COVID-19: If Some Drown, We All Drown

“We are not all in the same boat. We are all in the same storm. Some are on superyachts.

Some have just the one oar.” Twitter user Damien Barr.

Now that confirmed cases of COVID-19 have passed 45 million globally ( John Hopkins) and deaths are at over 1.18 million, we, the citizens of T&T, not infected or dying at alarming global levels are afloat due to shut borders and COVID-19 restrictions.

With our cases at 5,594 and 111 deaths, we want to look away from the body bags, mass graves, the people in blue/white hazmat suits, the armoured army defending mankind.

But wait, didn’t they say it kills mostly the elderly with underlying diseases? An 18-year-old girl was Trinidad’s most recent COVID-19 victim.

This unknown virus with the shape-changing malevolence of evil does not provide long-term immunity even in those who get it (BBC).

From beleaguered Spain (now in a six-month state of emergency) comes the news that people without masks even in small groups of six, in poorly ventilated spaces: home, restaurants, bars, places of worship, classrooms have a higher probability of getting it (from over six feet away) and turning super spreaders.

So stop hankering for the ‘normal’.

This is it. Most of us are in safe boats, for now, but others, those who’ve lost jobs, or reckless with protocols, getting the virus, are punctured, in dangerous waters.

There are those amidst us who are drowning with lost jobs: 49 media workers lost jobs last week.

150 people working in restaurants and bars lost jobs this week.

Yet in this discrepant catch-22, we also witness and learn from ‘first world’ countries who have failed to contain the virus (mass graves in the US, France, in its second lockdown). We know without strict protocols amidst economic activity (masks, social distancing, and handwashing) we will be pulled into an unstoppable maelstrom of the chaos of an overwhelmed health care system, poverty and anarchy.

To protect children, the State closed nursery, primary and secondary schools since March (correctly, given the catastrophic global ‘first world’ spread).

But you only have to talk to a few single mothers, sending their 12-year-olds to look for work, or going hungry, to know the social and economic tragedy of the virus is at the door.

This ten per cent (and growing) economic contraction has left parents without electronic devices, books, electricity, or internet access for zoom learning depriving more than 20 per cent or 40,000 of our nation’s children of an education.

We can’t allow this drowning.

The State must bulk buy tablets, uniforms and distribute to schoolchildren on a means-tested basis. The State should also open a few schools for children in need and run them on a shift system.

This will also allow children who are in need to access the school feeding programme. Volunteer teachers can come into schools to ensure that social distancing is maintained.

We all know there is only so much the Government can do.

Even if you have your head in the sand, and even if you’re purely self-interested, if you’ve got any spare change, you must open your heart and wallet if you want to have a country that does not collapse with civil unrest.

In three years the boys leaving school at 12 or 13 now to work or babysit for their moms will be 15 or 16, with no future, no jobs, no education, with access to surrogate father drug lords and abundance of guns in this country.

They will be angry. And rightly so.

By being inhumane to children now, we will create young adults with no mercy to us in the future.

It’s all hands on deck, folks.

Every citizen who can, must step in, help people, one family, at a time, with rations, a tablet, books, clothes, health care. The Chamber must mobilise business and private citizens to coordinate a massive nationwide exercise to look after our children and their carers.

We, institutions, companies, citizens are not in the same boat.

Every one of us who can help in any way, must. Give at least one family another oar, reach out, or prepare for a country where we will not be able to live. On these COVID-19 boats: if some drown, we all drown.