Government concedes defeat as South Africa's coronavirus cases surge

Last week it was clear South Africa's coronavirus cases would breach 200 000 this week. From 50 000, it has been doubling every 14 days. It will reach 500 000 in a month. There are now over new 10 000 cases a day.

SA has 40% of African cases and 14th highest in the world. It has among the highest increases over a 14 day period per million people - 1 000 - 2 000 - in the same group as six other countries, US and Sweden included. These are only the tested cases, not total cases.

Charts show a surge a month ago after the lockdown was eased. After initially listening to the science, Ramaphosa's government gave in to self-doubt and right-wing denialist fear-mongering and eased restrictions far too soon. They threw the baby out with the bath water and undid the the lockdown's benefits. 

Now, after the fact to justify themselves, they say it was to give time to prepare rather than flatten the curve. That's believable if the country is really prepared but it's not - they wasted time as evidenced first by WC's now Gauteng's and EC's health unpreparedness and health collapse.

Government conceded defeat and has abandoned trying to control the epidemic, in effect, by default implementing discredited herd immunity. Under pressure to ease restrictions and save the economy, they're leaving citizens to their fate and imposed responsibility on them and businesses to prevent the spread of the virus.

From July 1 restrictions were further eased and schools are gradually reopening despite infections on a steep exponential curve and Health Minister Zweli Mkhize telling parliamentarians the "storm" has arrived.
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However, most of the public and businesses are going with flow and are not taking the epidemic seriously enough, under the deluded, complacent belief if restrictions have been eased, the risks are lowered. 

At this same time pandemic denialists continue to spread conspiracies, misinformation and confusion. Their key agitation and lie is the lockdown is damaging the economy and would cause more deaths more than the virus itself. This was largely speculation. As the New York Times writes today:

“Sweden* has become the world's cautionary tale. Its decision to carry on in the face of the pandemic has yielded a surge of deaths without sparing its economy from damage. Not only have thousands more people died than in neighbouring countries that imposed lockdowns, but Sweden’s economy has fared little better.” 

Quoting Jacob Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, “It’s a self-inflicted wound, and they have no economic gains.”

Sweden has has more cases and deaths than its neighbours - it's 14 day cases is among the seven highest in the world, and that includes SA. Their and other countries like US, Britain and SA assumption is avoiding lockdowns or opening too soon would enable economic recovery. The approach is governments must balance saving lives with jobs. 

But as the NYT shows, the economy before lives choice is a false one: the failure to impose and adhere to restrictions in whatever form has cost lives and damages the economy. And Sweden, US and UK - not SA yet but it's still early - have higher death rates without showing economic benefits for not imposing lockdowns. Like SA, they only suffered twice.

Former US treasury secretary and economic policy professor at Berkeley Robert Reich writes in his blog post Brace Yourself for Trump’s Great Recession:

“Trump and businesses demanded America reopen to revive the economy. But we’ve reopened too soon, before Covid-19 is under control. So we’re needing to close or partly close again, which will prolong the economic downturn and wreak even more havoc on millions of Americans’ livelihoods.

It never should have been a contest between public health and the economy, anyway. The economy has always depended on getting public health right. And we still haven’t (emphasis added).”

Opening too early and then been forced to close or partly close again, as Gauteng suggested, means suffering economically twice and having increased infections and deaths with the economic and human cost that brings.

NYT (ibid): “It is simplistic to portray government actions such as quarantines as the cause of economic damage. The real culprit is the virus itself. From Asia to Europe to the Americas, the risks of the pandemic have disrupted businesses while prompting people to avoid shopping malls and restaurants, regardless of official policy.”

And in a globalised economy and intertwined supply chains, what affects one country, affects others. When China experienced its outbreak while the world was largely unaffected, supply from cars to computers was impacted. Eventually the global economy was impacted as the pandemic swept around the world.

Another factor the anti-lockdown or open chort forget is the social, health and economic costs to allow the virus to spread uncontrollably particularly when health systems in SA, US and other badly affected countries are near and at collapse. And as Reich, Paul Krugman, I and others have said, what good is the economy is a large proportion of the population are ill or dead. Who will service and sustain it then. 

This is predictable and known so to claim a lockdown harmed the economy more than the pandemic itself is false and malicious. And it's reckless when government adopts the approach of opening prematurely. 

What little confidence I had in the ANC government for its early management of the pandemic - and it wasn't much since they acted too little, too late - has dissipated. They always revert true to form. And always they and the backward, divisive right-wing wrestle defeat from victory, taking the country with it.

Update: See here for breakdown of national figures. For a local opinion on the Swedish experiment see here.