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Is government manipulating Covid-19 data to justify reopening?

Is the South African government manipulating Covid-19 data to justify fully reopening the economy? Cases are apparently slowing. But since the start of the pandemic government and experts have been predicting the peak anytime from July to September. 

The alleged slowing of infections comes at the time government is about to relax* the lockdown to level 2. At the same time there are reports of more focused testing, i.e. reduced community-wide testing. If that's the case, of course reported infections - not real infections in the community which could be 10 times the official number - will appear to have slowed. 

When government moved to level 3 they also announced the peak had been reached. It hadn't. There's nothing about the country's precarious and collapsing health system and socio-economic position - hell, it can't even keep the lights on, struggling with 150 year-old techonology, coal-powered energy - that indicates the pandemic will just go away by itself. 

The narrative is being laid to justify moving to level 2.

There are probably ten times the number of cases than officially recorded, and government is reducing testing. Convenient: like Trump said, if we don't test, there are no cases. So SA can merrily open.

SA's coronavirus testing has serious problems, that it's "broken" and needs "fixing" so it's suspect that overnight it's been remedied to provide an indication of declining cases. Government failed to use the lockdown between March 27 and May 31, and in the run up, to prepare for the pandemic. They first said the lockdown was to slow the spread and flatten the curve, but when that didn't happen, to prepare.

So with the testing plan broken, how did it go from alarm at high case numbers one week to optimism the next? 

A week ago daily cases was 7 712. Yesterday it was 3 946. As at August 13 total cases was 572 865 (Worldometer).



Ourworldindata.org: "To be able to properly monitor the spread of the virus, countries with more widespread outbreaks need to do more testing." But SA's tests have been declining from mid-July which correlates with declining reported daily cases.



The conclusion is simple: government gave up fighting the pandemic and left it up to citizens. Ramaphosa said as much, gaslighting the public and making it our responsibility. 

From the time the lockdown effectively ended on May 31, government and various groups have presented the Panglosian narrative infections have "flattened", "stabilised" and "slowing down". From then government abandoned the science, which until then they had listened to, and sacrificed it to expediency and right-wing pressure groups and business.

Today on e-TV's 1pm news the head of government's pandemic task team Prof. Salim Karim said it's encouraging infections are declining and the economy can be opened. But noting other countries' experience, said it must be done carefully. Now even this respected scientist, who until now had been the voice of reason and moderation, has bought into the narrative and speaking beyond his brief and expertise on economics and trade like his colleague Prof. Glenda Gray, a now notorious spreader of gossip and hearsay.

SA's excess deaths from May to August are 33 000. Owen Dyer writes in the British Medical Journal in the article Excess deaths point to hidden toll in South Africa as cases surge: "If covid-19 is largely responsible for South Africa’s unexplained excess deaths, the country’s real toll from the pandemic so far would be approaching levels seen in western Europe." 

Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, writes in the New York Times that Europe, eager to reopen and get back to normality, is seeing increased cases, Spain 3,500 new coronavirus cases per day, and Germany saw 1,445, "cause for serious concern". He says as  "the recent experiences of Israel and the state of Victoria in Australia show that even a handful of daily new cases can easily become hundreds and thousands".

Although he's writing about Europe, his advice applies to other countries too. 

"Lockdown measures can bring case numbers low enough that testing and tracing can break chains of transmission. European countries have already taken a severe economic and social hit to contain Covid-19, but to finish the job and truly crunch the curve they need to build up massive diagnostic capacity, to be able to run large, fast and accurate testing services. This is a difficult project but not impossible: Germany has done it fairly successfully. Countries need to introduce serious limitations on nonessential travel until safe travel bubbles can be built among countries where the virus is low. The virus moves when people move."

While SA's cases are appearing to slow, this is no time for complacency. But the ANC government is negligent, incompetent and craven, always disappointing and unable to make the correct and difficult decisions. And South African exceptionalism is such that it believes it can do what rich countries and those that did every thing right, like New Zealand and South Korea, and still escape the worst consequences of the pandemic.

* Update 17/08/2020: on Saturday Ramaphosa announced the lockdown will move to level 2 at midnight 18/08/2020.

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