I would be interested in a credible survey of South African attitudes to the coronavirus. How many of us have heard of it and how many of us think it's a threat? You could add more questions, but those two came to mind after a family member went to a home affairs office in the Western Cape on Wednesday.

The place was relatively quiet and the queue moving along at a good clip. Until, that is, a man in front found that the biometric identity device at the office couldn't read his fingerprints...