Skip to main content

Futile Alan Winde trying to push back the Covid tide

Last month I wrote Western Cape Premier Alan Winde and the DA (leader John Steenhhuisen et al) continue to push back against the even benign level 1 lockdown. This was as Europe, UK and Australia experienced a resurgence of Covid-19 and US numbers continued worsening. But Winde and DA wanted travel restrictions between South African and countries lifted.

Winde and the DA oppose lockdowns, even when Covid infections were at their worst mid-year and despite lockdowns being the only way community infections can be slowed. Now Covid is increasing again, as one expected.

This week Winde is warning WC residents of a 50% increase in cases, particularly along the Garden Route. This is not surprising as the Eastern Cape is a hotzone. Covid appears to be making its way from the EC to Cape Town. Infection numbers, Winde says, are like May's. 

He says another lockdown will "kill all jobs" (sic), but like his DA colleagues doesn't suggest ways to slow it. With inter-provincial movement allowed and to all intents there are non-existent restrictions, what does one expect.

Sweden didn't impose a lockdown (their constitution doesn't permit it except wartime) but asked people to adhere to measures. But in a country where citizens are generally law abiding and and have faith in government, it had higher infections than its neighbours and recently experienced a surge.

It's impossible to be completely isolated in the modern, especially urban world. So asking people to take responsibility for measures to protect themselves can only go so far. And gas-lighting them when self-measures predictably fail - excluding idiots who have Covid parties and breathe on others - as government has done is really pointless.

In national emergencies government must take the lead. In wartime one doesn't ask citizens to individually take measures as they like when they like without a national plan which is very similar to a lockdown but called curfew, restrictions, etc.

Now futile Winde, who personally and his party has been against lockdowns from the start, is in effect appealing for us citizens to fight Covid by ourselves, as the government did during the worst this year.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Health Professions Council protects 'euthanasia' doctors

The Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) has doubled down to protect Groote Schuur Hospital doctors accused of the unauthorised removal of a patient's life support that resulted in death (euthanasia) and hospital and Western Cape Health Department administrators who covered it up.  As I related in a previous  post , on 31 May 2019 the HPCSA's Third Medical Committee of Preliminary Inquiry (committee) exonerated doctors Ahmed Al Sayari, Marcelle Crowther and Mikhail Botha and Trauma Centre head Prof. Andrew Nicol, CEO Bhavna Patel and WCHD head Dr Beth Engelbrecht.  I requested the committee's rationale and doctors' responses but despite promising to do so, they only sent the responses excluding Nicol's second statement (2019) which they refuse to.   The committee and CEO/registrar Dr Raymond Billa, who nominally investigates the public's complaints and assured me they're an "advocate for the public", cleared the doctors based ...

Western Cape Health has no jurisdiction over its doctors, senior official claims

On Wednesday June 1, Western Cape Health Department's (WCHD) officer Dr Saadiq Kariem was interviewed on CapeTalk about access to chronic medications for WCHD patients. He spoke of two options: collection at a department facility or delivery to their homes. He made it sound so easy. He didn't mention, though, that at many community health clinics aka day hospitals there's a wait, often hours, to simply collect medicines even when clinics already have patients' current scripts on file. I myself tried that - the first time and last time I'd been to a clinic for collection - but left after two hours without even being attended to. I buy my meds which fortunately are not the expensive kind. People cannot take off hours every month merely to collect meds but the poor have no alternative. I gather problems may be clinic specific. On a related matter, during an after hours phone call that weekend, Groote Schuur Hospital's chief operating officer Dr Belinda Jacobs told ...

The racial composition of Groote Schuur Hospital's patients and staffs

 This piece is about the racial composition of Groote Schuur Hospital’s patients and staffs. It was determined over numerous visits to its outpatients departments (OPD) and an in-patient ward. Direct observation is the primary method of research data gathering. Groote Schuur is one of Cape Town's two major teaching hospitals, the other is Tygerberg in Bellville. There are secondary facilities in the metro too. Patients are referred to Groote Schuur from all over the city and Western Cape. It is attached to the University of Cape Town's Medical School. It has the full range of specialist departments and facilities. It is the only public hospital in South Africa to have the Da Vinci Robotic Machine, one of a few in the country.  The hospital falls under the Western Cape Health Department (WCHD) whose head is Dr Keith Cloete (2020 to present). Dr Bhavna Patel is CEO and Dr Belinda Jacobs is manager: medical services (COO). The Western Cape has 5.5 million people and Cape Town met...