Tired.

I really have not been blogging/writing enough. In all honesty I am tired. Tired of the last 18 months and all the nonsense. Tired of the incessant bickering between the “unvaxxedd” and the “vaxxed”. A friend of my husband’s who will not get the vaccine has been trying to “egg” him on. Saying things like “let’s see how well you are in two years time”. You’ve take the vaccine? Your choice. You haven’t? Your choice as well. I have had the vaccine, it was my decision and, not because anyone forced me to, because I was scared I wouldn’t be able to travel or because I wouldn’t be able to do business or shop etc. If I didn’t want the vaccine, I would not have gotten it, but I did for the reasons I decided on and it was my choice. If you feel your freedoms are being taken away by having to wear a mask while shopping, or if you are forced to get the vaccine by your employers, go and protest, as we have seen many protests around the world lately. Just try not to go on a frenzied looting and arson rampage of a week similar to what happened in South Africa in July and destroy thousands of businesses, shops and livelihoods in the progress. If that was the straw that broke the camel’s back, it was the looting and destruction for me. My home city was thrust into a week of turmoil and destruction. Sure, it could have been worse, but it should have not happened in the first place. Yes, there are some serious problems in South Africa, but thinking that looting and destroying businesses and shops are going to solve any of the those problems simply makes no sense, well to me anyway. I am also frustrated with the Covid situation. I am also frustrated with poor and corrupt politics, but destruction does not work. Businesses and shops that actually employed people were targeted, just because the owners may have had the wrong skin colour or did not share certain political views. Or they were targeted “just because”.

I have not had a good relaxing break in eighteen months and I am tired. Each time we have gone into a surge, in the hospital I work in, we have had our leave cancelled and have had to be on call. That’s three surges, and contrary to the belief some people have, who believe that Covid is a scam, the numbers of patients who were ill enough to be admitted to the hospital during those surges with Covid, increased to the point of elective surgeries being cancelled. If people want to believe it is “just a bad flu”, that is their choice, but from our perspective, working in hospitals where the numbers of ill Covid patients has increased during three surges, make no mistake, it really is bad. How can it be something we are imagining? Or that we are fear mongering because we are sheeple? It’s the reality we are seeing in our hospital and hospitals around us. For now, as we have gone into spring in South Africa, the Covid numbers are down, and we can breathe a little easier for a while.

I have a three week break next month, a little over three weeks and I am truly looking forward to some time to hopefully recharge my batteries. It’s over our 25th wedding anniversary and my birthday, so it will be great to have that time off as well.

Today it really is a lovely spring day. Sunny and warm, but not hot. I am tired but I am still hopeful and that’s what counts.

Groundhog Day.

I have been struggling with writing lately. Same with running. I haven’t run for months. At least I’ve written more than I’ve run. I am simply tired. Tired of Covid. Tired of this Government that runs South Africa. Tired of the daily news reports about corruption and inept politicians. Tired of this run down and littered city that I live in.

South Africa is now it’s third Covid surge and once again we are faced with restrictions. A 9pm to 4am curfew. (Not that it makes much difference to me – I am never out after even six anyway, at this point in my life.) Political or social gatherings are not allowed. Except for Jacob Zuma supporters in the last week or so, who gathered in their hundreds and opposed to the fact that their beloved hero was found to be in contempt of court and sentenced to fifteen months in jail. The sale of alcohol is banned. Casinos and cinemas are closed. Sit down dining is not allowed in restaurants, if they want to operate, they are allowed to do so as takeaways. These restrictions are for two weeks, but I am sure they will be longer. As a nurse, the surge means that I am on call when I am off, not every single night I am off, but with my colleagues who work me on the same shift, we take it turns to be on call. It is tiring, not being able to totally unwind on your time off and we will be doing calls until the surge ends and Covid admissions into the hospital have decreased again, which will probably only be in a couple of months or so. 85% of the adult population of England have had their first vaccination and if the football and tennis match crowds are anything to go by, they are almost back to normal. In comparison, South Africa has some time to go before we get to 85%. Barely 6% of our population has been vaccinated. Need I say much else on the state of affairs in South Africa.

I had to go and renew my driver’s license card. Once you fill in your forms, you get your eyes tested and your thumbprints captured – that didn’t take too long, about half an hour, so I thought great, all I’ve got to do is pay. Well, the que for the payments was what took the longest, about an hour and a half. Living in South Africa teaches you the art of patience with queues! No point in getting fed up. Just grin and bear it.

So, here we are in South Africa and muddling through it all. A little like Groundhog Day.

One year ago.

Almost a year ago South Africa 🇿🇦 went into lockdown – a strict lockdown, classified as Level 5, only allowing essential businesses to operate, as well as essential services. Of course this was easier said than done in South Africa with a high unemployment rate, and millions of people living in poverty and informal settlements, making sure a strict lockdown was adhered to throughout the country was almost impossible. Unlike wealthier countries who remained in lockdown during their surges and peaks, 🇿🇦 began easing lockdown before the first surge hit in July and we simply cannot afford another strict lockdown. By September things had eased, but because lockdown had been eased and so many more people had become complacent, or simply disagreed Covid was a serious problem, another surge hit going into Christmas, which has only eased over the last month or so. I work in a city hospital and we struggled through both surges, with the hospital being strained by patients needing oxygen and treatment – it’s not “just the flu”. Both surges saw the hospital being filled up with mostly patients needing treatment for Covid and we are anticipating a third surge after Easter. So it will go, surge after surge, until we have “herd immunity”, either through vaccinations or natural immunity to Covid. Of course, being for or against vaccinations is a sensitive matter for many people and it’s a personal choice. Most hospitals in hotspots have had health care workers become ill from it and sadly some were not able to fight it. We have lost colleagues, and it’s been a hard and at times heartbreaking year. Personally I am relieved to have had the vaccine, and glad that the rollout has begun in 🇿🇦, although it needs to speed up.

I remember going to work for the first time when lockdown began at 6.30 pm for my night shift and the roads were almost deserted. I was expecting some sort of police presence, but it was eerily quiet. I guess those of us living in the middle to upper class suburbs weren’t considered among those likely to break the lockdown laws and never once after that did I encounter the police on my way to work. If there was one thing that I didn’t mind and even enjoyed about lockdown, it was the lack of traffic. South Africa is known for having a high traffic crash and death rate, so the quieter roads were a relief for me. It is beyond me why so many people feel the need to be impatient and reckless drivers, having little consideration for other road users. I put it down to plain impatience and also a culture of South African drivers wanting to get ahead of everyone else in the traffic. Far too many big egos and “show offs” on the road. Heaven forbid if you can’t get first place at that red traffic light, or a lesser vehicle slows you down, even just a little. I wondered if being in the grip of a Pandemic, or at the very least going through hard times, would get people to calm down and become more considerate and cautious? Now that we are pretty much back to normal, nothing has changed and all those big egos who used to drive recklessly and lawlessly, still do so. The only thing that will change our entrenched culture of lawless driving is very strict policing, but this is South Africa 🇿🇦, the land if the lawless, so I’m not holding my breath change will happen anytime soon. 🇿🇦 is not for sissies, that’s for sure.

A Year Ago.

A year ago, in South Africa we were four days away from receiving news that the first case of Covid had been reported in Hilton, Kwa – Zulu Natal. I remember going to the shops later in the afternoon, to buy some groceries, and noticed that the hand sanitizers, disinfectant hand wipes etc. had all been taken, nothing remained of those products on the shelves. By then, we all knew the virus was rapidly spreading in Italy, and it was a group of South Africans tourists to Italy, on a skiing holiday, that brought the virus back home to South Africa. Of course, social media in South Africa lit up in an angered frenzy about these “selfish and rich” tourists, who had brought the virus back home. When I tried to defend the tourists, saying it could have been anyone that might have brought it into South Africa, not necessarily “rich tourists”, I was slammed by quite a few people. Seriously though, it could have been anyone. Many South Africans have family abroad, and could have visited family in an emergency, and on their way back to South Africa, picked up the virus. Many South Africans also work and do business abroad and likewise they could have gotten the virus first. Unfortunately because it was “rich” tourists that brought the virus back to South Africa, it was their fault that South Africa was now at the mercy of Covid19. How petty by the finger pointing, blaming social media brigade. Did any of them stop to think that we were living in such an interconnected world, and air travel so prevalent with thousands of flights in progress worldwide, on a daily basis, that it was simply a matter of time before the virus hit South Africa? Once the virus spread out of China, there really was no stopping it. A few weeks later South Africa entered it’s initial Level 5 lockdown, and on paper it was certainly a very hard lockdown. Only essential workers country wide, were allowed to carry on working, otherwise we were only allowed to leave home for essential purposes, eg to buy food or to seek medical assistance. We were not allowed to even exercise outside our homes. Alcohol and cigarette sales were banned. Our initial lockdown has been described as one of the hardest in the world.

This last year seems to have flown by and it really feels just like yesterday to me, when it all began. At the end of 2019, when we started hearing of this virus in China, we really had no clue just how quickly the virus would snowball around the world. We had our first surge in South Africa around June/July and our second surge around December/January. At the moment in South Africa, our numbers are decreasing, and we are back to Level One Lockdown in the country – for the most part the country is open, besides a curfew from midnight to four or five am and there are some restrictions on large gatherings of people. Mask wearing is mandatory when you leave your home. Schools are open. Needless to say, our third surge is being forecast for around May or so. I won’t be surprised. South Africans love their public holidays and long weekends – Easter will be no different, people will gather in large groups, families, party goers etc. It will spread again. Yes, we all know about Covid. Some claim that it’s a “‘plandemic”, others claim it’s no worse than the flu. Well, as far as I’m concerned, being a nurse who worked in a city hospital that was greatly strained by the first two surges, it was one hell of a bad flu, the likes of which I’ve never experienced in my 30 years of nursing. Nursing colleagues have died, because they made the ultimate sacrifice, nursing Covid patients. I am very fortunate to work in a small Neo Natal ICU, on night duty, where our exposure to Covid is much lower compared to the ICU and general wards. So far, so good and I have not picked up Covid.

I am hoping to get the vaccine soon – as a healthcare worker, I have been registered to get it. Over 67000 health care workers have now received it in South Africa. It will be interesting to see how much of an impact the vaccine will have with a third surge looming, and if a third surge is to happen, will it be as bad as the first two surges? Time will tell.

That all said, I am now on a two week break from work. I last had two weeks off last year in February, a week off in July and a week off October over my birthday. I worked over Christmas and New Year. I have never been more exhausted to be quite honest and these two weeks off are much needed. These last six months especially, each morning that I have returned home from work after a 12 hour night shift, I have felt utterly exhausted physically and it’s been because of a combination of things – I haven’t run for months and have lost the fitness levels I had at the beginning of last year and I’m not getting any younger, next year I’ll be fifty. Night duty, is catching up with I’m sure – it’s not a normal way of life, but I have done nights for over twenty years. Of course the stress of living in such times is exhausting in itself. We wear our masks all the time at work, and after a twelve hour shift, I cannot wait to take my mask off. For sure, I don’t particularly like wearing a mask, but if I can do my bit in helping to reduce the spread of Covid, I will. The amount of nasty comments I’ve read on social media during this last year has been more than I’ve read during all the other years I’ve been on social media. I try my best to avoid the comment sections of anything Covid or politically related. I have filled my Facebook feed with feel good pages. Yes, I know the realities of the world, but I don’t want to be inundated by those problems every time I look at social media. My opinions are my opinions. When I comment, I do my best to comment as politely and tactfully as possible, i.e. no name calling or swearing, and it saddens me that so many people can not respond in a similar manner when they disagree. Such is social media though. It’s easy to be rude and nasty when you don’t have to actually look some one in the eye, and that is why I don’t often comment any more. Anyway, these next two weeks I simply need to rest. To not worry about the outside world. To appreciate the simple things in life. To write and read more. Go for a few walks and start getting my fitness levels up again.

In South Africa, it’s a lovely time of the year. The summer intensity has abated. The mornings and evenings are cooler and refreshing. My herbs and plants have grown well these last few months. I find such peace sitting on the veranda, overlooking my herbs and watching my dogs run around. I’ve had quite a lazy day today. Read a little, hung up a little laundry, sat on the verandah drinking tea and coffee during the course of the day. Listened to music. I’ve been wanting to re watch the Lord of the Rings Trilogy for some reason, so I started on the that. Now it’s time to finish this post, go feed my dogs and get our own dinner started and seeing I’ve drunk enough tea and coffee for the day, a glass of wine or whiskey. Cheers.

Covid Blues.

When I was blogging and posting from October last year until the beginning of December or so, I was feeling quite motivated about my writing and blogging. Then the second Covid surge hit us, we were put back on to doing call outs (i.e. in case of emergency admissions) and all leave for staff over Christmas and New Year was suspended. Not that I had requested leave though and I worked over the Christmas weekend and on the 31st December. I don’t really mind, after all I’ve been nursing for thirty years and working over Christmasis the the norm. I have only ever had Christmas and New Year off together once, a two week break- five years ago.

Over Christmas and through most of this month, our hospital has been full with patients, most of whom were in hospital because of Covid. Fortunately, once again the numbers of Covid positive patients are decreasing. We can nit pick whether or not it was Covid making them sick or Covid that was attacking and exacerbating peoples’ underlying health problems, but whatever way you want to look at, most of the patients admitted were on oxyen during the surge, and the really ill patients were ventilated. We can nitpick about it “just” being another flu, but again whatever you think it is, or whatever it’s caused by, it’s making people sick and during the surges it is filling up the hospitals and straining the hospital oxygen systems. Pre Covid, during flu seasons, hospitals were not strained to the point they have been over the last year.

What has frustrated me, since the beginning of the pandemic is the flippant and dismissive attitude of many people. When I, have made comments about the hospital being under strain, I have been told (on Facebook) “show us photos”. I have been told nurses and doctors should be held accountable for patients not being treated properly and dying ‐ that God will judge us for what we have done. I have been told that it’s the medical profession who are at fault because we wanted lockdown. I have been told we are lying about patients who have Covid. The amount of angry comments I’ve read on social media this last year has been more, I think, than anything prior to Covid. None of us, well, no sane people, wanted to be locked down. Don’t blame us for a corrupt South African Government that did not maintain hospitals adequately, that did not invest in it’s economy and many of it’s politicians and their cronies were blinded by th pe allure of power and money. We could have withstood this virus so much better if we’d had a strong economy economy, and a health care system that had not been neglected.

What also frustrates me, are the people who are so utterly convinced they know it all. They know it’s 5g making people sick, or masks killing people and certainly not a virus – the new world order are out to get us, and if we don’t agree, we are sheeple, left wingers. Declare on Facebook you will get the vaccine and you will get told all about just how evil Bill Gates is. Well, how about common decency? Believe what you want but don’t insult others because you don’t agree. Sure, not every exchange I’ve had on Facebook has been confrontational, but sadly, many have been. Which is why I have now filled my Facebook feed with mostly travel pages, book pages, cooking pages etc, where Covid is not often discussed and it’s helped.

This post has been more of a rant than anything else and hopefully I can find some of that enthusiasm I had back in October. Surge or no surge, life goes on.

Covid 19 Vaccine – For or Against?

So. Cyril Ramaphosa, aka President of South Africa, addressed our country last night. I was off last night, very tired and did not have the energy to watch it, nor did I want to, to be honest. However, having had a good night’s sleep, and feeling refreshed today, I’m giving it a listen now.

I know everyone is fed up with Covid, but needless to say, it’s still around, and will be around for some time to come. Breaking news over the last week, has been a vaccine developed in Germany. Vaccines are a very sensitive subject, especially for those totally opposed to them. Humans have been getting vaccines for years and vaccines have undoubtedly saved many lives. Those who oppose vaccines claim they cause medical disorders, like Autism and have mercury in them, however from what I’ve read in general, it is that vaccines used to contain thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative used to stop the growth of bacteria and fungi in vaccine vials, but thimerosal was removed from most vaccines in 2001, and it has since been shown to have no adverse health problems. The way I look at it, and maybe it’s because of my nursing background, most medication has side effects. Any surgery has the possibility of complications, mostly from the anesthetic, so do we not put people under anesthetic anymore, because of possible complications? Do we stop taking all modern medication, (especially life saving medication) because they have side effects? Do we stop taking tablets for high blood pressure, diabetes, thyroid, heart problems, etc. Yes, certain tablets do cause more serious side effects for some and allergies as well, unfortunately. Or is all part of “big pharma” just out to get us? Are most Doctors who prescribe medication and pharmacists who dispense medication conning us? Do we go back to life several hundred years ago? Where few surgeons and Doctors believed that the simple act of washing their hands would save patients lives. Where do we draw the line between theories of a new world order and common sense?

As for this new Covid vaccine, taken off this site – https://www.lifenews.com/2020/11/09/new-pfizer-coronavirus-vaccine-not-created-with-fetal-cells-from-babies-killed-in-abortions/ – “Pfizer’s vaccine was developed using genetic sequencing on computers without using fetal cells. As a consequence, the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute listed the vaccine as “ethically uncontroversial. So, if this vaccine can save lives, and is safe, why shouldn’t we take it?

If anti vaccers can say they shouldn’t be forced to have the vaccine, fair enough. It’s their choice. I’m not judging them. However, on the other hand, I’d also like not be judged if I decide to get the vaccine. I’d also like not to be judged as a sheeple, just like I’m also sure they don’t want to be judged as conspiracy theorist nutcases. I’d also like not to be judged as someone who is part of the “new world order”, or as someone who is anti – Christian because I think it’s sensible to get the vaccine, and continue wearing a mask in shops and malls that are crowded, until Covid19 is no longer a serious threat. Am I a bad person because I think wearing a mask helps, or think a Covid19 vaccine will be beneficial to humanity and don’t believe it’s part of some new world order?

Regardless if you think Covid19 is a man made disease unleashed on the world, or that it simply made that jump from animal to man in a Wuhan “wet food market”, it does not make the virus any less real. I work in a hospital in a South African city and where I worked, July and August were very difficult months. The Covid surge or wave was a reality then. A temporary mortuary was erected on the hospital grounds as the local undertakers could not cope with the higher amount of daily deaths in the city. Yes, fair enough, many of the patients were elderly, or had underlying health conditions, but if it hadn’t been for Covid, they unlikely would have ended up in hospital at that point in time.

This from the Port Elizabeth area – https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-11-11-health-crisis-nelson-mandela-bay-sends-out-sos-as-active-covid-19-cases-approach-6000. All the people who believe Covid19 is a farce will say this is mainstream media blowing things out of proportion again, there wasn’t a first wave to start with. Well, I work in a hospital. Were my hospital managers blowing things out of proportion when they put up that temporary mortuary to cope with the unusually higher number of deaths every day and night during July and August? Were they being hysterical? Were they lying? If that is not proof for people of what happened in July and August, well then, I can only shake my head and try not get too irritated.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no fan of the current lot of corrupt politicians within the ANC and because our country was on tenterhooks economically, having been relegated to the junk status heap before Covid, when Covid did hit us, our economy all but collapsed – not quite maybe, but it’s barely hanging on by a thread. I’m not saying every ANC politician is corrupt, but many of them with influence are and if we’d had a strong economy led by a morally strong Government, we’d certainly have withstood lockdown better than we have. Which gets me back to Ramaphosa’s state of the nation address last night. He extended the nation’s state of disaster until 15th December. No further lockdowns for now. I do believe that first lockdown, was necessary to some degree, to stop our hospitals from being completely overwhelmed but another enforced hard lockdown will certainly cripple this country and the Government has got to look at other ways of dealing with Covid19. If a safe Covid19 vaccine is part of the answer, it will certainly help. That’s my take on it anyway.

Change.

Saturday evening saw South Africa’s President tell the country that from Tuesday the 18th, Lockdown Level 3 would end, taking us in to Level 2. The Western Cape, the first province to surge with the virus is now seeing decreased hospital admissions, as are Guateng and the Eastern Cape. Kwa – Zulu Natal, where I live, and work in a hospital, is in it’s surge still and probably about to peak, or peaking right now.

Yet there are still all those “conspiracy theorists”, (some of them will say that’s fine that’s what they are, but rather call them “truth seekers”) who insist on claiming Covid 19, is just another flu. Well, here’s the truth, it’s not “just another flu”. I’ve exhausted myself explaining to them, that it’s a serious virus, and no actually – it’s not just like “another flu”. Regardless of how people think the virus started, whether it was really from bats, (or pangolins) or was let out from a lab on purpose to create havoc in the world, is not the point I’m getting at here in this post, my point is that it is real, and it’s serious. I don’t remember in my thirty years of nursing, colleagues getting so sick from flu, especially those working in ICU, making the ultimate sacrifice, and nursing extremely ill patients with Covid. I don’t remember ICU’s being so full of patients with flu, many on ventilators, during previous years. I don’t remember it because it’s never happened, certainly not in my lifetime. I’ve had the weekend off, but I go back to work tonight, wondering if a longtime colleague of mine, who has been very ill and on a ventilator, in the ICU she has worked in for over twenty years, is still hanging in there, or if she has lost her fight against Covid.

I even had an ex colleague of mine, a fellow nurse, and who I thought was a friend, tell me she didn’t believe me that our ICU was almost full of patients with Covid. She told me they are there because of their underlying conditions – or because they were elderly. So I said yes – AND because they had gotten Covid, which then because of their underlying conditions/poor immunity, made them so susceptible to becoming so seriously ill. If they hadn’t gotten Covid they would unlikely be so ill. So she then told me, “well, when it’s your time, it’s your time and it doesn’t matter what you die of anyway, it matters how live”. It’s all well and fine saying that, when you do not work in a hospital and are not seeing the reality of what’s happening, thanks to this virus called Covid. Yet this very same woman, will still insist on putting up (outdated) stats of deaths worldwide from various illnesses, with Covid being on the lower end of the list – but I thought it didn’t matter what people died of?! When I told her (once again) that she didn’t work in a hospital anymore, and had no clue about what we were dealing with, she deleted my comment. She will be the first to complain about lack of freedom of speech eg anti mask posts, anti covid posts, anti vaccine posts, etc. etc. etc. getting taken down, yet she does the same to me, by removing my comment. I don’t often “unfriend” people off face book, but sadly to say I did to her. It did sadden me, because we have been on friendly terms and have seen each other at times, after we stopped working together. She helped me last year when my husband and I moved houses. When my dog was not well, and my husband was not home, she took me to the vet. Yes, we can have differing opinions, but I took it as a slap in the face, when she told me she didn’t believe me – so, are we exaggerating? Lying? Imagining it all? Misinformed? I tried to ask her, but as I said, she deleted my comment. There you go, censorship from someone who will be the first to complain about her freedoms getting taken away. Whether it’s because of losing friends or because of a virus that totally upends our lives, change is inevitable.

Who would have thought?

Who would have thought that at the beginning of the year, the virus that hit China, at the end of last year, would quickly spread around the globe and affect most countries worse than it hit China. Here in South Africa, we have been in lockdown for just over four months. Well, our hard lock down ended a while ago, so it’s semi lock down really. The advice is still to stay home if you can. Although I think it’s fair too say most people are fed up with being told to stay home by now. People just want to get out and about, except for those who are really concerned about their health and age.

I’m happy with my own company, for the most part, so being told to stay home really doesn’t bother me too much. I have my husband and my two dogs. I was one of the fortunate people that was able to continue working during lock down, as a nurse. During the initial lock down, we were actually quite busy in our Neonatal ICU with four little premature babies, all born about 1 kg’s (2.2 pounds) giving us the run around in their fight for their lives. They probably gave us all a few extra grey hairs, but they all pulled through and their parents took them home. So those first couple of months of lock down, for me, carrying on with my normal shifts, didn’t feel like lock down really. The only difference really was the quiet roads, which normally, would be full of traffic. Even now, that lock down has been eased, the traffic is still relatively quiet. Even when lock down is totally eased, I don’t see the traffic being as busy as it used to be. More people will work from home I think. People have lost jobs, and many of those people will struggle to find jobs again after lock down. It is tragic.

Tragic also that we have a Government that did not prepare for it’s future. A Government, particularly the Jacob Zuma Presidency and regime, where many of those politicians and politically connected felt it was their right to plunder millions upon millions of Rands (all in all, billions) off the public coffers, to live their high lives, while the poor got poorer. Instead of building up State Departments, like Eskom, South African Airways, SABC (the country’s TV and radio coverage), Home Affairs, they didn’t seem that worried, that those Departments were very poorly managed, to the point of almost no return, but for bailouts from Government, they kept hanging on, albeit by a thread. Of course they made all sorts of excuses, for why their departments were in such dire straits, and all along unable to actually believe it was due to their ineptness and corruption. It was their time after all. Many many public hospitals were left to deteriorate. Is it any wonder that private hospitals around the country became big business, and anyone who could afford to, (regardless of their race) got themselves onto medical insurance. After all, who would want to land up sick or injured in a dirty and understaffed public hospital? The initial hard lockdown was meant to give the hospitals time to prepare for the surge of Covid patients, but how do you prepare so many hospitals (and a healthcare system) that have been badly managed for at least a decade, in a couple of months or so?

That said, I am fortunate that I have been working in a private hospital for many years and our management have, since the start of the pandemic, provided us with adequate PPE. I must admit, we have good management, that really does care about it’s nurses and staff. Our ICU is experiencing the surge, and I know my fellow nurses working in ICU are working hard and under a great deal of pressure. When I worked last week, many of the staff in ICU were off sick with Covid and sadly I heard that a nurse who I worked with over 20 years ago, when we were in our twenties, and we often saw each other clocking in, in recent years and times, has Covid and is on a ventilator, in the ICU that she has worked in for many years. Just before the surge, we were clocking in, and joking that we were the “old ladies” now. When I started in the neonatal ICU, I was one of the youngest – now I am one of the oldest, and I’m not quite fifty! I hope and pray she makes it.

The country’s Covid “experts”, the Scientists and Doctors I guess, tell us that our “surge” will likely carry on into September and start slowing down towards the end of that month. I certainly hope so.

It’s a typical day in this part of South Africa. Windy with a slightly chilly breeze. It started off sunny, but by lunchtime was overcast and grey. Everything is so dry. The rainy season will certainly be welcome, and hopefully it will be a good one – or at least, a somewhat decent one.

The South African Lock-down

At the end of the day South Africa is a third  world country.  From the likes of Apartheid which caused untold injustices to it’s natives and other South African citizens who did not have white skin, to a corrupt Jacob Zuma Presidency that looted our coffers left, right and center South Africa has often been on the back foot.  It didn’t learn from the mistakes of the past.  The Nelson Mandela Dream faded quickly enough.  After Mandela,  under Thabo Mbeki, South Africa could have done worse, but it certainly could have done better, and the Mbeki Presidential stance on HIV was a mockery of medicine and science.  As for Jacob Zuma and his cronies, well they certainly did their bit in hammering a good few more nails into the coffin – under his presidency, far too many state owned entities and countless municipalities became shambolic departments of inefficiency and corruption.

When the Covid19 pandemic hit, South Africa was not prepared financially.  Shortly after lock-down began here –  “ratings agency Moody’s moved South Africa to “junk” status on March 27 2020 after revising the outlook on the country’s last investment-grade credit rating to “negative” because of a slowdown in economic growth and rising debt burden.” As if Covid19 wasn’t delivering a good enough sucker punch to us, the junk status added to that blow – although the total junk status was not a surprise, it had been coming for a while.

I’m beginning to believe lock-down is more of a farce in South Africa, than the good it should be doing.  Maybe it’s helped to a small degree, which I guess is better than nothing, but in any city in different areas in any city, lock-down will be adhered to in some areas – and not so, in other areas.  In the financially well off suburbs and shopping centers, people for the most part are obeying lock-down rules.  Mostly everyone wears masks and adheres to social distancing.  Go to other areas like townships, and the less well off suburbs, life goes on like there is no pandemic.  There are plenty of advertisements on Facebook for things like people offering hair braiding – that sort of thing is not allowed under our current lock-down.  My husband went to get meat at our local butchery today, which is not situated in the best part of the city – the prostitutes were out and about, as if lock down was not an issue for them and the owner of the butchery said that they have been out since the lock down began.  If the prostitutes are out and about, there must be a demand for them.  I wonder if they have their “essential services” certificates ready for police inspection – if the police ever apprehend them anyway.   This time of the month sees thousands upon thousands of people queuing for their social grants, long winding queues outside banks and post offices, people standing cheek to jowl, with social distancing null and many people not wearing masks.  Yet us law abiding folk who want to go out to exercise, either to walk, run or cycle have an exercise curfew from 6 am –  9 am.  Not forgetting the alcohol and cigarette black market industry that is thriving right now (since those two vices have been banned under our lock-down).   It’s a mockery of a lock-down really, that some are abiding to and many others are not, with a Government that must know what’s going on, but seem incapable of doing much about it.  Lock-down for some and not for others, that’s what it is, and it’s a mockery right now.   All this “lock-down” has done is give our hospitals some time to prepare for a spike in Covid19 positive patients.

I have a friend though, who believes that Covid19 is a storm in a tea cup, that we are getting hysterical about this virus and the numbers have been over exaggerated around the world – that it’s all a big scheme by the “elite” who run the world, to create their new world order but how does one discount all the stories of nurses and doctors on the front line in the cities and countries that have been hit hardest by the surge of Covid19 patients? I am a nurse and the hospital I work in is now prepared for a possible surge in the coming weeks and months.  We are already seeing Covid19 patients, although we certainly haven’t been overwhelmed.  It would be great if we are not overwhelmed, but as I said to my friend, rather be prepared than sitting ducks.    Conspiracy theories aside, one thing is for certain, the world is in one big mess!