So what's brought me to post now? COVID-19 ... aka Coronavirus. In South Africa we're sitting on Day 4 after the President declared a National Disaster following the global spread of COVID-19, and its growing impact in South Africa. That was Sunday evening, with around 48 "infected" in South Africa. Now it's Thursday evening, and we're sitting at 150, but the true number is most likely way higher (we just don't have enough test kits - and the government is most likely trying to avoid mass panic anyway).
Everybody calls this an unprecedented time, and it certainly feels that way for me. I heard the phrase "worst plague in 100 years", but don't quote me on that. I think that's really the thing about COVID-19 that is so difficult to navigate: telling the genuine facts apart from the outdated data and outright "fake news" (another recent phenomenon).
I felt this special time warranted a snapshot in time of what it's like living now. Of where I'm at.
Things are moving quickly. Yesterday my company had already released a Coronavirus Business Plan detailing its new corporate policies surrounding everything from travel restrictions to how to apply to work remotely. I did the latter immediately and got my approval today. Tomorrow when I wake up, I start work from my PC at home: armed with Google Hangouts for videoconferencing and a VPN to get onto my server, I'll need to make it work.
This week has been a flurry of trying to do "normal" work, alongside COVID-19 related tasks. I'm a project manager in an advertising agency in Pretoria, so that's entailed liaising with suppliers of sponsored events to enquire what their event plans are (most events are cancelling after the president declared a ban on gatherings of more than 100 people), briefing in urgent social media and other communications, helping forge electronic communication channels between myself and my client (in-person meetings are a luxury nobody is indulging in anymore), and generally just hoping that nobody I'm meeting has been to Italy (Gauteng DOES have the highest infection rate in South Africa - so I'm at ground-zero).
Let me not forget the panic buying. Stories about people stocking up. Then evidence in the local stores of long queues and people loading shopping trolleys to breaking point. Me joining in one lunchtime on a limited budget and walking away with this (not the biggest haul in the world - but hopefully enough to buy time in a true crisis). All the basics: tinned tuna and pilchards, instant noodles, my favourite cereal, long-life milk, bottled water, and some other odds and ends:
I feel obliged to mention for the sake of history that people are so afraid of running out of toilet paper that everybody is over-stocking on it and the stores are reportedly all out. I haven't checked on this yet ... I need to check that out this week and see if I can get some more. In case. Apparently it's all New Zealand's fault because they import toilet paper from China, so when COVID-19 locked down Chinese imports then they found themselves in a ... err ... sticky situation. South Africa manufactures bog roll so we should be fine. Should be. But apparently shelves are running empty there too, of that most priceless commodity.
It's just another painful reminder that we're all human. People are afraid. They're angry. They're tired. They didn't ask for this, but now it's here, just as we start to tip over into the winter chill and were emerging from the darkness of Eskom's national loadshedding problem (I can only hope that the me in the future reading this doesn't still have electricity shortages).
Where to from here? In South Africa, we're most likely going to see COVID-19 cases spiking. I fear for our industries which are most affected: hospitality and entertainment are being wiped out overnight or forced to retrench most of their staff. You can't move a bar experience online (maybe the new business model is to ship alcohol to clients and they can get drunk together over a video-call ... but getting drunk alone and vomiting over your keyboard most likely won't have the same appeal).
There are rumours of province-wide shut-downs, if not country-wide shut-downs. Families will be broken apart. People are being retrenched. We're still trying to find the humour in it, and there are COVID-19 memes everywhere ... but they're just not funny anymore.
The ONE upside, if any, is that COVID-19's worst symptoms for most people are a fever and dry cough, and you get better in two weeks with no medical intervention. For 2% of people (mostly the old and infirm) there is a harsher downside: death. Nobody has died yet in South Africa, as far as the media knows. Yet.
I like to think that this is better than an Ebola-type virus, which would strike people down with blood running out of their ears and noses, with guaranteed fatality in most cases. At least that, right? Maybe this is just a trial run. Maybe it's an opportunity for a bit of that "Blitz spirit" (World War 2) in a country as divided as ours. Maybe it's going to drive a deeper political wedge between people, when COVID-19 enters the townships and the poor cannot afford to stockpile or access private medical healthcare. Most likely that, in fact.
So if the above demonstrates nothing else, it's just how all over the place this is, and this is just for me. Stories are swirling around out there, with every more bizarre headlines. And maybe we're all going to get Coronavirus. Maybe we have to. Maybe it's better that way. Maybe we should be deliberately infecting ourselves rather than trying to distance ourselves and just prolong the agony. Two weeks and you're either dead or alive and able to continue life (although some people CAN apparently get reinfected).
Hope. We have hope. I have hope. We will survive. Some of us will survive. Most of us. I think. I hope. I plan. I work. I try.
“Hope” is the thing with feathers - (314)
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -
I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.
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