This is the time for us to become disciplined

This is not the time to abuse a privilege. We were heartened at the start of the week when President Ramaphosa announced the scaling down to Level 1 of the lockdown restrictions.

But he made an impassioned plea, warning that any deviation from the essentials of social distancing, sanitising, handwashing and wearing of masks could propel the country into a new wave of infections.

Relax, but don’t relapse, to paraphrase his message.

Decisions to move in either direction in terms of the levels are not made lightly or thumb-sucked; they are based on sound medical, scientific, social and economic statistics and factors.

While it is a relief that the numbers of dead and those infected are steadily decreasing, relaxing of the health and hygiene regimen can offset all the gains made in the past months.

It is wonderful to enjoy old freedoms we often took for granted, such as gathering for sport and religion, as well as being allowed in the open air for recreation.

The business sector, particularly the tourism and leisure industry, breathed a welcome sigh of relief that further burdens had been lifted.

Hopefully the trend we saw late last year, when the economy showed a noticeable improvement after lockdown regulations were eased, will repeat itself.

However, it did not take many hours before abuse of the curfew times and lifting of alcohol sale restrictions saw a rise in accidents and assaults, to the detriment of the long-suffering frontline workers at hospitals and clinics.

This is, unfortunately, a predictable pattern and if we resort to our previous bad habits, there could well be a third and even a fourth wave of infections.

The big plus this time is the availability of the vaccine, which should be the tipping point to as near to normal as we can hope for.

Much of the financial and other repercussions of the pandemic cannot be simply undone; the main target right now is to ensure we don’t negate the gains that have been made.

It’s going to be either selfdiscipline or having to be disciplined. With freedom comes responsibility.

Meanwhile, we remain in gratitude to those frontline workers who are hoping their burden will be made lighter by our positive behaviour.