I’m still not convinced that we are doing the right thing.
From midnight tonight, we will get as close to normal as we’ve ever been in the past five months.
For the most part, President Cyril Ramaphosa is being applauded for his decision to take the country to Level 2 of the lockdown.
This means from tomorrow, we will be allowed to engage in a number of our pre-lockdown activities again.
This includes the right to travel around the country freely and to enjoy the great outdoors.
The common-sense bans remain in place, like large gatherings and international travel.
But depending on how well we behave ourselves over the next few weeks, that could also change for the better.
In fact, with just two weeks to go until spring, our Covid confinement may be a distant memory by the time summer hits.
I worry that for many, the end of our confinement will also mean them acting like it’s the end of the Coronavirus pandemic, which of course is not the case.
We have done well so far to learn from what happened in other territories and then avoiding those mistakes here.
One big lesson we need to be aware of is the premature rejoicing in places like Spain, New Zealand and parts of China.
These are all places that had their peaks long before we did, and therefore shouldn’t still be struggling with new infections this late in the game.
Yet here we are!
There are many examples of victory laps and celebrations happening far too early, only to lead to a relapse into a hard lockdown again.
As of tomorrow, our complicated relationship with alcohol will also resume.
I have heard dozens of healthcare workers talk about the relief they feel to not have to deal with liquor-related casualties over weekends.
In fact, they saw a sudden (but not unexpected) surge a few weeks ago when the sale of booze was briefly allowed again.
Suddenly they were treating an increase in patients that had been shot or stabbed during drunken arguments.
They also saw a sudden spike in vehicle accidents again.
Of course none of this came as a surprise to us as society, because that has been our normal for decades.
And I think we are all quietly anticipating a return to that normal from tomorrow.
I do feel sorry for our healthcare workers who will have their hands full again with incidents that we now know are completely avoidable.
It still bothers me that we have become immune to news about people dying.
The lockdown has served as a global social experiment with all of us guinea pigs in our open laboratories.
Our actions in 2020 are going to be studied for many years to come, especially how easily we started to accept death all around us.
And how when given the choice between not causing anyone’s unwitting death, and doing something completely arbitrary and unnecessary, like eating out with friends, we chose risking our lives and those of others.
It’s one of those things I will always find exceptionally hard to swallow.
Now let’s see what we do with these new freedoms from tomorrow.
Will we act responsibly and expand those freedoms, or will we be our own worst enemy and be the cause of a forced few steps back?