Yeah. We were a bit slow on the testing front too, and it’s still not ideal in some places. Our health department is making the effort to develop a world-leading tracing etc system though. They discovered gaps in our current system with so much pressure being put on it. It’s obviously something that will be needed on an ongoing basis and there will be more pandemics in the future which they’re making an effort to be ready for.

There were a couple of areas that were slack in the stay-at-home phase. The police presence was increased in those places and people asked to go home. I don’t know what reputation SA police have, but ours are mostly trusted so that worked. There were laws put in place if people repeatedly refused to go home, but I’m not sure if they were even used. If they were, there weren’t many arrests.

I second that, the hoping you get back to it soon.

The lockdown has been a busy period for me. Less clinical work, but a huge admin task that the lockdown entailed.
And I also had to spend time making wine (SA had a ban on the sale of alcohol from March 28 to June 1), which was more time consuming than I thought.
South Africa also locked down early, and quite draconian at that. They did well in equipping hospitals and retraining the army of home based care workers (we have them due to the HIV epidemic) but they failed in the testing field. Although that is better now (it used to be more than a week), test results still take days to come through. So test and trace is not very effective. Also the social distancing measures and wearing of masks is not adhered to very well.
Hence, despite locking down early, we are in a very different place from NZ.

I must take back what I said about Mr Biden, I saw a few interviews with him, where he appeared anything but senile. Herewith I retract that characterisation.

Our lockdown has been over a while. We were lucky in that our government shut things down pretty quick, which meant little community spread and a shorter lockdown. Our borders are still almost completely closed, of course, but within the country things are pretty much normal except for the reduction in tourism.

I hope you get back to it soon. I’ve found this lockdown thing has given me the opportunity to do a lot more writing than before.

Hi mate. Yeah, sort of. Thanks for asking. I don’t feel much like writing. I’ve been in a fair bit of pain, and that makes it difficult to concentrate on writing. I’ll get back into it, hopefully sooner rather than later. I’ve started a few posts that haven’t made it onto the website because by the time I’ve written anything substantial they’re obsolete. I’ve been trying to do as much as I can on the Heather’s Homilies Facebook page, but that doesn’t have many followers. It’s easier for me to work in that shorter format at the moment.

Also, I don’t much like the way my site is now. I thought it would be okay, but it’s just not how I want things and I’m not comfortable with using it.

Not heard much from you recently. Are you okay?

He botched it big time indeed.
I think his second term is a lost case, never mind CPAC.
However, on 538 his compound approval rating is still at a mindblowing 42.3%.

Well, we have seen how Mr Trump botched the Covid-19 epidemic. And he is on record that he does not take responsibility, and when asked why he emasculated the Epidemic Response Team in 2018 he passed the buck, to “Tony”. (who is “Tony”?)
https://www.axios.com/white-house-pandemic-national-security-trump-disbanded-e9c2e350-7cb6-4875-9e98-47579530684f.html

Mr Trump wants to make this about the mental capacity to be president? I think Mr Trump’s (increasing) detachment from reality is much worse than the mild symptoms of aging in Mr Biden. Yeah, bring it on!

Yeah. The handling in the US has exposed Trump big time. However, I’ve seen plenty of reports, such as from CPAC, that his core supporters think the media are making too big a thing of this and it’s just another attempt to get him out of office.