This year, after Eskom published it upcoming 5-level load shedding schedule, intervention by coronavirus delayed actual cut-offs. EskomSePush app claims “No Load Shedding :) 3 months ago” – and publishes Covid-19 numbers instead.
Except… electricity continues to fluctuate. Power shut-off from 3:30 to 5am this morning, with shorter duration fluctuations since.
Does Eskom understands how it “looks” to depower a nation during a pandemic and has decided, like Brazil’s Bolsonaro, to fudge reality?
Bolsonaro’s government stopped releasing total numbers of Covid-19 cases and deaths and wiped an official site clean of swaths of data.
Taking note of Bolsonaro, Eskom could load shed for shorter durations and pretend it’s not happening.
Or is Eskom, like everyone else, simply out of juice?
I’ve managed, until the last day or two, to stave off lockdown fatigue.
Friends and family admit malaise, too.
We’re all in uncharted waters.
Does lockdown fatigue come in waves? If so, is our current experience the crest of the wave - or its trough?
Does it matter?
Fortitude is needed. But what? And how?
Mental health experts warn of fallout.
Even in the early stages of the lockdown, the World Health Organization issued a statement that noted “elevated rates of stress or anxiety” in the general population, before warning that, “as new measures and impacts are introduced – especially quarantine and its effects on many people’s usual activities, routines or livelihoods – levels of loneliness, depression, harmful alcohol and drug use, and self-harm or suicidal behaviour are also expected to rise.”
[By] 21 April … 42 researchers from around the world had formed the International Covid-19 Suicide Prevention Research Collaboration amid growing concern about the longer-term mental health consequences of the virus. Leaving aside the probability of another spike, the aftershock of the pandemic is likely to last a long time and leave yet more casualties in its wake.
… [One off] kinds of emergencies are classed as “single events that occur within a limited time-frame and affect a defined population”. A global pandemic does not fit that model.
“The word most often used is ‘unprecedented’… and it looks increasingly likely that the long-term consequences will also be unprecedented in scale. … there is a lot of concern among health care professionals … about what will happen next.”
It is in the coming months and even years, then, that the psychological effects of the pandemic will become most apparent. “Trauma occurs when you are overwhelmed by an event that you cannot process…”
***
It is time to revamp thoroughly how police and police departments operate. But nothing will change expeditiously enough to save lives right now.The use of tear gas and pepper spray, which provoke coughing, adds to the health risk, as do police crowd control techniques like “kettling” — pushing demonstrators into smaller, contained and tightly packed spaces.“American Police are at War with Democracy Itself”
“The police tactics — the kettling, the mass arrests, the use of chemical irritants — those are completely opposed to public health recommendations,” said Malika Fair, director of Public Health Initiatives at the Association of American Medical Colleges. “They're causing protesters to violate the six-feet recommendation. The chemicals may make them … remove their masks. This is all very dangerous.”
In New York, Milwaukee, Cincinnati and Washington, D.C., civil rights groups are filing lawsuits and exploring other legal steps if police don’t take measures to protect detained protesters. In these cities, and many more across the country, demonstrators have been held for hours, packed together in cells with little room to social distance or access to running water, civil rights attorneys said.
Police in city after city have made it very clear that they simply do not care if they are exposed as lawless brutes. ..
The police violence is not restricted to Black protesters, or even protesters in general. On Saturday night, officers in Brooklyn brutalized a hospital worker walking home from his job of managing the COVID-19 crisis, leaving his hospital ID smeared with blood. Police are arresting journalists, legal observers and even food deliverers — all of whom are permitted to be on the streets after locally imposed curfews — just for doing their jobs.
All of these actions were not only outrageous, but flagrantly illegal, and dozens of similar horror stories are emerging every night. The police know the whole world is watching, and the message they are sending is very clear: We’re in charge, not your laws or your elected officials.
***
Meanwhile, Sara Cooper’s terrific Trump voice-overs find a grateful audience. Click to view her recent pieces enjoyed by a growing audience of millions: Meanwhile, back at the ranch…
A walk on the wild side. Today, I stepped out of the security gate and enjoyed my first walk in ten weeks through the rural neighborhood. Alone. Pepper spray in pocket. Knobkerrie walking stick in hand. Mask around my neck.It was lovely. Legs and lungs adjusted quickly. Neighborhood dogs set the pattern for barking. I reciprocated, woof for woof.
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