Coronavirus - South Africa
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Hi Sid. How is the lockdown being policed? Is it just the main urban areas? I assume it would be almost impossible to maintain it country-wide. I have a friend in Zim and she tells me it is complete chaos - over and above the normal chaos by a significant margin. All that with no real data either.
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Though the article is more positive than I discussed in my post, it basically makes the same mistakes.
Three countries are mentioned in the piece; South Africa, Egypt and Kenya. Does the authors know how far Cape Town is from Nairobi, because I do because I've driven it. Its 7120km by car and if you do it at leisurely pace it will take about two and half weeks.
I don't know how much trade there is between Egypt and South Africa, but it is hell of lot less than there is between South Africa and Britain. The situation in London has a far greater affect on South Africa than Egypt and the fact we nominally share a landmass is all but irrelevant.
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How is it being policed? Here in Cape Town the police do random patrols and people are chased off beaches/parks etc. There are a couple of roadblocks where you need show a permit to travel.
Where I live is a middle class suburb and adherence to regulations is pretty high (no-one out jogging/walking their dog etc.). My girlfriend's house is in an area with a much more working class character and adherence seem to be lower (more people on the street loitering etc.)
I can't comment on other areas because I haven't been able to leave my house in 5 weeks, but according to the news people are generally trying to adhere as best they can (with exceptions). The real struggles seem to be around minibus taxis and public transport which doesn't lend itself to social distancing.
As for Zimbabwe - I can't repeat this enough, it is different country with very different challenges, and I have basically the same insight as anyone here about what is happening there. The best analogy I can think of right now is that Zimbabwe and South Africa has about the same relationship Britain has with Romania - there are a lot of Zimbabweans living and working in South Africa and fair bit of domestic trade (people shopping in South Africa and sending it home and South Africans tourists visiting Zimbabwe), but they are very different countries.
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@SidBarret said in Coronavirus - South Africa:
In the meantime I am teaching myself how to homebrew cider - its drinkable, but needs more time for the sugar to ferment, hopefully the second batch due next week will be better.
Start a thread if you want to chat on this and maybe pick up some tips from folk. I've brewed a couple, no expert, but produced something pretty drinkable that I enjoyed. Super easy too
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@SidBarret said in Coronavirus - South Africa:
It's pretty brutal, only essential goods and services are being allowed and essential is defined extremely narrowly.
No cigarettes, no booze, no hot food or take aways.Yeoawch!!!!! No hot food or takeaways, I understand, but no booze!! What a way to help give up smoking
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@SidBarret you shouldn't need to. Pitch a whole lot of good yeast, and you should be done in under a week. You can drink it flat - otherwise you're into secondary fermentation which is interesting with ciders.
Seriously consider throwing more apple juice onto the yeast cake that develops. It should be sanitary and good to go, and will ferment like a mofo.
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@SidBarret said in Coronavirus - South Africa:
Yeah I'm Cape Town - though my wine reserves ran out three weeks back....
I'm pegging you as either a very bad planner or a drunk. I'm rather hoping for the latter, we would get on so much better.
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@Catogrande Bit of both. A cruel little trick was played on us. When the lock down was originally announced it was scheduled to run for 3 weeks, but was then extended by a further 2 weeks and then booze sales were extended indefinitely.
We stocked up for three weeks, finished it in 2 and now we're just waiting (hence the my apartment smelling like a brewery, which it kinda is)
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@SidBarret said in Coronavirus - South Africa:
@Catogrande Bit of both. A cruel little trick was played on us. When the lock down was originally announced it was scheduled to run for 3 weeks, but was then extended by a further 2 weeks and then booze sales were extended indefinitely.
We stocked up for three weeks, finished it in 2 and now we're just waiting (hence the my apartment smelling like a brewery, which it kinda is)
That is not the way to keep the population onside. At least dear old Boris over here recognises that alcohol sales is an essential service. Mind you that might be a little self serving.
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@Catogrande Yeah, it's a bit of a double edge sword - alcohol is banned to stop people doing stupid shit (and to close down the supply chain), but we have seen some looting of liquor stores and depos.
The police minister is super keen on the prohibition and there has been notable drop in violent crime over the lock down period (see the FT article above).
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@SidBarret said in Coronavirus - South Africa:
Though the article is more positive than I discussed in my post, it basically makes the same mistakes.
Three countries are mentioned in the piece; South Africa, Egypt and Kenya. Does the authors know how far Cape Town is from Nairobi, because I do because I've driven it. Its 7120km by car and if you do it at leisurely pace it will take about two and half weeks.
I don't know how much trade there is between Egypt and South Africa, but it is hell of lot less than there is between South Africa and Britain. The situation in London has a far greater affect on South Africa than Egypt and the fact we nominally share a landmass is all but irrelevant.
Recognise that SA is worlds apart from Central Africa, but was an article I'd happened to see.
A relatively low reliance on public transport is likely to be the Continent's get out of jail card, given PT (including air travel) is main conduit for CV transmission.
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I woke up in foul mood this morning, so I apologise for my tone...
Yeah, we are still waiting for the scientist to confirm whether the buffalo I depend on to get to work can be a carrier of covid.
I can kind of accept that people don't know how Africa operates; I have made the point in this very thread that news coverage of Africa poor. But it still astounds me that someone would make a statement like the below, in thread where the lack of good information is being discussed.
A relatively low reliance on public transport is likely to be the Continent's get out of jail card, given PT (including air travel) is main conduit for CV transmission
I can't speak as an expert on transport in all of Africa, because you know, I am not a transportation economist and Africa is fucking big place. I was even trying to find a headline figure on how many people depend on public transport in Africa, but again, serious researchers avoid generalising across such a large and diverse area.
https://medium.com/impact-engineered/the-african-commute-city-transport-trends-cf369e5106bd
Do I need to find a reputable research paper to suggest that Africans rely heavily on public transport? For the purposes of an rugby chat forum, probably not. What I can confidently comment on is the situation in South Africa and less confidently on Southern and Eastern Africa that people are massively reliant on public transport to get around.
But this rant isn't even about whether Africans rely on public transport or not - it is about the way that people just casually assume that they know something that they are clearly pig ignorant about.
Do I blame @pakman for making a stupid comment? Yeah I kinda do, but that would not motivate me to spend thirty minutes to write whatever the fuck this rant is. What did motivate me to write this is nicotine withdrawal and the stupid narrative about Africa as a societal and economic blackhole where everything that happens is either due to some white guy coming to save us, political corruption or economic backwardness. It is fucking insulting and has these beliefs have real consequences on how people make long term decisions.
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@SidBarret said in Coronavirus - South Africa:
I woke up in foul mood this morning, so I apologise for my tone...
Yeah, we are still waiting for the scientist to confirm whether the buffalo I depend on to get to work can be a carrier of covid.
I can kind of accept that people don't know how Africa operates; I have made the point in this very thread that news coverage of Africa poor. But it still astounds me that someone would make a statement like the below, in thread where the lack of good information is being discussed.
A relatively low reliance on public transport is likely to be the Continent's get out of jail card, given PT (including air travel) is main conduit for CV transmission
I can't speak as an expert on transport in all of Africa, because you know, I am not a transportation economist and Africa is fucking big place. I was even trying to find a headline figure on how many people depend on public transport in Africa, but again, serious researchers avoid generalising across such a large and diverse area.
https://medium.com/impact-engineered/the-african-commute-city-transport-trends-cf369e5106bd
Do I need to find a reputable research paper to suggest that Africans rely heavily on public transport? For the purposes of an rugby chat forum, probably not. What I can confidently comment on is the situation in South Africa and less confidently on Southern and Eastern Africa that people are massively reliant on public transport to get around.
But this rant isn't even about whether Africans rely on public transport or not - it is about the way that people just casually assume that they know something that they are clearly pig ignorant about.
Do I blame @pakman for making a stupid comment? Yeah I kinda do, but that would not motivate me to spend thirty minutes to write whatever the fuck this rant is. What did motivate me to write this is nicotine withdrawal and the stupid narrative about Africa as a societal and economic blackhole where everything that happens is either due to some white guy coming to save us, political corruption or economic backwardness. It is fucking insulting and has these beliefs have real consequences on how people make long term decisions.
You've got the wrong end of the stick here, by failing to appreciate the significance of the word relatively.
Interested to know if you're aware of any African public transport system to rival NYC subway or London Underground in terms of major population density.