The public sector not-a-mandate seems to have quietly fizzled at the same time that the Ministry of Education has reaffirmed its commitment to bringing the lower Forms and Standard 5s back out to school early next month.
In a society in which people cared about each other, preparing to live with a deadly virus would mean doing what’s necessary to protect each other from it. A society founded in common sense would recognise that individuals can’t prosper if society collapses.
We can pretend the decision to send unvaccinated children to school with maybe-vaccinated teachers has nothing to do with the steadily increasing caseload, but that doesn’t make it so. As much as I want my daughter to return to a life that allows her to interact with her peers and actually physically meet and spend time with her teachers, I’m not prepared to play dotish just to see the (much-needed) end of digital school.
Omission just gives fearmongers a chance to wrap their sensationalism around a tiny kernel of truth, putting the authorities on the back foot and undermining their efforts to do what needs to be done.
In the wake of an abrupt end to the State of Emergency, prominent figures in this country are comparing the implementation of ‘safe zones’ to South African apartheid even as we record our deadliest day yet with 28 deaths, including the first child to die from this virus.
In this context, I can understand why some might decide to rebel at the level of the final bit of power they have left: personal bodily autonomy.
What I don’t understand is why ✨this✨ is the bodily autonomy hill that has been selected to die on.
Hidden behind the air of “welp, we tried”, is an alarming shift towards returning to business as usual without ensuring that the most vulnerable members of our population are properly protected.
How does one account for the strange dissonance in telling parents that their unvaccinated children couldn’t attend in-person school while also failing to ask teachers if they’d been vaccinated?
I have to ask what it is Trinbagonians really want at this point of the neverending shitshow. The hard truth that our big, hardback, 59-year-old nation needs to fully face is that this is a PANdemic and it is not over.
It’s one thing to be caught in a terrifying global scenario and understand the need to hold strain until things get better. It’s another thing entirely to sit and watch as other people’s (thoughtless at best, selfish at worst) actions extend everyone’s suffering nearly two years later. Even as the tools to improve everyone’s circumstances are right there.