Trinidad and Tobago’s decision to begin a phased re-opening of parts of the country’s business sector following a period of ‘lockdown’ and outcomes which appear to suggest that significantly restricting the movement of people for a period may have impacted positively on the country’s status insofar as contracting of the Coronavirus and better still, fatalities deriving therefrom, should be noted in Guyana. Mind you, we are not suggesting, by any means, that our CARICOM partner’s decision is one from which we should derive a template without mindfulness of comparison between our two sets of circumstances and how these have unfolded since the virus made its presence felt in the region.
Trinidad and Tobago’s decision, as far as we can tell, derived from more than just official worry over the contraction of business and the multi-faceted implications that this would have been having for jobs, the welfare of families and for the country’s economy as a whole that would have ensured even as the swathes of the country’s economy remained closed. Indeed, the available evidence would appear to suggest that at an earlier stage Trinidad and Tobago took what would have been the tough decision to impose a lockdown across the country that may not have been universally popular and, moreover, would have resulted in a considerable degree of immediate-term hardship, but which would have been influenced by the view that there was the need to ‘force the issue’ in order to ensure the effective implementation of the procedures associated with social distancing. The upshot of biting the lockdown bullet, it would seem, yielded some positive results for Trinidad and Tobago, not least of which was a dramatic drop in the number of COVID-19 cases and fatalities during that period. It was these outcomes, one imagines, that handed the authorities the credentials with which to send some people back to work in some sectors, albeit under caution.
Whether we, from our vantage point, endorse the wisdom of the road which T&T has chosen to go down, or not, is beside the point here. The salient point is that there was, it seems, a ‘sitting down’ exercise in Trinidad and Tobago and ensuing stakeholder discourses that led to agreement on a particular course of action. That course of action has now led us to the point where a phased opening of the country’s business sector is underway; and while we must wait and see just where this takes the Trinidadians, the action that they have taken would appear to be the outcome of a planned process, one which appears to have enjoyed the support of a wide cross-section of Trinidadians and Tobagonians, some of whom (who knows?) may have been fretful over aspects of the process but are now able to return to work, under caution.
Across the Caribbean countries were, to a greater or lesser extent, confronted with similar circumstances and similar kinds of decisions to make insofar as responses to the advent of COVID-19 were concerned. Inherent in that circumstance was an across-the-board requirement for governments, the populace and the various other stakeholders to arrive at a common understanding as to how to respond to the challenge. While there would have been differences of opinion in relation to response methods, from country to country, it would have been altogether reasonable to assume that given all of the expert advice and guidance that has been coming from institutions like the WHO/PAHO and UNICEF, among others, there might even have emerged a possible collective regional response that could have been adapted accordingly on a case by case basis to fit the circumstances of the respective territories.
It was pretty clear from the outset that social distancing had been universally tagged as being critical to the wider effort to limit the spread of COVID-19. What, regrettably, was also pretty clear from the outset was that in a country, Guyana, where, whatever the circumstances, sections of the population are inclined to push back against constraints to what they sometimes misguidedly refer to as their ‘freedoms,’ social distancing has not been not universally popular, to say the least. This point was made quite early in the piece by a wave of verbal blowback from detractors. So shocked, it seemed, was the local representative of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) Dr. William Adu-Krow, that he openly called for the imposition of an immediate lockdown as an official response to what he asserted were widespread transgressions. It should be noted that the PAHO representative’s assertive advocacy of a lockdown, while it may have appeared diplomatically indelicate was an altogether appropriate response to the realization that as far as containing the spread of the virus was concerned, Guyana was on a hiding to nowhere.
The available evidence does not point, in one way or another, to any significantly enhanced level of compliance with the protocols of social distancing. This newspaper, in its April 21 editorial addressed some of the excesses of transgression of social distancing in coastal communities. We are, truth be told, not persuaded that the transgressions have been suppressed, either through the belated self-restraint of the transgressors themselves or on account of the imposition of robust lawful restraints and sanctions. To put it bluntly – and this is the crux of the matter- not only do we continue to tempt fate, imbued with the belief that we will ‘dodge the bullet,’ but we also ignore the reality that the absurd persistence of pockets of pushback against social distancing make a persuasive case for the authorities not to make any moves in the direction of fully reopening the business sector in the immediate future. That, one might add, is attended by a different set of likely consequences insofar as jobs, earning and the welfare of families are concerned.
Last week, we became aware of the frightening news that Brazil, with which Guyana shares a border that is accessible as a stroll into a neighbouring village, became only the sixth country in the world to report more than 20,000 deaths. Whereas one might imagine that the reality of the potential of COVID-19 to take lives might add a dimension of ‘good sense’ to the national response here in Guyana, we can say without fear of contradiction that even as this editorial is being read, pockets of Guyanese in parts of the country (perhaps labouring under the impression that COVID-19 has afforded us the day off to celebrate the anniversary of the country’s independence) are nonchalantly ‘living it up’.
The authorities cannot pretend not to ‘know the score’ here. There is a duty here to ‘turn the screws,’ to roll back the resistance to social distancing. It is either that or we accept that there will have to be shared consequences if and when things turn really ugly.
