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I find it hard to believe that just banning alcohol caused that much of a drop in murders in SA. For one thing, the liquor stores had block-long lines the days before lockdowns, both for personal stashes and for reselling. As for murders, there is a huge domestic violence problem, which prohibition would probably address, but the vast majority of murders in the townships are either for money or gang reasons. The thing is that there are key confounders: lockdowns made it far more difficult to supply illegal drugs like tik (meth and god knows what) and whoonga (heroin and god knows what, sometimes HIV meds), which are also a massive contributor to violent crime, lockdowns make gang activity more difficult and less lucrative, and the additional welfare passed out during lockdown periods probably dissuaded some marginal criminals from killing someone over fifty rand.
I would say that, given the study apparently counts car accidents, a huge chunk is probably coming from that. Driving drunk is totally normal in South Africa, from the richest to the poorest, and the general standard of driving is pretty dangerous (the common estimate is that 1/3rd of licences on the road are fake). Clearing the roads in general with lockdown and in particular eliminating drunk driving probably has some major effect as well.
I mean lockdowns also just mean fewer people on the roads. We saw global declines in road deaths, even in countries where most people drive soberly and defensively.
Yes, that's what I mean by clearing the roads in general - banning alcohol probably had an additional synergistic effect on top of that. Also, in addition to clearing cars off roads, a lot of road deaths in SA are pedestrians walking along the shoulder (poor folks will walk very long distances by the highway), who were probably also cleared out somewhat by lockdown. They also wouldn't have the uh, inexplicable uptick in road deaths in the US from the summer of 2020.
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I admire the diligence of the local dealers, why not give your clients some PEP for HIV gratis? Saves on the costs of sharing needles and you hold onto a lifetime client for a longer value of said lifetime.
If you run into any docs fleeing the South African medical system, it's an interesting topic to ask about. Wikipedia claims there may be some psychoactive effects, but I've never heard of that, what I hear from SA medical types is that the binding agent in the antiretrovirals is thought to help hold whatever chemicals they put in it together (plus, most likely, superstitions of various sorts).
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