If you need the fear of hell to be a good person, then you have failed as a human being. If you need the president of your country to tell grown-ups to take responsibility for their health and the well-being of others, then you have failed as a human being too.
In a perfect world, no one should die. We should all live for forever and remain perfectly healthy and well. The problem is that we do not live in a perfect world. People die every day and people’s body’s break down and we become sick. I know that some deaths may be natural, and some deaths unnatural or due to our lifestyles, and possibly some due to genetics, although the field of epigenetics is proving otherwise.
We know the SARS-CoV-2 has allegedly killed almost 2 million people worldwide.
But it’s a tragedy only if you focus on that 2 million. You see in 2020, 58 million people died.
Source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
I do not have the stats of the full breakdown of categories of deaths for 2020, but I do have some of them for 2019. And according to the World Health Organisation, 9 million died from some kind of heart disease, 7 million from stroke, 4 million from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, 6 million from some disease of the respiratory system, 2 million each from some issue with their kidneys as well as diabetes. I do know that up to 700 000 people die from the seasonal flu every year according to the World Health Organization as well.
Source: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/the-top-10-causes-of-death
I also know that 800 000 people committed suicide in 2019.
South Africa is talking about the president getting apparently “emotional” for 30 000 people dying from Covid in 2020, but he did not choke up when more than 42 000 woman and children were raped in the 2019/20 period or when the more than 21 000 people were murdered in that time period as well.
Source: https://africacheck.org/factsheets/factsheet-south-africas-crime-statistics-for-2019-20/
If you think you can trust a politician, then you must also believe that the Easter Bunny is a real person. When Cyril Ramaphosa addressed South Africa on 29 December 2020, he had a white spot on the corner of his mouth, which is caused by a severely dry mouth which I have commonly seen in public speakers who are nervous or really anxious. A large portion of his speech appeared to be written by him personally. I did notice tears in his eyes. A large majority of South Africans think he was becoming emotional due to the deaths. I would like to argue that this was not the reason he teared up. It’s a nice thought that a leader cares so much that he sheds tears for his people. But consider that his emotional response was actually a personal one. Thousands of people died just this morning, but you did not cry. If someone you know personally died today, you would not be able to stop the tears. President Ramaphosa is a human being too. I would guess that he lost someone close to him due to Covid. This is why he made a special note to light that candle on midnight. This was a personal message. He was mourning someone, he was not mourning the nation.
You see the real issue here is not that people are dying. 58 million people died this year and we are not alarmed because we have come to accept death as part of the process of life. The real issue is that we are running out of beds in hospitals, we have few oxygen points left and our medical support have become infected and we have less people available to treat others.
If you knew you could rob a bank and nothing would happen to you, would you do it? I do not know about you, but I may consider it if I were desperate. What stops you and I from robbing the bank is the fact that there is a law in place and that you could face serious jail time or worse.
In the same way, it’s not a question about people dying, it is a logistics issue. We have a problem because we have more patients than beds. The moment we have more beds than patients, we have no problem. It is not that people are dying. It was never about people dying because people die every day.
So… we have to isolate ourselves from the world to save our lives. So that we may live! But what does it mean to live? Is living merely breathing? Is living meaning that we exist? I do not believe that living means to just be alive. The quality of a life is far more important than merely existing. What kind of a life is it if you have no job, no money, lost your home or your car, have no food to eat, have no money to pay your bills, cannot have fun and take time to go on holiday…?
Its so easy to wear a mask, it is so easy to wash and sanitize your hands, and it is so easy to just stand 2 hand lengths apart from each other. But people do not take responsibility. I attended a function once and had my mask on, and the host said to me, “This is [city removed], we do not wear masks here, takes yours off…” and it was true as no one wore their masks at this function, except for me. It is this kind of irresponsible behaviour multiplied over 58 million people in South Africa and across the world that is keeping this pandemic alive. The cure is responsibility, not a vaccine!
Do your bit to stay safe, but we need to just get back to the old world already. Otherwise, we will have a problem far bigger than covid. If you have a headache, you can’t cut off your head to feel better. But that is how the world is handling this pandemic. If we continue this way….we are truly screwe
