Few thoughts from lockdown

Lockdown in South Africa, Day 12.

Lockdown in South Africa, Day 12.

There’s still no end in sight for COVID-19 and the global economy is still tanking. We’re all still scared about the futures of our families, businesses and our country.

It is worth remembering that we come from a long-line of people who have made it through these kinds of emergencies before. And — in the year 2020 — we’ve never been this prepared to handle them.

The scientists working on new treatments and vaccines have never been smarter and better equipped. The doctors on the front lines have never had the drugs, tools and training that they have now. Our economists and the monetary policies in their toolbox have never been this sophisticated, driven by real-world data and able to act proactively.

And, thank goodness for the internet.

If you’re a South African in your 30’s or 40’s, your parents raised you through the final years of Apartheid with the border war, forced removals, civil disobedience, township protests and various states of emergency; the AID’s epidemic and its period of unmanageable death, uncertainty and panic; 1998 interest rates of 24% and the 2008 global economic resession.

Their parents didn’t have it any easier, and during a generation or two before them there were world wars (two of them) and the Spanish Flu…

The Spanish Flu — which started in Kansas, infected a quarter of the world’s population and killed up to 100million people — spread around the globe in 1918 to 1920.

For reference, penicillin, the first true antibiotic, was only discovered in 1928.

Aren’t you glad that we’re not back in the 20th century?

There has never been a better time for a global pandemic.