“Cam-bola”: the campus wide epidemic of flu after everyone descends onto campus. Caused by the grubby little first year infected fingers touching EVERYTHING. Also caused by miserably sick seniors spreading germs on every lecture hall surface and blowing their germ filled hubbly smoke around the student centre. (I just sneezed while writing this.)

I hope you’re all back in the swing of the semester and well settled into the routine of tests and assignments. With pleasantries out of the way, let’s talk. A lot happens around UP campuses, people hear things, people see things and people know things. PDBY serves as a voice for students and student concerns and we strive to find and report to you, the students, the truth, as unbiased and objective as possible. But we don’t claim to be the only students who know of newsworthy issues or events. If you know something that should be voiced to students or that affects students, speak up. Don’t sweep important issues under the carpet, or keep quiet about something that students should be informed about. News tips can be sent to news@pdby.co.za or @PDBYMedia on Instagram, and we will look into it.

There has been a lot of drama surrounding COVID-19, the novel coronavirus. It did spread exceptionally quickly and with the death toll surpassing 2 200 as of 21 February, it does seem very scary and overwhelming. That being said, the National Department of Health has said that up to 11 000 South Africans die every year from the flu. So while COVID-19 is highly infective and thousands of people have died, it is by no means severe enough to warrant global panic. I feel that the thing that makes the coronavirus scary is that COVID-19 is a novel strain that we do not know much about. But people also tend to forget to mention the 19 000+ cases (so far) of recoveries from the coronavirus. So while caution is necessary and health systems worldwide should still ensure that they are sufficiently equipped to handle an epidemic, general panic and anti-Chinese sentiments have no place or purpose in our conversations and opinions. Do you feel that people are overreacting? Or are you worried that the world is not worried enough? Let me know your opinion at editor@pdby.co.za.

Speaking of diseases, the PDBY Editorial are all fighting off a persistent bug. The office is currently made up of a symphony of coughs, sniffs and general moans of mutual misery. We are all close and spend a lot of time together, but I am not particularly fond of sharing cold and flu germs so intimately with my team. I don’t know if it’s the time of year, or something in the air but everyone seems sick with UP’s own “cam-bola” (or campus-ebola if you’re new to this) and it isn’t fun. I know sharing is caring for students, but this is excessive.

With breathing feeling like effort, and my brain barely functioning in its cotton-ball state, I’ll leave this here and retreat to a dark and secluded hole to wallow in my misery. Maybe Pssst… will share the space under the office floorboards.

Kayla Thomas