South Africa's Lockdown Is Especially Severe

A nationwide lockdown is a brutal, blunt tool. It presumes that each business, and each individual, operates in exactly the same manner, and that certain experts' (nay, philosopher kings) can best determine the path forward on behalf of over 50 million individual human beings. Hayek's knowledge problem rears its head once more. A hard lockdown such as we have seen in South Africa made no accommodation for the different capabilities of people, and allowed no room for companies to still try and tackle the virus through implementing their own health measures.