Would you clap for health workers?

To start with, I must admit I’m a Brit who retired and moved to Port Elizabeth 12 years ago.

I watched the British nation last week standing at social distancing levels clapping for the NHS, offering, as a nation, a heartfelt thanks to all those on the front line of Covid-19.

The doctors and nurses, the ambulance drivers and medics, the porters and the hospital cleaners.

All those who have put their care for the nation before themselves. Yes, the entire workforce of the National Health Service.

No clinic or hospital closures, no infighting, no demonstrations, and no unions sticking their oar in.

Nothing but dedicated health care for the whole nation.

The NHS staff aren’t well paid, they didn’t have all the PPE they wanted and all the other things that are being demanded here, but they continued to save the nation.

UK had a lockdown, but it was driven by science, not individual minister’s passions.

It was understood and generally adhered to by the public, though the individual financial cost of transgression was astronomical compared with SA.

It was administered by educated and civilised law enforcement officers who definitely don’t see themselves as tin gods.

Morons didn’t throw tests all over the highway and pretend they didn’t notice, possibly because nobody carried those test kits in the open back of a bakkie.

Politics did not play any part in any of it, the nation, led by the National Health Service, just got on with it.

One particular doctor I know was glad she caught the virus at an early stage, so that she could get back to work without making a fuss, hoping she would have some immunity, and do her bit.

How many South African health workers have that state of mind?

And to conclude, here is the burning question: How many South African residents could or would now feel the need to stand in the street and join together as a nation to clap for the health workers and others on the front line? Clive Hassell, Port Elizabeth