A rather bizarre, jingoistic Covid-19 Freedom Day address by Julius Malema

HAVING JULIUS Malema appear on national television on Freedom Day, as if he were running the country is nothing new. But having the man appear to take charge during a National Disaster, surely one for the history books?

Today’s address must be seen as consistent with the commandeerist and vanguardist philosophy for which his far-left faction are renowned. The trouble with our national broadcaster’s approach, one of drawing in the troublesome EFF, is that it has allowed Malema to garner new opportunistic heights during the Covid-19 crisis.

Though characteristically lengthy, (I will leave it up to news media to report the nuts and bolts), the address contained more than the usual number of clangers.

Even under lockdown, he attacked the private sector which he said, could not be relied upon to provide services and said such persons were ‘driven by the profit-motive instead of coming together in times of crisis’, a fact not born out by the government’s own policy of allowing some economic activity to continue.

Witness Malema’s crass attempt to set the stage for a new ‘politics of the body’, setting the scene to take future credit for the production of ventilators and health equipment by our military-industrial complex under Denel, and a programme thus already underway.

“The South African government currently owns Denel which produces high tech fighting machines, that capacity must be directed towards the production of medical equipment. How do we explain that we can build fighter jets, fighting machines, but we cannot build a ventilator to help people breathe? Why do we have capacity to produce guns to fight wars but cannot produce machines to save lives?” he asked.

If you have not been following the details of South Africa’s national ventilator programme, or the response by local pharmaceutical companies such as Aspen, you could be forgiven for thinking that the EFF boss, had just made a major contribution on the subject, demanding local production of medicine and deployment of scarce military resources to the national effort.

Most of the politician’s address was caught up with an essentially bellicose attempt at holding both our government and industry to account for the crisis, whilst calling for stricter measures and harsher penalties, and reminding ‘revolutionaries’ that the ‘revolution was far from over, so long as the land was in white hands.’

‘If any workers lives were lost as a result of a premature exit from the national lockdown’, he fulminated, there would be hell to pay. In particular his party would make sure that for each worker’s life lost, the family ‘would receive at least R5 million’.

This after demanding an increase of the emergency crisis grant, to R1000. No credit given for President Ramaphosa’s historic introduction of a basic income grant (BIG) in times of need. Which is a bit like saying, ‘up the grant, and we will negotiate a payout if you die, or else’.

Not even socialist Sweden, which did not embrace a lockdown, has the kind of money to pay its entire population R1000pm, indefinitely, without there being some form of concomitant work in return, and thus a contribution by all workers to the nation’s exchequer. Malema however, called for BIG to be made permanent, and also demanded laptops and tablets for learners, another policy already implemented to some extant by the ANC, alongside E-learning.

Not content with playing catch-up to the ruling party and its remarkable series of interventions announced over the past week, by demanding stricter measures, and a return to moribund SOEs, Malema then proceeded to draw the kind of racist distinctions for which he is also famous.

One distinction in particular jarred, that made between European and Non-European, or in Malema terms, African and Non-African. That Malema was merely paraphrasing racist invective from the past whilst appearing to couch his arguments within the terms of black pride, can be seen in the following bizarre statement:

“Everyone thinks they are better than an African, they can made (sic) the worst form of suffering like Holocaust and bullets, they still will see themselves as better than Africans, meaning instead of human tragedy making them identify with Africans, they will still think of their own human suffering as better than being an African, why because African is being trapped in a skin colour, a body one can never escape.”

It was Adolf Hitler who made a distinction between what he termed Aryan, and Non-Aryan. It took apartheid founders such as DF Malan and HF Verwoerd to extend this classification system into the binary, European and Non-European, and thus some wind to the kind of racist terms deployed by Malema today.

But I fear, it takes a special type of jingoism, an inversion of logic if you will, for the result to blur into a scenario where ‘Hitler’s suffering’ is at the heart of all the problems to do with the black body. And where contrary to black consciousness leader, Steve Biko, ‘blackness is now purely the result of skin pigmentation’. All whilst calling essentially for a school curriculum that could see compulsory political re-education camps and censure on the basis of ideological outlook?

The sheer problem of metaphysical and epic proportions, in the extrapolation of a new ‘physicality of the body politic’ as a Covid19 ‘discourse of suffering’ by Malema, requires a lot more rumination than is possible on Freedom Day.

However, one of the tactics deployed by the self-styled and would-be Marxist dictator over the years, has been to cast himself as an unstoppable theoretical force, already in power. (By the powers of Fanon & Sankara?). If only the outcome of the ballot paper were a bit different and our nation’s ideological battles could be resolved with a simple tick of the pen?

Freedom day is surely not the time to be making distinctions on the basis of race, colour, religion and creed? And a crisis is not the place to be issuing forth on a treatment regime for some at the expense of others? But of course, we all get that Malema is about to volunteer for the treatment action campaign, or do we?

No other opposition leader has been given quite the same legroom by our nation’s institutions to attack democracy (or the marketplace) from within, whether in terms of editorial or column space, and thus to gain access to radio listeners and television spectators thereby, using the very mechanisms of power.

Malema’s party has too readily been granted the kind of privilege reserved for our democratic founders, and the type of audience reserved for visiting heads of state, in issuing forth racist cant that divides our nation, not between the haves and have-nots, but between those who qualify as Africans in Malema’s eyes, and those who do not.

For many commentators, the emergence of the EFF is a strange fact of South African life, orchestrated by party insiders, those wanting to create an antidote to the mostly white official opposition, and those who want merely to steal the revolution.

It is time to call-out what is occurring before our eyes, on the nation’s screens, in the negation of the democratic promise of universal rights and freedom for all citizens, black and white.

Hertzogate: No evidence tobacco assists patients with respiratory illness

COLUMNIST Mandy Wiener has written an opinion piece for News24 entitled: ‘The case for lifting the cigarette ban’

Her central thesis is that the ‘prohibition on smoking tobacco merely drives the practice underground’. While Wiener appears to grasp some of the health arguments being touted by the Dept of Health, she appears to be in plain denial of the consequences:

“We understand that research globally shows that those with underlying conditions are more likely to be susceptible to Covid-19.”

“The working premise is that this also applies to current smokers. It is therefore safe to assume that government has implemented the ban to stop people from smoking so it reduces their risk if they contract the virus.”

It is highly irresponsible for a columnist to be advocating a return to smoking tobacco as usual during a global respiratory disease epidemic, in other words a pandemic of respiratory illness.

Wiener then further states “According to the WHO, ‘Smokers are likely to be more vulnerable to Covid-19 as the act of smoking means that fingers (and possibly contaminated cigarettes) are in contact with lips which increases the possibility of transmission of virus from hand to mouth. Smokers may also already have lung disease or reduced lung capacity which would greatly increase risk of serious illness.”

The insinuation is that smokers simply need to stop sharing their fags. Instead of drawing rational conclusions from her observations, she casts doubt and proceeds to make an irrational case for the lifting of the ban.

For starters, it must strike readers as a tad too convenient for Wiener to assert at the beginning of her piece that she has ‘no personal investment in this matter’. The claim is rather disingenuous since it is predicated upon the supposed independence she enjoys from her publishers and the tobacco industry. Two claims which are demonstrably false.

Wiener’s column is published in a Naspers-controlled News24 media outlet, one heavily invested in by the self-same Tobacco Industry,  if not outright controlled by those with extensive tobacco-related investments.

Medialternatives has previously covered the manner in which apartheid financiers Rupert Beleggings Pty Ltd, the real  brains trust behind Naspers, and the ultimate control behind a cartel actively involved within South Africa’s media, is also involved in capture of our justice system.

Readers however may be unaware of the manner in which the Rupert dynasty rose to fame and fortune via its stake in the tobacco industry. Orchestrating the outright purchase of Rothmans International in 1953. The biography of Anton Rupert, written be Ebbe Dommisse and Willie Esterhuyse covers the meteoric rise of the ‘Rembrandt Tobacco Corporation’, devoting an entire chapter to what they term ‘the birth of a masterpiece’.

The corporation founded in 1946 initially focused on tobacco and alcohol but later became the saviour of apartheid financial institutions.

JBM Hertzog, National Party & Naspers founder

A launchpad for the careers of prominent National Party members including Chris Stals, and Nico Diederichs. Dan O’Meara’s book Volkskapitalisme asserts that the Broederbond connection was vitally important to the early development of Rembrandt, as too it was in the formation of Naspers. The Hertzog’s were instrumental in the creation of both Naspers and Rembrandt. Two corporations which rose alongside the National Party itself, and whose founder-in-chief was none other than J B M Hertzog. The book further details various intrigues involving cousins Dirk and Albert Hertzog, Owen Horward and Anton Rupert.

It may be demonstrated, that the Tobacco industry, the same industry behind second-hand smoking and apartheid, is also behind climate change denial. A fact documented by science historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway in their book Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. Oreskes and Conway write that a handful of politically conservative scientists, with strong ties to particular industries, have “played a disproportionate role in debates about controversial questions”. The authors write that this has resulted in “deliberate obfuscation” of the issues which has had an influence on public opinion and policy-making.

It is not all that surprising that the selfsame industry is behind science denial and censorship in the Coronovirus Pandemic.

The Tencent WeChat system for instance has been accused of censoring Coronovirus Content in China. Naspers exercises minority control of Tencent via its 73% control of subsidiary Prosus, a company which in turn owns 31% of Tencent.

Citizen Lab, an interdisciplinary laboratory based at the University of Toronto, has released an analysis, showing censorship around the coronavirus on WeChat and YY — a Chinese livestreaming app similar to Twitch. The lab found that ‘both platforms began blacklisting terms related to the virus as early as the last week of December 2019, when Chinese health officials first reported an unknown pathogen spreading through the country’s hospitals.’

The self-same supposed rational gatekeepers have previously resorted to Anti-Vax propaganda. Most recently targeting philanthropist Bill Gates in the aptly named Gatesgate in which News24 editors were forced to publish lengthy retractions.

There is no evidence Bill Gates has ever advocated vaccine trials in Africa. He has instead donated much needed drug assistance to various institutions whilst funded various philanthropic initiatives which will hopefully bring post-trial Covid-19 vaccines within the reach of consumers.

British American Tobacco (BAT) part owned by Rupert’s Reinet Investments, claims it is working on a potential Covid-19 vaccine using its biotechnology subsidiary Kentucky BioProcessing (KBP). It is claim met by a great deal of scepticism and suspicion.

There is also no evidence that Tobacco assists in recovery from Respiratory disease, quite the contrary. Tobacco has been shown to cause cancer and cardio-respiratory illness.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration this week made a second revision on its stance about the risks of Covid-19 and nicotine, saying that cigarettes also increase the chances of catching the disease.

“People who smoke cigarettes may be at increased risk of infection with the virus that causes Covid-19, and may have worse outcomes from Covid-19,”

Medicine is ‘part observation, part hypothesis’, Tim Noakes apologises.

THAT A HydroxyChloroquine vs Chloroquine controversy continues to rage, and one of the theories as to why Covid-19 patients may be getting starved of oxygen despite medical interventions, appears to have been debunked as nothing more than in silica research, hasn’t stopped Dr Tim Noakes going out on a limb to defend what he feels should be an open debate on the subject.

‘It is not important if one’s hypothesis is wrong or right, what is important are the clinical observations, the theories must come later’ is the gist. In an audio interview broadcast on Capetalk and 702 Noakes apologised to listeners for any perceived harm his comments during an interview on CCFM may have caused, but urged the public to keep an open-mind instead of jumping to conclusions.

Without mentioning Nathan Geffen directly, he referred to the Treatment Action Campaign, which he lauded for doing a sterling job, but accused an unnamed activist for ‘being in cahoots with drug companies’ and wanting to shut down and censor debate. An advocate whose views were also broadcast during the follow up interview, was of the opinion that Noakes should rather ‘stick to his own lane’, meaning his chosen field, as a physician, which is sports medicine.

Noakes is no stranger to controversy, having literally had his version of the Banting diet placed on trial (his research started out as a refutation of a key feature of the Lore of Running), and then suffering the inequity of several years of litigation before the matter was finally put to rest in 2018, with HPCSA failing to appeal his acquittal.

Far from issuing a rebuttal, Noakes was keen to assert that he had spent most of his career researching the manner in which oxygen circulates within the body, and thus the impact of diet on ones health.

Noakes then proceeded to laud a New York physician Cameron Kyle-Sidell, MD who suggested COVID-19 ventilator protocols may need revisiting, and requested listeners to take the time to watch the following video:

The CCFM podcast is available here and criticism which you can read here and Noakes response here and here.

SEE: Could Hypokalemia explain COVID-19 mortality?

SEE: OGH using hyperbaric 02 therapy with success on COVID-19 patients

The Luc Montagnier Covid-19 Chimera Controversy

AT THE START I should caution readers that the scientific literature is littered with controversies and that the very basis of scientific proof, for any proof worth its salt, a proof must not simply be demonstrable by its authors, but subject to further experimentation by peers. In other words, for any theory to be accepted as true, it must be subject to peer review, and corroborated by experiments which are both demonstrable and repeatable.

Our own country has its fair share of scientific controversy, the latest being on air statements by Dr Tim Noakes and criticism which you can read here and his response here and here.

And for obvious reasons the history of the HIV epidemic, in particular the policies of the Mbeki administration remind us that it is important to keep an open mind and to allow debate to occur before jumping to conclusions.

It may therefore come as a shock that no less than the co-discoverer of HIV, Professor Luc Montagnier, 2008 Nobel Prize winner for Medicine, is at the centre of a growing controversy around allegations that SARS-CoV-2 is a chimera — a combination of several viruses, and possibly man-made.

Reasons why this may turn out to not be the case at all, are supplied below.

Luc Montagnier claims that SARS-CoV-2 is a manipulated virus that was accidentally released from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. Chinese researchers are said to have used coronaviruses in their work to develop an AIDS vaccine. HIV RNA fragments are thus believed to have been found in the SARS-CoV-2 genome.

His claims are based upon alleged evidence which has yet to be peer reviewed, and a paper which has been submitted for publication by mathematician and researcher, Jean-claude Perez.

Perez’ science paper summary is available here and here. And may also be downloaded here.

Perez maintains ‘It is very likely that there was HUMAN INTERVENTION in this LYONS’s region of wuhan genome: Analysis of this region in all coronaviruses shows a 100% jump in homology for the Wuhan genomes and 70 to 80% for the closest SARS. Although there is already a trace of ENV HIV1 in the genome that we have referenced here SARS2003. While there is NO TRACE of HIV1 ENV in the region (Lyons-weiler 20020) in all other SARS Coronavirus genomes.”

He supplies various proofs and includes two diagrams which we publish here for the sake of discussion.

Invalidated Work

‘Based on the study published by Jean-Claude Pérez, who “delved into the smallest details of the sequence” of the virus’, reports Le Parisien, ‘Professor Montagnier argues that SARS-CoV-2 contains “sequences of another virus which is HIV, the AIDS virus ”. He adds that a “group of Indian researchers tried to publish an analysis” of the same type and that it was withdrawn “under enormous pressure”.’

‘But “the study of Indian biomathematicians was quickly invalidated by other work which, by looking into the computer study of the genome, proved that there was no HIV sequence”, recalls Anne Goffard, virologist and teacher at the Faculty of Pharmacy in Lille.’

The study in question was also withdrawn by the authors themselves after “the comments received from the research community on their technical approach and their interpretation of the results”, can be read on the site BioRxiv , host of the publication.’

For the mathematical study provided by Jean-Claude Pérez, Étienne Decroly, CNRS researcher at the Architecture laboratory develops an analogy: “The sequence of a virus corresponds to 30 pages of a book. We scientists have tools to try to determine if a paragraph from this book has ever existed in another book. We have the sequences of all known viruses available. As for similarities with HIV, it is as if the word ‘hat’ appeared four times in two different books. We can, by chance, have sequences that look alike without demonstrating intentional modifications ”.

There is also published work refuting the idea that SARS-Cov-2 is a chimera.

And of course it all depends upon how one defines natural vs artificial. A chance occurrence of parts of a genome sequence from HIV may be the result of in vivo evolution of the virus genome, since chimeras may be created from two separate viruses inside the body, and what Perez may be observing is the unreported possibility that the samples sequenced were taken from patients that were already infected with HIV.

One should remember that what all RNA Coronoviruses have in common is the remarkable ability to assemble themselves via hijacking the bodies own cellular mechanisms. Cells already infected with HIV may therefore result in the exact same genome subjected to analysis by Perez. A simple case of looking too closely at an object seen from afar?

Or just another factor of the infodemic and failure to correctly unravel the viral family tree?

More likely, HIV shares some of the genome common to Coronoviruses. 

I could also be wrong and just plain Dunning–Kruger, as one researcher put it.

Only time can tell which view of reality is the truth.

UPDATE: The withdrawn study appears to be one and same research conducted by Perez, and published in International Journal of Research – Granthaalayah

UPDATE: Coronavirus could attack immune system like HIV by targeting protective cells, warn scientists

UPDATE: Calif.-based Gilead Sciences Inc., is ramping up its COVID-19 antiviral candidate production and research and is donating 1.5 million doses for compassionate use

Peter Breggin MD, raises questions on US-China ‘gain-of-function’ Coronovirus research.

THIS WEEK saw a special report by Peter Breggin, MD, raising serious questions about US-sponsored ‘Gain-of-Function’ Coronovirus research at China’s Wuhan laboratory facility.

This type of research was temporarily halted over ethical concerns under the Obama administration. Gain-of-function (GOF) research ‘typically involves mutations that confer altered functionality of a protein or other molecule.’

He says a ‘2015 Scientific Paper Proves US & Chinese Scientists Collaborated to Create Coronavirus that Can Infect Humans‘.

In 2015, American researchers and Chinese Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers collaborated to transform an animal coronavirus into one that can attack humans. Scientists from prestigious American universities and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) worked directly with the two coauthor researchers from Wuhan Institute of Virology, Xing-Yi Ge and Zhengli-Li Shi. Funding was provided by the Chinese and US governments. The team succeeded in modifying a bat coronavirus to make it capable of infecting humans.

The research was published in December 2015 in the prestigious British journal, Nature Medicine (volume 21, pages 1508–1513). The paper by Vineet D. Menachery et al., “A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence” is available here as a PDF as well as on-line.i

The research demonstrates how a modified Bat coronovirus capable of attacking ACE2 was created by Chinese researchers and also their failure to develop a vaccine, and was followed by warnings of the danger involved published by The Scientist, 16 November 2015.

“We built a chimeric virus encoding a novel, zoonotic CoV spike protein—from the RsSHC014-CoV sequence that was isolated from Chinese horseshoe bats1,” claim the researchers.

“The results demonstrate the ability of the SHC014 surface protein to bind and infect human cells, validating concerns that this virus—or other coronaviruses found in bat species—may be capable of making the leap to people without first evolving in an intermediate host, Nature reported. They also reignite a debate about whether that information justifies the risk of such work, known as gain-of-function research. “If the [new] virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory,” Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, told Nature.”

Breggin’s astonishing report comes the same week that an investigation into the same Wuhan facility has been reopened by the USA.

Breggin is well known within the medical and scientific community and has authored dozens of scientific articles and over twenty books, ‘promoting more caring and effective therapies’. He is also highly critical of the drug establishment and pharmaceutical industry.

His report follows initial articles, questioning whether Sars-Cov-2 is a chimera of two different viruses?

And apparently conclusive evidence that the virus is not man-made.

Breggin is at pains to point out that the man-made coronovirus referred to in the 2015 scientific literature is not SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for Covid-19. He instead presents various questions, necessitating further inquiry:

Concluding Questions:

  • Who in the US government enabled this research? Why was it allowed when it was enabling the Chinese to develop a military weapon or to accidentally cause an epidemic?
  • Why was an FDA official involved as an author and why was NIH funding the project?
  • The virus created in collaboration with the Chinese and the current epidemic virus are both SARS-CoV with many shared characteristics. This writer has found no scientific research that specifically compares the two viruses, a subject that needs to be investigated.
  • How many more lab-created or manipulated viruses are in the world’s laboratories and under the control of governments and the military?
  • Are potentially dangerous research projects continuing to go on involving American and Chinese collaboration with or without funding from both countries?
  • Why and how has this research project wholly escaped notice amid the growing concern about China’s role in causing the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic?
  • Why have none of the American researchers come forward to draw attention to this project which, at the least, enabled and promoted Chinese efforts to weaponize viruses?

Two years before the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic upended the world, U.S. Embassy officials visited a Chinese research facility in the city of Wuhan several times and sent two official warnings back to Washington about inadequate safety at the lab, which was conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats, according to Washington Post.

A new investigation, titled “Coronavirus 2019-nCoV contains a furin-like cleavage site absent in CoV of the same clade,” suggests it is unlike anything seen before. Which might require furin inhibitors.

Coronavirus study identifies ‘gain of function for efficient spread in humans’

Another paper raises Ethical and Philosophical Considerations for Gain-of-Function Policy: The Importance of Alternate Experiments

Inside the Chinese lab poised to study world’s most dangerous pathogens

South Africa’s high tech response to Covid-19 epidemic

SOUTH AFRICA is leading the way in charting a high tech response to the pandemic. Several hospitals, including private and public facilities are utilising robots to limit exposure and infection control. A two-wheeled robot named Quinton is helping to reduce the time doctors are physically present with infected patients at Tygerberg Hospital, while Netcare has deployed germ-eradicating robots to fight infection.

Netcare Group’s chief executive officer, Dr Richard Friedland says “Both the Xenex pulsed ultraviolet (UV) robots and Yanex Pulsed-Xenon UV robots deployed in Netcare hospitals use high doses of UV light to destroy viruses, bacteria and fungal spores and disinfect hospital wards, theatres and other spaces within minutes”.

Meanwhile Prof Salim Karim outlined this morning, how his team intends to tackle the local epidemic using ‘big data’ by deploying the CSIR National Ops Centre initially created for the soccer world cup. His team is busy gathering data by geolocating tests via cellphones and identifying hotspots inside the country.

A strategy of containment has also been rolled out. Prof Karim is in the process of ‘identifying weak links in the national containment strategy’. He says the country is not just slowing the outbreak but ‘is learning from how the virus spreads’. Is concerned about potential for spread within Prisons, Mines, Hospitals, and is talking about ‘control, enforcement and more aggressive steps’.

The use of technology is proving to be a game-changer.

Local biotech company, Cape Bio Pharm is introducing spike proteins into plants, to produce “a cheaper, locally produced test kit” which would “separate the seasonal flu sufferer from a person infected with COVID-19, thereby alleviating the strain on our healthcare system”

The Health Dept recently ramped up testing by utilising a GeneXpert TB test machine repurposed for Covid-19 that will massively increase capacity.

Two entrepreneurs from CSIR have developed a lab PCR test which takes just 60 minutes.

Stellenbosch University and AzarGen Biotechnologies (Pty) Ltd, a South African biotechnology company have focused on developing ‘human therapeutic proteins’ using advanced genetic engineering and synthetic biology techniques in plants, and have joined forces in the global fight against the coronavirus.

A branded synthetic pharmaceutical, previously used for the treatment of neonatal Respiratory Distress Syndrome (nRDS), a condition where some premature babies struggle to breathe due to collapsed lung sacs, as well as treatment for acute lung injury in adults, is being tested as a supportive agent for the treatment of ARDS, the condition associated with COVID-19.

South Africa’s local biotech industry is already quite advanced, and the country has a history of medical world firsts, including the first ever heart transplant at Groote Schuur hospital.

Telemedicine is moving in leaps and bounds, but still needs a way to go within the public health sector.l

A syndromic response may be required as we move into Winter flu season. Various companies around the world have outlined the means by which multiple tests for a variety of respiratory illnesses may be combined in theory into one single test.

While SAA may have been grounded for good, Ethiopian Airlines arrived with medical supplies from China, and also tests and equipment donated by Jack Ma.

Emirates Airlines has started implementing rapid testing for passengers demonstrating the type of technology being appraised by Senegal’s Louis Pasteur Institute.

Biodx, a proudly South African company,  is developing ‘cutting edge antimicrobial and antiviral technologies’ with technical support from the CSIR. However UV Led Light may turn out to be a better option, as demonstrated by a 30-Second Coronavirus Kill.

South Africa’s first successful genome sequencing of a locally collected sample of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been added to an international database to help better understand the disease. KwaZulu Natal’s Research, Innovation and Sequencing Platform (KRISP) and the Big Data Flagship Programme of the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) has a multi-disciplinary team of world-renowned experts which mainly focuses on analysis and control of viral outbreaks and genomic analysis.

SA’s 3D-printing community is making life-saving protective gear from home and the University of Johannesburg is deploying its printers in the fight against Covid-19.

The United States Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will provide technical assistance to South Africa’s National Department of Health (NDoH) and National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) in addition to 50 million rand to the countries epidemic response.

Concerns about the use of tech during the crisis taking the surveillance state to a new level have been expressed. In 2013 South Africa passed a law protecting personal data, The Personal Information Protection Act.

Hunger must be seen as a determinant of health

YESTERDAYS looting of supermarkets in several South African townships, is unfortunately driven by hunger. These food riots are indicative of an alarming situation unfolding two and a half weeks into the hard lockdown. Gatesville, Manenburg, Tafelsig, Alexandra, are where low-income families have been forced into the lockdown without any tangible relief from government. Hunger must be seen as a determinant of health alongside the burden of disease.

Instead our government appears hellbent on implementing prescriptions driven by the WHO in Geneva. Solutions which may turnout to be wholly unsuited to conditions in emerging economies such as our own. The lockdown may be wrong for Africa.

It is doubtful whether or not the hard lockdown will accomplish any of the supposed objectives laid out by our Health Minister, and should rather be replaced by a smart lockdown, or soft lockdown as soon as possible. Despite experiencing a surge, Japan has implemented a soft lock-down, as have many countries fully aware that completely suppressing the virus risks the situation where one merely postpones and lengthens the epidemic.

According to chief scientist Prof Salim Karim, ‘South Africa will know on 18 April’ if the methodology utilised against the coronovirus is inaccurate or factually correct. The measures may have bought time for our health system to prepare for a coming surge, known as the ‘delayed exponential curve of infection’.

If mitigation measures  to curtail the spread of hunger, are not implemented immediately, the problem of mass starvation could dwarf the current epidemic and grow to haunt South Africans as we move forward during an unprecedented period of economic turmoil. Most households are only able to maintain a two-week supply of food. Without income or food parcels, the situation could quickly deteriorate to conditions seen during wartime, famine and natural disasters.

“Our problem is not that we don’t have enough food in South Africa. Our problem is that the food is only available to those who have cash” writes business strategist Marius Oosthuizen.

The closure of restaurants and hotels has perversely resulted in literal food mountains. Tonnes of produce is being destroyed around the world because of the global pandemic, while ordinary consumers are ironically forced to pay more for fresh produce.

Since 2011, three million more South Africans have been pushed below the poverty line, according to a study by the national data agency, Statistics South Africa. More than 30.4 million South Africans—55.5% of the population—live on less than 992 rand (about $75) per person per month. Yesterdays interest rate cut will assist middle-class households, but the problem remains that most households were already below the poverty line at the beginning of the lock-down.

Ekurhuleni mayor Mzwandile Masina on Tuesday launched a food bank to provide relief to the poor during the Covid-19 outbreak. The same plan alongside further disaster relief is required in every Metro, town and city. School feeding schemes urgently need to be restored. Other relief measures that should be contemplated include once off emergency cash payments to each and every household.

Current relief packages rolled out by national government include  assistance to SMMEs, tax relief, Agricultural Aid, UIF, Health and other support services. More needs to be done if the lockdown continues. As an anonymous author from Iran writes, ‘the difference between barbarism and civilisation is a plate of food’.

It is imperative that food security be seen alongside the burden of disease, as a determinant of people’s health.

 

Lockdown doing more than trashing our rights alongside the economy?

IT MUST strike readers as incredibly ironic, that a virus whose origin is China, has resulted in formerly free and open economies, closing shop and placing their markets in hibernation mode. Most economies including South Africa, UK, USA, France, Italy and Australia have implemented lock-downs and restrictions on movement and travel, with our own country choosing a ‘hard lockdown’.

Last night Professor Salim Abdool Karim outlined the events which have resulted in a low mortality rate and rate of infection (R0). Our country is not alone in this regard with New Zealand reporting similar outcomes, but unlike most experts who attribute the sterling results to the hard lockdown, Professor Karim was at pains to explain that the data needs to be ‘corrected by a fortnight’, or 14 days, to account for incubation, and therefore the elbow in the curve of infection which begins on the very day of the lock-down, is more likely the result of what had happened two weeks previously, in other words, the initial measures taken when our President announced the National State of Disaster, closing our borders, implementing social distancing and hand sanitation measures.

Several news articles rushed to misquote Professor Karim and did not carry his own interpretation of the data which he had presented. There is currently no evidence that the hard lockdown has done anything more to curb the spread of the virus, than closing our borders and tracing infections, and may turn out to be a case of Fear of Being Left Behind. However South Africa will know on 18 April if the countries fight against the coronovirus is inaccurate or factually correct.

Karim explains: “SA’s Covid-19 trajectory is unique, because unlike most other countries, it did not see an exponential increase in cases after its first 100 cases. The most likely explanation was that the country had seen three epidemics: one among travellers, a second among their contacts and a third epidemic of community transmission. By the time the lockdown began on March 26, the first two epidemics had largely burnt out, and community transmission was not occurring at a significant level,”

Nevertheless there was open speculation by yesterday’s panel on what would come next. According to the Professor, South Africa is doomed to experience a ‘delayed exponential curve‘ once the lockdown ends since the period had simply bought time, and thus various criteria for coming out of lockdown were elaborated including a suggestion that the elderly continue a voluntary lockdown until at least September.

He also outlined various measures to deal with potential hotspots, the ‘small brush fires that must be contained to avoid raging fires’. In theory a lockdown like self-quarantine creates dead-ends for infection, but so do many other measures. None of what he said is indicative of why an approach as that followed by South Korea was not considered nor whether a smart lockdown would have been better for our economy?

South Korea appears to have reined in the outbreak without some of the strict lock-down strategies deployed elsewhere in the world, while Sweden is showing data not all that different from countries which had delayed lock-down strategies.

Needless to say, the Department of Health must be commended for its proactive steps in regard to testing and lowering the threshold of surveillance of the disease , so too the unprecedented sharing of information and data as seen during last nights televised presentation. But there are many questions which remain unanswered.

The brutality and callousness with which the hard lockdown restrictions in terms of the Disaster Management Act (DMA) have been implemented by SAPS and SANDF over the past two weeks have taken many citizens by surprise. There are those who would have preferred a ‘smart lockdown’, as well as a growing list of virologists and medical authorities who question the efficacy of introducing steps which show little scientific merit, for example banishing citizens from the great outdoors in a respiratory disease epidemic where ‘fresh air may also save lives’. In this case the cure may be worse than the disease.

The economic fallout and risk of mass starvation and worse total meltdown, certainly needs to be weighed against any purported public health objectives moving forward. It is also questionable whether the DMA promulgated as it was, to deal with natural disasters such as floods, hurricanes and earthquakes is fit for purpose when it comes to a public health emergency.

Given the low mortality and infection rate, it is unclear whether the current health emergency, indeed fits the description of a national disaster if at all.

Witness images of SAPS and SANDF trashing traditional beer stills  and confiscating meat poitjies, effecting arbitrary arrests of joggers and dog-walkers whilst gangs of youths go free. The erection of concentration camps for the homeless, acts of arbitrary punishment and some 9 deaths and counting at the hands of the authorities, including the beating to death of an Alexandra resident, found with a bottle of beer inside his own home.

It is not too late to address those measures which have worked, the massive hand sanitation campaign, social distancing measures and adoption of face masks, while taking a long and hard look at those steps which appear to be little more than a brazen excuse by authoritarians to exert social control over the population.

Getting out of lockdown may be essential to combating impact of the virus

THE LOCKDOWN was never meant to do anything more than buy us time to prepare. Time to allow the public health system to adjust, to stock-up on medication, to initiate testing and special counter-measures.

Unfortunately it appears that many South Africans and government officials are under the impression that the lock-down is some form of a cure-all. It is nothing of the sort. It cannot prevent the second and third wave of infections that will undoubtedly arrive come winter, and it cannot continue being extended if our economy and way of life is to survive.

Although a return to normal is not possible, and social distancing and other measures will be in place for a very long time, the cost of extending the lock-down must be weighed against the inevitable collapse in economic activity that will result. Given that for the majority of South Africans, adapting to a world where the only economic activities will be online jobs, is neither practical nor possible over the short term, nor is it readily apparent what unskilled labour is expected to do during the crisis?

Getting out of lock-down is essential to combat the impact of the virus upon the economy, on people’s lives and livelihoods, and to avoid the continued abuse of state power by the SANDF. Where those on the left including the ANC have supported the extension of the lockdown, it is only the opposition DA which has registered its dismay.

Many of the measures already in place have little scientific or health merit. Preventing people from playing in their yards, from jogging outdoors, or engaging in other activities such as drinking alcohol, that presumably might risk the spread of the virus, is not ideal. A zero tolerance approach to infection has consequences, chief of which is that unless the state can pay its citizens a basic income ,the possibility exists of mass starvation.

There is limited capacity within our country to simply go on dishing out food parcels, to place SMMEs on life support, to postpone bond and debt payments. This while rounding up the homeless, placing such persons in ‘temporary shelters’ that resemble concentration camps. The sheer density of many informal settlements has made such steps seem ludicrous.

One approach to the problem outlined by an Australian virologist, Professor Peter Collignon, is to gradually expose parts of the population to the virus. This controversial approach to developing immunity within the broader population has some merit and should not simply be discarded. In Sweden for example, where there has been no lock-down, admittedly within an excellent health care system, the mortality figures have not been all that different from those countries which have implemented lock-down practices.

In some respects the UK which early on adopted some of the measures in Sweden, before choosing a general lock-down, is an example of the counter-intuitive logic at play. The country at first sheltered the elderly and most vulnerable. Those dying today, would have died tomorrow, argue proponents, dead in future waves of the epidemic. Without a vaccine, the only option for so-called ‘herd immunity‘ is to control the rate of infection, to flatten the curve and stall the onset of the epidemic.

Faced with the prospect that a working vaccine may only be ready in September, in six months time, South Africa has an unenviable task, that of weighing up all the options, examining the case for and against an extension of the current five week lock-down.

published in part by Natal Mercury Letters

 

 

South Africa’s C19 ‘Concentration Camp’ for the Homeless

VIDEO has emerged of appalling conditions inside what appears to be a ‘Concentration Camp for the Homeless‘. The Strandfontein temporary site was setup by the Western Cape administration acting in conjunction with National Government. Its homeless inmates were rounded up two weeks ago when the national lockdown started.

A report from inside the internment camp shows an insider explaining in Afrikaans that ‘everyone is sleeping up against each other’, there is no social distancing, no separation of men and women, lots of condensation from ground water, since the site is right on the beach in Strandfontein.

More alarming is the apparent failure to separate adults, youths and children.

SAPS Western Cape are currently investigating the circumstances surrounding the rape of an 18-year-old girl by a 36-year-old male last night at the ‘Strandfontein temporary shelter’.

A news report carried by INM, explains, that while the inmates or ‘guests of the state’ were apparently ‘free to leave’, they would simply get arrested again for disobeying the lockdown.

“We are forced here. It’s like a concentration camp.” Is how Tracey van der Pool described the conditions at the Strandfontein sports complex.

The facility is clearly operating in contravention of Article 12 of our Bill of Rights. All citizens have a fundamental right to be brought before a judge within 48 hours following their arrest, but of course, the latest annex to Pollsmoor Prison is posing as a ‘solution to the pandemic’ in terms of the National Disaster Act and nobody has been charged.

The Children’s Act defines a child as ‘any person under the age of 18.’

Earlier another video emerged of a petty confrontation between the ANC’s Cameron Dugmore and DA’s JP Smith at a media briefing at the site last week, in which Dugmore proceeds to ignore the unsanitary conditions and instead tackles JP Smith over his alleged failure to give SAPS hand sanitiser.

Human Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu says her department has identified five informal settlements whose residents will be requested to relocate as concerns grow around the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus.

Neither SAPS nor the SAHRC are likely to act given their bad track record on dealing with similar matters.

In 2002 the Mental Health Act was amended to prevent involuntary medical commitment for economic reasons.

Volunteers from various Community Action Networks have written a letter listing their objections and concerns about the living conditions at the Strandfontein Sports ground site. The group have encouraged people to sign the letter before Monday, 13 April 2020 at midday, as it will be sent to Mayor Dan Plato.

In another twist, the City has been issuing fines of R500 to inmates, which may contravene rights of prisoners.

SEE: Doctors Without Borders makes scathing findings against City’s Strandfontein shelter

SEE: The Strandfontein Relocation Camp is a test of our morality as a city