Playing roulette with lives of our children, and others

By most accounts, SA has not reached the peak of Covid-19 infections (yet).

For what it’s worth, the government’s response to the virus has been described as among the best in the world — at least at the outset. Having said all that, staging down to levels 3 or 4, as we approach an inevitable peak, when it is anticipated that the virus will wreak havoc with the lives of people in informal settlements around the country (I certainly hope this scenario can be avoided), is as courageous as it is reckless, and dangerous.

So, if you’re not a public policymaker at the moment, count yourself lucky.

Imagine having to make the decision, in the midst of the pandemic, to send children back to school, with limited information; with a state buckling under pressure of challenges from various groups, some of whom may have vested interests in lifting the lockdown.

The main concern is, understandably, the economic affect of a lockdown with no definitive end in sight.

This is precisely the case with the life of the virus.

Nobody knows when it will lose its potency (or whether, indeed, it actually will); whether it can be contained from spreading; whether herd immunity will emerge, or whether a vaccine will be developed any time in the next six to 12 months.

While it is impossible to confidently tell what the economic affect will be — whether it will be next week, next year or 10 years from now — it is equally impossible to make any predictions about the virus.

What we do know, with absolute certainty, is that the virus is highly infectious, that it can destroy human organs

— lungs, liver, heart, or kidneys — and cause slow painful death, or long-lasting pathologies.

Beyond that we have nothing. And it is into this void, of sorts, that we send children back to school, open some businesses, and “get the economy going again”.

Though I have never, myself, been a paranoid or neurotic person, the virus has caused me to live every day in fear because of “underlying conditions”.

Without intending to sound morose, I have lived a full life. If and when the virus gets me — the longer it is around, I won’t bet against getting it — the virus will take me out, and that’s about it.

It is the children for whom I fear the most.

There is this belief, based on some evidence, which suggests that children are immune to Covid-19.

Though the evidence seems convincing, I can’t get myself to play roulette with the lives of children, and not just for utilitarian reasons (they are the future, and if we protect them we “protect our future”).

They’re human, but also, while they may not “get” the virus, as some evidence suggests, two things are worth bearing in mind.

The first is that there are people who are asymptomatic, and as the New England

Journal of Medicine found, “asymptomatic transmission [is] the Achilles heel of current strategies to control Covid 19”.

This brings us to the idea that children are somehow “immune” to the virus.

The point should be made, here, is that they may, simply, be asymptomatic.

The parents of young school-going children know full-well the way that coughs and sneezes spread diseases among children, how they circulate among the children at schools, and how the children bring these diseases back to families.

The problem, as I see it, is that children are believed to be relatively unaffected by Covid-19, because they have not fallen ill or died in large numbers.

This position does not address the issue of asymptomatic carriers of the virus, and how it can be transmitted to people — with potentially tragic outcomes for those who have “underlying conditions”.

The reality, such as it is, is that it is almost impossible to shut the country down indefinitely.

At the same time, we can also not throw caution to the wind and (quite literally) sacrifice segments of society, like the aged and the young.

This is one of the arguments that is gaining traction, especially in the US, and it’s difficult to ignore the convenient fact that these are the people who, generally, are not part of the workforce.

They are, so to speak, economically inactive, which — in the crudest social Darwinist language — makes them dispensable. It’s hard to wrap my head around that.

For now, though, we have to sit it out —“luckily” for me, I work from home with only occasional trips out into the world, as it were — and hope for the best, while the state is preparing for the worst by preparing infrastructure to deal with what may be an inevitable wave of infections as we go deeper into winter, and beyond.

For now, the evidence shows that SA is doing better than the US and Britain, countries that are “more advanced”.

As impossible as it may seem, let us hope the virus evaporates, or that a vaccine arrives before infections and deaths rise.

For now, I worry about our children.