23/04/2020
First post I’ve seen in weeks that makes sense....
*Written by The Head of Trauma at Groote Schuur Hospital, Prof Andrew Nicol.*
Good afternoon all.
Just putting down a few outcomes of the discussion on the pandemic with some doc friends of mine in the school group.
1. The lock down is in place to slow the progression of the disease, NOT to eradicate it by end of May.
2. Some people are missing the point because they naively think the govt will somehow get rid of it so life goes back to normal. These are people who have ignored the global reality since January. This is the dangerous delusional thinking that some people are applying in their assessment of the situation when advocating we should stop the lockdown because they are literally only waking up to this thing now, or when we were initially shut down.
3. Flattening the curve means slowing down the disease so that hospitals can cope with the sick. It does not mean eradicating the disease all together.
4. No government will be able to eradicate the disease this year. It’s here until a cure or a vaccine is found.
5. A vaccine is at least a year away. That’s April 2021. The earliest vaccine trials just started late last month. It takes 18 to 24 months to make, test and assess the efficacy of a vaccine. So 1 year is literally a Hail Mary.
6. There is NO going back to normal. Your normal will not exist for at least a year. Economies globally will keep bleeding and we are likely to have rolling lockdowns until a vaccine is found.
7. Even when the ban is lifted, tourism and hospitality industry, and many others will not see an increase in business for at least a year. Until a vaccine is found people will continue to self isolate even when a lock down is lifted.
8. The only reprieve we are going to get is if we have thousands of people who have been infected and recovered and minimum deaths so that we have some level of herd immunity. That is also still a theory that is yet to be proven because some countries think they may be seeing people get reinfected. Even with that in place normal is not feasible because fear still reigns and people will remain isolated until safety is guaranteed- cure or vaccine.
9. The above is still 6 months away. We are projected to reach our peak in September. That means, bleeding economy, rolling lockdowns, death and chaos until then.
10. The decisions made in the lockdown like no alcohol and no dog walking or running and no e-commerce are not made with the privileged in mind. They are made with the masses in mind. What you allow in the suburbs you must allow in the townships and those two things look very different in ex*****on.
11. Now our government is doing the best it can and they have reacted faster than most developed countries. Our progress is still better than most and right now we’re riding the dumb hope that somehow BCG vaccine gives us some fighting chance (still unproven).
12. So please please we all need to do whatever we can to help our neighbors, help each other, support our government and stop having delusional ideas about any level of normalcy at the end of this month. Adjust your projections and educate the uneducated on the same.
13. Normal is dead. Let that sink in. But hope is very much alive!
