COVID-19 pandemic - I told you so!

I do not want to say this, but I told you so may be quite in line here. A week or so before the RSA lockdown was instituted on the 27th March 2020, I tried to tell some politicians and everyone who cared to listen that it was not really necessary to lockdown our countries just for the fear of covid. I suggested that lockdowns would do more harm than good both in the short term and long term. I tried to point out that the lockdown approach negated well tried and tested disease prevention, control and treatment protocols. no one listened, and still no one is listening right now!

However, there are two highly developed countries which followed the sort of approach which I was advocating for even well before I advocated for it. These are South Korea and Japan. I want to ask all open minded people to check what I was advocating for and what these two countries did and the fantastic results which they have achieved so far minus the unintended grievous socioeconomic devastation which come with various lockdowns in countries which instituted these non-selective ablation procedures and I would call them. You don't burn your house down just because it has been infested with bugs, but you selectively ablate the infesting bugs themselves leaving your house intact and livable. Yes, burning down the house will surely ablate the infesting bugs, but it would also ablate the house as well! We can never say antespectively that burning down the house is inevitable in the face of bugs infestation!

Look at what has happened in the USA, yes, a lot of people have died, but over 30 million people (and their families) have lost jobs, a lot of them permanently! A lot of companies have closed shop, some permanently as well. The same applies in Europe and all the other countries which opted for the burning down the house approach. Could that not be avoided? Could the billions of socioeconomic losses and the slow destruction of millions of lives, both young and old, not be avoided?

With an open and unemotional mind, can I please ask you to read my original advice given herein and below again? Thank you very much and God Bless. Amen.

" COVID-19 PANDEMIC: TO LOCKDOWN OR NOT TO LOCKDOWN?

1. This is the big question which faces or faced most national governments. And apparently most national governments decided to lockdown, some more severely than others. But the bigger question is this: Is locking down the only correct or right thing to do?

2. The answer to the above question is actually very simple and straight forward to disease prevention and control specialist medical professional like me. This is because there are just a few basic disease prevention and control principles which apply here.

3. The very first and most basic medical principle is this: First, do no harm – physically, psychologically, mentally, socially, economically, environmentally or otherwise!

4. The second most basic medical principle is this: Do not make disease prevention, control, treatment or recovery more grievous than endurance - physically, psychologically, mentally, socially, economically, environmentally or otherwise!

5.The third basic principle is this: Location makes the difference! COVID-19 in one person, one country and in one region of the world is not exactly the same disease as COVID-19 in another different person, different country or in a different region of the world in terms of client response to disease prevention, control, treatment and recovery. Such being the case, there must never be a one jacket fits all kind of approach to these things! Disease prevention, control, treatment and recovery must always be situationally based or customized!

6. The fourth principle is this: Quarantine is for those with transmissible disease and not for those without transmissible disease. Quarantine is meant to protect those without disease while at the same time it prevents those with disease from transmitting it. This means that those without disease must never be locked down together with those with disease! Now, the biggest questions this one: What are the various current national lockdowns doing? Are they not locking down those with COVID-19 together with those without COVID-19?

7. The fifth principle is this: For quarantine to work, there must be a way of detecting those with disease before they can transmit it to those without disease. Luckily, with infective inflammatory diseases, besides direct disease testing itself, body temperature screening is the first and foremost way to detect those with or who may have disease. Increased and increasing core body temperature is the first sign of active infective inflammatory disease. It happens well before (12 to 24 hours or more) any disease symptoms (complaints) or transmission occurs. What this means is that if strict core body temperature screening is instituted for everyone and everywhere (at home, work, shops, airports, planes, events venues, borders, etc), then all those with clinically detectable core body temperature elevation due to COVID-19 can be detected and thus tested and quarantined! This then obviates the need for socio-economically very expensive, cumbersome and highly irritating and very disruptive lockdowns which have the tendency of locking down those with disease together with those who do not have the disease! National governments – Please think twice about these facts and act accordingly! Thank you very much."

Yours Truly

Dr Cleopas Sibanda: MBChB, PGCert OSH, PGDip OSH, PGCert SP, MSc WHW.

Occupational Health and Social Protection Specialist Physician