Stigma and shame

Friday the 13th has for decades been a date of dread and danger, but a relative of Jamaica’s first COVID-19 patient remembers that day in March 2020 as the pivotal moment that redefined her family’s lives.

Gloria Clarke had died days earlier and was to have a grand farewell to memorialise her legacy. But a routine attendance at her funeral at Grace Gospel Hall in Harbour View from a well-wisher who had flown in from the United Kingdom set in train a sequence of events that began in the east rural St Andrew community of Bull Bay and spiralled across the country.

The Friday the 13th nightmare hasn’t ended.

The Bull Bay relative, a mother of two, said she has lived with a stain that has scarred families across the country: stigma and shame.

The visitor travelled to Jamaica on March 4 and was hospitalised five days later. In-between, the visitor, who had been titled Patient Zero, and later Patient One, had attended the funeral on March 7 and checked in on family in central Jamaica.

A sign on the gate to the Bull Bay resident’s yard strikes an eerie reminder of the shock March lockdown of Seven Miles and Eight Miles.

It reads, ‘COVID-19 Tan A Yuh Yard. Follow Protocol. It’s social distant 6 feet apart ‘hear’... who feels it knows it. Idlers, lef we gate ‘and kip weh.’

By the time police and soldiers swarmed her community that evening, she became aware of a potent enemy that could not be seen.

The woman became one of an estimated 135,000 Jamaicans to lose their jobs to curfews, quarantines, and other coronavirus containment measures. She still has misgivings about the displacement caused by the snap quarantine that Friday evening as Jamaica was declared a “disaster area” by Prime Minister Andrew Holness.

“Dem tek me from my yard and carry me away for no reason at all and tek me out of my job one year now,” she told The Gleaner days before the first anniversary of COVID-19 detection on the island’s shores.

“They said when we go into the quarantine, we will have back we work, but nothing of the sort. I didn’t even get paid for the three weeks that they had us for,” she added.

Patient One has long returned to the UK but the members of the so-called ‘first family’ are still living with the after-effects of discrimination. They suffered scorn from taxi operators and were the victims of a cyberscandal as names and pictures were plastered across the Internet. They also got arson threats.

The cousin doesn’t believe that the UK traveller had the virus before she came to Jamaica. Persons may present symptoms in three to seven days after transmission but it is internationally accepted that signs might arise within as many as 14 days.

“Mi just haffi a use the little weh mi have and now it done ya now. So a just God’s help,” she told The Gleaner of her coping strategies.

Shooters Hill resident Robert English says March 13, 2020, is a day he, too, will never forget.

“Shooters Hill was locked down … from that we don’t hear of no more case. All of who [Patient One] was amongst, none don’t get it either. She alone dem say have it,” the mechanic said.

A year later, Jamaica is in the midst of an aggressive surge of community spread, with multiple one-day records in the last six weeks. The country has tallied more than 29,000 infections and 480 deaths as at Thursday, but English is still questioning if the virus really exists.

“Only she alone out of the house have it. Fi the how much days dem lock down Shooters Hill, nobody else no pick up or the whole community where she was. Up to today, mi still a look ‘cause mi a say me don’t even know weh dem call suh ‘cause me never experience it yet,” English told The Gleaner.

A resident of Seven Miles, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the stigma still associated with the virus, said she was taken off-guard by the lockdown.

She said she was stunned as soldiers and police swooped down on the community, ordering bars closed and residents were commanded to go inside.

Hours after the quarantine was imposed, some residents cried for hunger, claiming that their cupboards and stomachs were empty. State agencies were criticised for being slow to deliver supplies of food and toiletries, but St Andrew East Rural Member of Parliament Juliet Holness charged that some of those allegations were politically motivated.

“A good thing me a woman weh always like fi store or else me woulda get lef. We never see nobody for that week. It wasn’t until the other week. The lockdown did a get to the kids dem, too,” the woman said.

Residents of Seven Miles and Eight Miles said that the usually upbeat community was psychologically affected by the two-week confinement.

Many believe the quarantine was not worth the dislocation and question whether the UK traveller had even contracted the virus. Besides Patient One, the family said no other relative had contracted the disease.

Doubts about the virus could hamper the Holness administration’s ambitious programme to inoculate 65 per cent of Jamaica’s near three million population by March 2022. The roll-out of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine began on Wednesday.

Adult vaccine hesitancy has strong undercurrents in Jamaican society – as elsewhere in the world – fuelled largely by conspiracy theories and suspicions about the perceived speed behind the medical innovation.

Like in many communities, some Bull Bay residents are concerned that many safety protocols such as mask wearing and social distancing are not being observed, putting the area at risk again.

“Them nah think and say it deh ya before she, is just her case highlight,” a woman said of Patient One.

“People know that she wasn’t the first case, just the first highlight. You can’t cough, you can’t sneeze, see it deh now, people can’t even go doctor. You haffi jus pray.”

andre.williams@gleanerjm.com