I am trying to figure out why everybody is in such a hurry to get back to the old normal.
Of all the things that this pandemic needs from us, patience is at the top of the list.
I understand all the frustration.
I am also siek en sat of being forced to stay at home and having my freedom of movement restricted.
But there is nothing essential about going to eat out at a restaurant, or going to a party.
It seems that we have lost our survival instincts and are so determined to socialise that the government has had to step in again to discipline us about gatherings.
It seems the minute there’s a gap, people rush out to act as irresponsibly as they possibly can.
And the Coronavirus likes that very much.
So we seem to be caught in this spiral of few restrictions that lead to more restrictions.
And the frustration then brings us back to throwing caution to the wind, which in turn energises us to deal with the consequences.
Essentially, we are the architects of our own imprisonment.
And yet I hear people complain about how the government has bungled the management of the pandemic and its vaccine rollout.
And while there is a lot of truth in that, it’s also true that you can say that about just about every government in the world, with very few exceptions.
From the poster children of good Covid management, like Australia, to first-world icons like Sweden.
They have all gotten something drastically wrong in the last 15 months.
So let’s not be too harsh with our own government. And let’s not forget that we are all learning; no world leader has ever had to deal with something like this before.
And then there’s the ever-present danger that the ignorant pose to us ever emerging from this pandemic.
There’s the selfishly ignorant who refuse to take the vaccine and then there’s the ignorant who infect others.
Take the Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans Association, which last week called on people to ignore Covid regulations and gather at Nkandla to protect one man from 15 months of mild discomfort.
This while millions of his fellow citizens have been going through severe discomfort for the exact amount of time, exactly because of such gatherings.
Considering the destruction that the Delta variant is wreaking and the very likely chance that we will still be fighting it (or a new variant) next year, the rush to return to a pre-pandemic society is almost comical.