is prepared.

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