In for the long haul, let’s ease up a little
In a way, there’s nothing left to write about the coronavirus other than to report the figures and wait for it to end. The lockdown obviously delays the end, and the delay is the price we pay for not having the health system, such as it is, overrun by Covid-19.
But for how long the delay? Someone clearly just told Cyril Ramaphosa a joke because he told it on Tuesday. “Yes I know I said I’d lift the lockdown on April 16, but I didn’t say what year ”… hahaha.
For the moment, though, commentary seems almost pointless, other than to entertain or amuse. There are only so many ways of saying the same important thing — matter-of-factly, despairingly, gonzo or whatever. It’s the same: this virus, this lockdown, is cruel to the poor in the way it isn’t to the rich.
There may or may not be a reckoning for that, but we will only know when the virus has exhausted itself. The lockdown may make it harder to transport it from Gansbaai to Tzaneen, but the poverty in which most South Africans live makes infection almost inescapable.
Karma may make an appearance. There’s evidence to suggest, even in cases in which pandemics have been relatively benign, that in the decades after a lethal epidemic real wages almost increase. Research from the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank suggests pandemics boost the working-class condition for about 40 years afterwards.
Something to look forward to, but it also implies company profits would be lower and pensions dented. Perhaps we will all learn how to live simpler lives, but I somehow doubt it. You can see the hope dawning in the markets. For a few days there was a run in global equities. We’re saved! Oh glory be! And then on Tuesday and Wednesday, a slump, and then hope again in the US.
The markets are looking for a price, any price, and that’s the coronavirus teasing them. The problem with this virus is that we think we’re in a war with it, but it doesn’t know that. Real wars have energising economic effects, often on the defeated. Pandemics do the opposite.
So, when does this thing go away? Literally no-one knows. The careful scientists seem to be saying up to 80% of populations will be infected in the absence of a vaccine (two years away from SA). And though most people won’t even know it, up to 2% of infected people will die.
So the bottom for, say, a Sasol or a Shell or GM is simply unfathomable, no matter how obviously sound their intrinsic value might be. The bottom is when the virus stops spreading, and if the lockdown works that could be sometime next year.
So does our house arrest get extended? Without the slightest doubt. There’s been some slick PR and some genuine effort by the wealthy to help, but as of Wednesday the private sector had conducted about 90% of all coronavirus tests, and while the government has been bragging about mobile test vehicles spreading out to get among poor and distant communities, there is as yet no testing equipment in them.
Knowing the capacity of our bureaucracy to stuff things up, even if by the end of next week all the testing equipment and the protective gear we need is in place, it could take another month to get reliable data in place. This is not Switzerland. There are 57-million of us, and if the British are looking at an April/May peak, then we are looking at June/July, provided we remain locked down.
That’s a hell of an ask. Ramaphosa is going to have to take some of his more rabid and stupid ministers off the public’s back if he wants us to stay indoors that long. He’ll have to allow smokers to buy a packet of fags from the corner shop again (you can always warn smokers that in ventilator triage they’re at the back of the queue).
He will have to allow alcohol sales, provided there’s no public drinking. Besides, Ed Kieswetter at the SA Revenue Service will by next month be wailing for excise taxes from alcohol producers, some of whom after just two weeks of shutdown are close to collapse.
In fact, I can’t see reason to prevent any retailer opening its doors, whether it is selling socks or vegetables. Rules can easily be designed to govern safe shopping. People have left the cities if they had to. The ban on crossing provincial boundaries could remain in place. Staying at home should remain in place unless you gotta go and get something.
The thing is to ease off bit by bit. Masks should be mandatory (when they finally arrive). No gatherings of any kind. Night curfews. No parties. Kids should be back in school by the end of April at the latest.
The big test for Ramaphosa, though, is political, not medical. The lockdown makes him safe and even dynamic. As we normalise, so will our politics and he will begin to wobble again and there’s the small matter of actually getting on with those “structural reforms” he promised in his speech announcing the lockdown. We hear nothing from the finance minister, whose reforms they are. Let’s hope he is well.
I CAN ’ T SEE REASON TO PREVENT ANY RETAILER OPENING ITS DOORS. RULES CAN EASILY BE DESIGNED FOR SAFE SHOPPING