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The right's deadly coronavirus model

In SA, like US, the right are once again exploiting blacks - with the pandemic, black sickness and death. They pretend they're concerned about poor and unemployed blacks who, they say, shall (note not might; they're adamant, no room for speculation) die in far greater numbers - PANDenialist: 29 times - than Covid-19.

This group includes PANdenialist (and here), DA's John Steenhuisen and Helen Zille, Allan Gray's CEO Andrew Lapping, right-wing media (BizNews and Politicsweb their editors and contributors; News24's Adriaan Basson has, as usual, flip-flopped to the end lockdown camp), IRR, FMF and the usual big business cabal.

They want the lockdown to end, not for themselves, you know, but the country's poor and unemployed (non-whites), people they've never thought about until now. Suddenly they're all humanitarians.

They forget, though, poverty is entrenched in SA, before and after apartheid, and millions of people didn't die because of it. Where was their advocacy for the poor the day before coronavirus hit SA?

Of course, now as then their concern is false, as fake as their hero Trump's tan.

As at May 23 the Western Cape had 61% of the SA Covid-19 infections, 12 947 out of total 21 343. Look at infections by area and Cape Town's black and brown suburbs, especially eastern part of the city, have the highest infections. This shows, as in US, poor and working class populations are disproportionately affected by the coronavirus (and similar communicable diseases).

The reasons for this are not clear but likely the high densities of these areas and people crammed into small dwellings with no privacy - no single-person rooms of the middle class. Then there's the nature of their work - cheek by jowl on factory and shop floors where they face hundreds of customers a day who may have the virus. No single-person offices and cars for them.

Even with lockdown infections rose exponentially. The WC dashboard shows on April 15 there were 49 cases/day to peaking at 815 on May 5. This was during lockdown. Ending it would mean the curve would rise again from the plateau on May 21.

The WC's primary tertiary hospitals, Groote Schuur and Tygerberg, are already close to capacity, and there's pressure on WC's public health system. Reports say private hospitals must develop a plan to help public hospitals.

Mediclinic predicts 200 000 cases for people with insurance in the WC by early July.

There is no scientific or common sense rationale to prematurely end lockdown - call it "smart lockdown" or stringent physical distancing if you want - without measures in place.

PANDenialist's and the right's model is one the right around the world has been pushing from the start with tragic results. Until then, there was silence from them as the pandemic spread around the world; it was a "Chinese virus". SA - its entire society, government and media too - was no different.

But once the virus hit SA and unanimity of purpose was needed, the right - overnight experts in epidemiology, virology and public health - as a man and woman noisily objected, suggestion dark conspiracies about coups. They say their constitutional rights are under threat, rights that before coronavirus they deemed their sole preserve and to which society including the poor were geared.

But the poor, and poor non-whites, never mattered, until now that is, when it's fashionable to adopt their cause, like it's fashionable and politically correct among some whites to adopt black babies while privately remaining what they always were, not giving a toss.

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