The President was only 22 minutes late for his address last night. In it, he said that there would be some relaxation of the lockdown at the end of the month and a gradual re-opening of the economy, but not for those areas with high and/or increasing transmission rates.
The next extension. The nextension.
The nextension means at least another 18 days at Level 4 before we even get considered for any sort of parole.
But as you can see, Cape Town is very much one of those red areas (it’s right at the top of the South African Covid tree, in fact), but then so are all the major metros to some extent. And Port Elizabeth.
And so it seems unlikely that we’ll get any lockdown relief any time soon. In the meantime, the economy will have rely on the 27 people who work outside Cape Town and Joburg, including the 2 guys in the Northern Cape.
Phew. Recession and economic disaster averted.
Not really – unless we are going to become a sand-based economy.
Still, I’m past ruling anything out at this stage.
Today, I’ve mainly been walking a grumpy beagle, putting the finishing touches to a quiz I’m hosting tomorrow evening, and helping out with school science projects. We’re delving deeply into Physics: my favourite of all the Sciences (assuming you exclude all the good ones first). I’m knee-deep in frequencies and wavelengths. I thought I’d left this all behind at school. That was always the plan, and indeed the intervening n years have been blissful – at least in their lack of physics.
(I admit that I have used gravity quite a bit, if I’m honest.)
My brain hurts and I need a beer. But even those have become much more valuable given the guaranteed extended time before I’m able to buy any more.