Mark Wignall | Tread carefully, prime minster

The prime minister is obviously a man of many parts, and he would be most aware of the history of pandemics. Based on this, he would know that in the 1918 Flu pandemic, the management of the first two waves of the pandemic were conducted under public policy.

As notes, jottings, and major publications would show, after ‘the burden of public health shifted from policy to individual responsibility’, the third wave was triggered. People relaxed their guard too early, and that introduced the deadly third wave.

Right now in Jamaica, we are in that frightful place that our policymakers always knew was more than a distinct possibility. Cases are up significantly here and internationally, with positivity rates heading upwards from a high 30 per cent to breaking the ceiling. Hospitals have reached and increased their bed capacity.

At The University Hospital of the West Indies, the accident and emergency unit has become an extension of the bed area housing critical COVID-19 patients. Some suppliers of crucial care items are not being paid on time, but they soldier on anyway.

At all junctures of managing the COVID-19 spread in Jamaica, from the initial big shutdown (2020) of the spaces serving the economy, the PM would have easily peered ahead and become saddened and deeply concerned as he visualised the many negatives that lay ahead. Potentially.

The most vulnerable in our society - like bar owners mostly populated by hard working women trying hard to scrape away from their lives the thick mud of generational poverty - were forced to be unwilling spectators to their own demise. Hair dressers, barbers, and other personal-care small-business operators were shuttered. The tourism industry came to a halt.

Through the many iterations of a regulated public policy/individual responsibility, the PM would have measured the possibilities and a multiplicity of likelihoods.

In August 2021, with hurricane season churning up towards peak activity, the gun no less prevalent than before, and a new awakening of anti-vaxxers, the PM must now realise that the worst is imminent.

It is obvious that Jamaica has not done too well on the individual-responsibility chart. And let us not fool ourselves. We saw it every day on the streets of this country. Too many in public transport taxis without masks.

The PM would have known of this, but apart from a few altercations between a few passengers and the police, in the vast majority of cases, people were simply left alone to stew in and enjoy their bad behaviours.

Many people would want to believe that potential superspreaders like the fancy Negril parties for the upper crust would be more of a burden on the public-health system than someone who contracted COVID-19 from breathing in the confined air inside of a packed taxi.

In formal research in Jamaica, the metrics were not necessarily fine-tuned to pick up the difference.

Buju Banton and other misguided mouths

Freedom is, unfortunately, not as liberating as the kind of life where we allow ourselves to swim in the soup of stupidity. In 2004, the Rev Al Miller, a highly popular preacher of the gospel, was able to sell a most convenient ‘prophecy’ that Hurricane Ivan spared Jamaica a direct hit because of his prayers.

The gullible bought it.

Now here comes Buju Banton, a giant on the international entertainment scene in October of last year giving us his big treatise on the wearing of masks. ‘Who fi dead a go dead, and who nah go dead haffi jus’ live. Who are these intellectual fools telling us how to live our lives? If you’re so smart, why haven’t you found a cure for cancer? Me nah wear no mask ‘cause mask no mek fi man. Free my people now.’

His very latest broadside, which has got him flagged by Instagram, is his view that the COVID-19 variants are being somehow cooked up somewhere to be conveniently released at various dates. And, of course, it has brought us back to his 2020 rant.

Let me explain and plainly state that I sympathise with these larger-than-life entertainers. Many people literally worship Buju at the sound of his voice. Often, if they speak out on a specific matter, it is totally accepted.

When he says on Instagram, ‘Who are these intellectual fools telling us how to live our lives? If you’re so smart, why haven’t you found a cure for cancer? Me nah wear no mask ‘cause mask no mek fi man. Free my people now,’ I am forced to ask in what form or fashion are his people trapped in bondage?

I do not know Buju Banton, but I am saying to him that he is much better than he is appearing to be. Many can see through the thin veil of him being disingenuous.

Could it be that what our much-esteemed Buju Banton really wants to say to the governmental authorities is ‘Free up the public space so that big Buju shows can hit the circuit again?’

PNP needs to think this through

Now that the prime minister is closest to eenie meenie miney mo in decisions on the management of COVID-19, the People’s National Party (PNP) has taken the PM to task and has, basically, accused him of tinkering.

“The PM has failed to explain how COVID-19 will be contained by starting the curfew one hour earlier each day. To the contrary, people leaving work in the afternoons will be bungling up in supermarkets and grocery stores so as to get off the road before the earlier curfew starts.”

So,what is the workable alternative?

Other point made by the PNP is: “Enable private medical practitioners across Jamaica to provide vaccinations to their patients, which will provide an effective additional channel for the vaccination-distribution system.”

Are you serious, PNP? Will you require the health ministry to provide these doctors with refrigeration capacity to store these vaccines? And even if by magic these things are in place and a subsidy is in place, if the doctor decides that he is still going to charge the poor patient $3,000 for a visit, what then?

Mark Wignall is a political and public-affairs analyst. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and mawigsr@gmail.com.