The death toll on the roads have plummeted to 28 over Easter Weekend 2020....add that to the 52 that succumbed to the Corona Virus to date and we still have more than 400 lives in the bank on last year's death toll over Easter.....stupid comparison, I know, but the deliberate lack of context in the media for Corona deaths is frustrating to say the least.
ATM, my company are still paying our permanent work force, but the temporary labour has been registered for the special UIF advertised by the government. To date, these people haven't received a cent from the funds supposedly allocatedby the state, so the boss have decided to pay the government's promised amount from our company's funds...small gesture, but absolutely vital for the workers...unfortunately, this is not sustainable. If we don't go back to work soon, companies are going to fold and longer term employment opportunities will be permanently lost. People will start dying of hunger. I've seen first hand what the loss of employment can do to a person...escalating that to thousands will be a horrible desaster for this country.
South Africa is living on the edge of extreme poverty...as is, without the complications the virus brings. Ee cannot afford this lockdown for much longer...this whole thing doesn't make sense...this is gonna sound harsh, but we as a country can probably afford a death toll off a couple of million more than we can afford shutting down the economy for a couple of months more...in fact, it will probably be better off in the overall picture. Terrible for those dying and for those losing loved ones, but much better than losing millions more to starvation in the months to come...
The virus mostly kill the elderly...famine will thake a whole generation of the young...babies and toddlers...too horrible to mention.
Sometimes decisions should be made on cold hard facts, without the emotion.
I can probably survive staying at home for another few months, without losing my home and stillb able to put decent food on the table for my family...the 40 odd people directly dependent on the work I manage won't...and the more than double that amount dependent on them will definitely not survive even a month more. Many of them will suffer greatly.
We need to put a strategy in place to go back to work while managing the risks. We have enough labour in the "low risk bracket", to replace those getting sick and continue working. Let those who are at low risk of getting seriously ill return to work. Isolate them from higher risk individuals. Test those working regularly and manage this thing on the run.
We are sitting on an unemployment rate of 30% (of people still actively looking for employment...that means the actual unemployment rate is actually up to 40%. That means we have a reserve employment force of 40% of the employable population. We can afford people risking to get sick. We can replace them if they do.
Almost a third of the known cases has already recoverd. We need to identify the low risk and recovered portion of the work force and get them back to work.