Lead article on News24 today. The penny is starting to drop. You cannot contain hungry masses numbering in the millions. You cannot ruthlessly police people who have nothing to eat while being confined in enclosed spaces, living on top of one another. The lockdown means nothing in these communities other than starvation. We need to open the economy and get people back to work, or face far more dire consequences than the virus.
I started a thread on what I experienced and was alarmed by the plight of the poor being starving in a rural town like Riversdale. What happens in slum settlements in cities will even be more alarming and I am afraid the problem is not handled properly by the SA Government specifically and the world governments generally.
Severe starvation is already affecting probably 30% of the world population who are lucky to have a proper meal a week, The present measures jeopardize agricultural production as well and will only aggravate the starvation situation worldwide.
What a choice - starve to death or in the alternative gets infected by the coronavirus? This could lead to fatalistic uprisings all over the world and destroy the environment in which most people live. The consequences could be horrendous. . .
Hunger is far less discriminatory in who it kills than the virus. Virus is at roughly 2% mortality rate, the vast majority being old people who are already suffering from various medical conditions. Hunger kills everyone, with babies and small children especially vulnerable to malnutrition.