ROB ROSE: Why Ramaphosa mustn’t lift the lockdown too soon
The human and financial cost of temporarily closing businesses and keeping people from going about their daily activities is immense – but not doing it would be far more devastating
06 April 2020 - 06:00
As the Covid-19 epidemic burns through the US and Europe, the cynics who initially rejected calls for a global lockdown, arguing that “the cure mustn’t be worse than the disease”, are slowly losing their voice.
The poster child for this lobby is US president Donald Trump. In early March he dismissed calls for a US lockdown, saying the country doesn’t shut down for seasonal flu (which kills 37,000 Americans every year), so why do it for a virus that had caused just 22 deaths at that stage?..
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