The Opposition PLP and the COVID-19 alter of sickness and death in The Bahamas

We are in a general election season in The Bahamas, and all common sense and logic seem to be thrown out the window

By Dennis Dames

COVID-19 is right in our faces, and we don’t see it for what it is. It’s a highly contagious killer virus that’s mutating rapidly into more lethal strains. The coronavirus is a global force to be reckoned with right now, and it is dubbed the invisible enemy for good reasons – because of its potentially devastating impact on the international front.

It is a serious danger to worldwide peace and stability. COVID-19 is also a grave threat to universal commerce and relationships. Every nation appears to be uneasy about their immediate future because of the raging coronavirus.

It doesn’t look like our political leaders get it. We are in a general election season in The Bahamas, and all common sense and logic seem to be thrown out the window, in my view. For example, I saw a PLP ad recently which states that a PLP government will implement free COVID-19 testing and so on.

What does free COVID-19 testing have to do with the reality that COVID-19 is spreading like wildfire now? What does free COVID-19 testing have to do with our overcrowded hospitals and morgue at this time? How will free COVID-19 testing curb the spread of COVID-19 in a tourist-dependent economy? How will free COVID-19 testing stop new COVID-19 variants from entering the country?

Let’s get real, PLP. The focus, in my humble opinion, is to convince our hardheaded unvaccinated brothers and sisters to get vaccinated soon. After all, they comprise the vast majority of COVID-19 hospital and morgue clients – 90 percent-plus.

It’s a pity and tragedy that the PLP is prepared to sacrifice many Bahamians on the COVID-19 alter of sickness and death. We lack national unity on such a dreadful issue, PLP; and all of us should be ashamed of it. It’s sad that winning an election tomorrow appears more important than saving Bahamian lives today.

Things are getting absolutely toxic and dire with the livid COVID-19 virus throughout the universe. We need to unite as one people and resolve to fight COVID-19 together. The unvaccinated is the big problem in the battle to defeat COVID-19.

Medical statistics everywhere show this, yet fools are determined to be fools. Yes PLPs, you could continue to promote your time-wasting, money-wasting and bogus free COVID test promise while our unvaccinated folks remain wickedly vulnerable to an unmerciful foe.

Yes PLP, all of your leaders are fully vaccinated. Why is it that they don’t want to share the wisdom and joy of vaccination with the unvaccinated citizens? 

Take note, PLP: There are only two choices to deal with COVID-19 – go back to lockdown, or keep the economy open.

If we choose the latter, then we must encourage the unvaccinated among us to get vaccinated. If we fail to do so, sickness, death and misery will rain down on us like a ton of bricks – and your free testing promise will prove to be dead on arrival.

After 48 years of negro political leadership in The Bahamas

 By Dennis Dames

Happy 48th Independence Bahamas. What are we commemorating, though? After 48 years of Black majority rule in The Bahamas, we Bahamians don’t have much to be proud about as a nation and as a people.

We cannot be happy to be unemployed, broke and in mounting debt. We should not be satisfied about being taxed to the max. Nor should we be contented with the out of control government deficit spending and borrowing with nothing much to show for it through the decades.

After 48 years of negro political leadership in The Bahamas, we have produced a continuous and healthy flow of young murderers – from generation to generation.

Our young men, in particular, are being slaughtered in mass numbers – year after year. Many of our youths are engaged in the dangerous and deadly gang life at an early age, and graduate to prison very young – with long sentences. It’s nothing to cheer about.

After 48 years of Black governance in The Bahamas, we have produced a Black ruling class that cares only about their selective lovers, family and friends. I’m sure that the quiet revolution was not about that.

After 48 years of Black political misrule in The Bahamas, we are stuck in the mud with more of the same static, mediocre and inept leaders – whom we all know well; but we are ready to vote for them over and over again. What a bunch of mad jokers we are.

After 48 years of Black self-governance in The Bahamas, we are going ‘round in circles. Where is the national vision? Where is the national unity and resolve? Where are the new breed of Bahamian leaders who are indeed serious about local government and power-sharing for the betterment of the nation?

Or is the new breed of national leaders simply chips off the old corrupt political blocks who have become comfortable with alternating one-term governments? Five years for you, and five years for me – and together, we’ll continue the corrupt legacy of our Black predecessors.

Where are the Bahamian leaders who truly believe in a Bahamas for all Bahamians – and not just for the chosen friends, family and sweethearts? Where are the Bahamian leaders who subscribe to true Black majority rule in The Bahamas?

Which of the no-good evils will we vote for in the next general election? No matter who wins, we must demand better, and a more productive, all inclusive, and prosperous way ahead as a sovereign Black nation.

Yes, let’s move forward, upward and onward together as proud Bahamians.

Our offspring will love and appreciate us for it; and I’m sure that they will do the same for their children. Let’s build a Bahamas where national independence has a genuinely rich meaning, and is worthy of celebration and observance by all Bahamians.

IN A DEFAULT TO ZERO SUM OUTCOMES, THE CARIBBEAN WILL LOSE!

Meanwhile, unfashionable seaside resorts within driving distance of urban centres may make a surprise comeback in popularity.

Atlantic City, near New York and Philadelphia, and Margate, east of London, may once again outshine the foreign, sunnier beaches that long ago eclipsed them.

The staycation trend may fuel the growth of economies already doing relatively well after covid-19, while setting back those doing badly.

By Gilbert Morris

The decline in international travel is hardening (See graphs below). Understanding this is critical to the right conceptualisation of what’s actually happening. I warned that our plantation economic model premised on a “double wait”

a. For foreign investors

b. For American tourists

Then feverishly dividing the meagre scarps by political tribalism, is not an economic model.

All the 258 pandemics recorded in history have not only shifted entire economic and social paradigms, they also reveal and punish system and structural fragilities, above and beyond the excuse-making voices of politicians, used to gaslighting their populations.

It was only a few weeks ago, public officials were exclaiming that “booking were up”. But we knew that if we had no protocols on the ground equal to the best practices of the best performing countries in Covid 19, point to booking was a mere demented distraction from reality.

Now underlying structural shifts are taking place, the success and strengths of which will be directly proportional to our economic prospects, and opposite to our lazy presumption that US tourists will soon return; an astonishing precept for an island state economy.

Read about the shifts - forecasted 13 months ago here - in a recent article from the Economist:

From The Economist!

The trend towards domestic holidays will create economic winners and losers:

A.J.P. TAYLOR, a British 20th-century historian, once wistfully noted that the only agents of state a Victorian Briton was likely to meet were the postman and the local policeman. How times have changed.

The pandemic has brought with it sweeping restrictions on what the state allows individuals to do. One of the latest is that, from March 29th, modern-day Britons will be fined £5,000 ($6,900) if they go abroad without reasonable excuse—a rule that in effect makes a foreign holiday a criminal offence.

No wonder that this year’s big vacation trend is the “staycation”—to go on holiday in one’s own country. That will have an uneven economic impact around the world.

Britain is not the only country to impose draconian restrictions on cross-border travel. America still bans virtually all Europeans from entering the country. Quarantine rules also have a chilling effect on leisure travellers.

Hong Kong’s system—among the harshest in the world—locks inbound passengers in hotels for 21 days to try and stop holidaymakers importing new variants of the disease.

Such measures, understandably, put a squeeze on leisure travel. Those with just two or three weeks’ paid leave a year have better things to do with their time than wait around in a quarantine hotel.

At the start of the pandemic, both foreign and domestic travel were destroyed by border closures and travel restrictions. So low was demand during the first lockdown that Ryanair, Europe’s largest airline by some reckonings, almost shut down completely.

Even so, since last spring domestic travel has been steadily recovering, particularly in America, where lockdown rules have been loosened faster than elsewhere. According to OAG, a data firm, capacity on American domestic flights at the end of March—measured by the number of seats on all aircraft—was 23% below where it was in January of last year; in Australia it was down by 19%.

Meanwhile, cross-border travel remains in the doldrums. In China, where domestic-passenger traffic has fully recovered, international travel is 93% below where it was before the pandemic (see chart).

With a third wave of covid-19 cases sweeping through continental Europe, Latin America and India, the trend this summer could well be towards more border restrictions, not fewer.

The trend for more holidays nearer home will affect tourist spots in different ways. Islands are likely to suffer in favour of places that can be reached by car.

Insular paradises such as Cozumel in Mexico, which used to earn 70% of its GDP from passing cruise ships, and the Bahamas, which formerly generated a similar share of its income from tourism, will take a long time to recover.

Meanwhile, unfashionable seaside resorts within driving distance of urban centres may make a surprise comeback in popularity. Atlantic City, near New York and Philadelphia, and Margate, east of London, may once again outshine the foreign, sunnier beaches that long ago eclipsed them.

The staycation trend may fuel the growth of economies already doing relatively well after covid-19, while setting back those doing badly.

This was the conclusion of a recent report by Bernstein, a research firm, which estimated the economic impact of 60% of outbound tourism spending being used at home instead. Their result: China, whose economy is already larger than before the pandemic began, would be the biggest winner. And the biggest losers? Greece, Iceland and Portugal, whose economies have already suffered dreadfully over the past year.

Source/Comments

WHAT’s WRONG WITH PUBLIC HEALTH NARRATIVE

MODERNA’s ANNOUNCEMENT THAT ITS VACCINE IS “94% EFFECTIVE” IS WHAT’s WRONG WITH PUBLIC HEALTH NARRATIVE...!

By Gilbert Morris:

In my recent SPACENEX Global ROUNDTABLE Lectures, I paraphrased Dr Martin Luther King Jr. saying: “CoViD-19 infections anywhere is a threat of CoViD-19 out breaks everywhere”.

Any government official or policy expert engaged in hoarding treatments or implementing partial solutions, is a champion of idiocy. That’s because, IF (AND ONLY IFF) vaccines are the strategy, THEN that requires global herd immunity.

This has set into force a race for market share, which is too little discussed - not to mention that the not only undemocratic but ANTI-democratic measures we have seen emerge in Britain, Canada the US and Israel; all western democracies; whilst non-Christian non-western nations have pursued rational policies based upon transparency and citizen participation.

Given the growing loss of transparency, the growing conspiracy theories, the reported fascistic despotic behaviours of some pharmaceutical companies, information and data about vaccines should be issued by independent bodies, not the pharmacy companies themselves.

You may say that the CDC is such a body. But that’s lunacy: they have shown themselves under the Trump administration to be willing handmaidens to convenient goat-barking, prepared to gong along with the former President’s donkeyfication of science to save their jobs rather than act to fulfil their calling.

Moderna cannot simply announce its vaccines “increased efficacy” in this environment...without confirmation from an independent source; which is the essence of the scientific process. The idea that pharmaceutical corporations - who are the most rapacious and corrupt corporate entities - following banks and before the mafia - lack the credibility, merely to announce such claims, to be seconded by state American agencies, which have already compromised themselves, resulting in hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths.

To gain perspective on this scandal, take a gander at the European/UK conflagration over the AstraZeneca vaccine. It’s was banned in at least 5 nations, owing to statistically nebulous findings of severe clotting; a prospect which could have been captured through pre-screening.

It was an example of risking public health over a spectacle of political shaming, with citizen’s lives hanging in the balance, attenuated to a vaccine regime authorised only for emergency deployment; a means - most people don’t seem to understand - of limiting the liability of pharmaceutical giants.

It would seem to me, that less arrogance and greater caution ought to have been exercises in every particular in deploying these vaccines, given the rushed circumstances of their issuance.

The conspiracy crazies will always be with us, but their lunacy is exacerbated by idiot governments and institutions insulting fearful citizens, who are watching the European charade referred to above, the flagrant stupidity of some pharmaceutical companies, the emergency use protocol that’s evolving towards a mandatory rule and the increasingly anti-democratic measures premised in vaccination.

Source/Comment

Caribbean governments must grasp the logic of pandemics

CoViD-19: A THIRD WAVE FORMING...!

By Gilbert Morris:

Once again, despite President BIDEN’s heroic efforts:

1. Variant strains of Covid 19

2. Refusals of vaccinations by at least 30% of Americans who also refuse to comply with social measures

3. The overall wicked nature of pandemics themselves

MEANS,

Cases are rising in more than 40 states of the United States. It is for this reason I warned in March 2020, the Caribbean governments must grasp the logic of pandemics: there is no point - as was done last year and being done now - in celebrating “bookings”.

That’s “idiot’s gold”!

Unless and until there is either a comprehensive national testing or (if vaccines are the policy) there is 100% vaccine coverage, any policy or attempt to facilitate tourism will end in disaster; a point proven twice in the Bahamas last year and underway in Jamaica now.

It’s either 100% vaccines or a robust testing regime in which we have at least 1.6 million tests; which I believe would discover over 30% antibodies.

If we are foolish in this moment - the natural inflection point of a pandemic - considering the likelihood that the variant strains of Covid 19 are ALREADY in these islands - given the lack of protocols (yachts are ring and guests partying together nightly - nightclubs filled with Bahamians disobeying the protocols etc - lack of aggregate analytics or technology measuring tools - chances are that we are in for a calamity.

I argued in January 2021, that cases would soon rise again. I am satisfied that sadly, that was and is now correct!

Again, IF and IFF, vaccines are the policy, then its worth it to procure the Johnson and Johnson single jab (subject to our lack of knowledge about medium and long term effects or immunity coverage) to incentivise persons to take the vaccine by paying them $300 each.

Nonsense mumbles and routine excuse-makers will say other nations have increased numbers too: true. But Usain Bolt lost races and your slow uncle lost races...but they aren’t the same!

Source/Comment

WHY HAS AFRICA FARED SO MUCH BETTER THAN THE REST OF THE WORLD WITH COVID-19?

 AFRICA IS BEST:

MY BROTHER Ntong Victor Sunday HAS PUT ME TO THE QUESTION: WHY HAS AFRICA FARED SO MUCH BETTER THAN THE REST OF THAT WORLD WITH COVID 19?

By:

Gilbert Morris

The African region is the best performing region in the pandemic. Africa’s total deaths are less than 10% of the United State’s daily deaths.

But what are the structural reasons for Africa’s superb performance?

1. SWIFT ACTION: In February 2020, a number of African nations - like Lesotho - shut down public institutions immediately, whilst implementing social protocols. Students of strategy should not see this as merely a decision to act quickly. Instead, it must also be seen as a tactical understanding of the implications of low facilities capacity and financial resources. Understanding these facts about their status, led African governments to act to prevent even the “best case scenarios”.

2. YOUNG POPULATION - I have written that the future belongs to Africa because its the youngest of all regions of the world. It turns out that this is also crucial for Covid 19 infections, since (at least initially), Covid 19 attacked the elderly disproportionately to younger persons. Africa has an added benefit: it does not “warehouse” its elderly. Africa and Japan - followed by the Caribbean - are the zones in which the elderly enjoy a near sacred deference; though in the Caribbean, we are beginning to copy American and European models of parking the elderly in ‘death barns’.

3. POPULATION DISTRIBUTION - Most African nations are arranged and operate on the “city-village” dynamic. As such, the elderly tend to live in the village, whilst younger people crowd to cities. This means the most vulnerable demographic were largely outside the hotspots for Covid 19 infections.

4. COMMUNITY vs. COMMERCIAL HEALTHCARE: Africa - for the most part - does not have large commercial healthcare systems, as in the US and Europe. It turns out that these commercial systems are not very flexible and could not react swiftly to the onslaught of the virus spread. They were limited in capacity, manpower and resources. In Africa, 90% of healthcare is delivered by small clusters of community clinics and a large volunteer sector. This produces a complex local information ecology, but one which can metabolise the best in formation quickly and adjust immediately at the community prevention and treatment levels.

5. EXPERTISE: Africa has a growing number of experienced medical personnel, (like Dr. Denis Mukwege, Dr. Stella Immanuel and beloved Dr. Evan Atar Adaha), who worked (suffered) through AIDS, Ebola, West Nile, Malaria, Dengue and a host of other maladies. Those physicians - as in Senegal - are amongst the most seasoned medical professionals in the world. In fact, they face a conundrum: come together to collect those skills and knowledge or remain in their communities where they are most effective. What is more important, they must not try to adopt Western Institutional models, which failed miserably in this pandemic. Even in countries like Taiwan, Japan, South Korea or New Zealand, which have the best performance records outside of Africa, those nations followed the same decentralised script as African nations.

6. LOCAL KNOWLEDGES: My favourite aspect of the Africa pandemic story is the local knowledge. In Liberia in 2013-15 International Organisations found themselves not only defeated, but found their medical professionals dying in droves in Liberia in the heat of the Ebola outbreak, which spread to Guinea and Sierra Leone. THEN CAME THE GRANDMOTHERS: quietly, they put the men and boys outdoors on cots under trees and in tents, sanitised the entire homesteads, open the little hovels in which people lived to fresh air, and made everyone stay off the streets, such as they were and cooked soups. This broke the spread to nearly nil. (I THOUGHT THESE WARRIOR GRANNIES DESERVED THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR 2014 and 2015, but they are forever in my heart). This exhibition of local knowledge particularly in places like Monrovia and Bensonville, Liberia (one of my favourites), demonstrated a high degree of “social trust”, the same social trust exhibited in Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and South Korea for their nationals governments.

7. CLIMATE: It is now well-established that SAR-CoV2 - the Coronavirus that caused the pandemic Covid 19 retreats in heat and expands in cooler temperatures. It is also interesting to note that in larger segments of Africa, Covid 19 emerged near the end of their Summer and into the Fall. As such, by time as Winter fell, in South Africa for example, three months ago - social practices had hardened already and populations had been well-schooled in the proper protocols, which they followed reinforced by local systems.

These are the major reasons for the low count in Africa of both infections and deaths compared to the rest of the world. I do not doubt there are anomalies in record keeping, categorisation and other statistical integral systems. However, its been 11 months and likely those anomalies would have collapsed by now. I am concerned about the new strains in Britain and South Africa - an unusual distribution pattern - because a virulent strain that replicates the ‘superspreader’ would be deadly, not only in Africa, but worldwide.

Source/Comments

The Bahamas National Trust (BNT) Says No to Oil Drilling in The Bahamas

Bahamians are clearly opposed to oil drilling in the Bahama Islands - and are not willing to accept the risks associated with an oil industry in The Bahamas

BNT Says No to Oil Drilling And Chooses Our Oceans

Since the release of its last statement on proposed oil exploration in The Bahamas, The Bahamas National Trust (BNT) has closely followed the national and international discussion on this issue. A growing number of Bahamians are clearly opposed to and not willing to accept the risks associated with an oil industry in The Bahamas. The prevailing view is there is simply too much at stake.

As a staunch defender of the Bahamian environment, the BNT is categorically opposed to oil exploration in The Bahamas. The BNT stands with every Bahamian speaking out against proposed oil exploration in our ocean nation.

Bahamian communities rely on healthy ocean ecosystems to support jobs in fishing, recreation, and tourism. The oil industry's track record in often failing to protect the environment effectively makes such developments too big a risk to be allowed in our fragile ocean nation.

An oil spill can irreversibly damage our oceans, threaten our tourism industry, and our very way of life. The 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon disaster proves that no amount of reward from oil drilling is worth the risks of a potential disaster.

The proposed initial well by BPC is incredibly close to the Cay Sal Bank, one of the most ecologically productive and economically important marine systems in the country.

The Cay Sal Bank Marine Protected Area (MPA) was declared a protected area by the Bahamas Government in September 2015. The Cay Sal MPA protects thriving marine life inclusive of commercially important species, most notably one of the last remaining viable populations of the queen conch. This large MPA also protects crucial marine mammal habitats, coral reefs, seagrass meadows and open ocean ecosystems.

Eric Carey, Executive Director, Bahamas National Trust: “The importance of the Cay Sal Bank for biodiversity and the fishing industry in The Bahamas cannot be overstated. Because of its critical importance, any pollution of the area would be devastating for The Bahamas, our fishing industry, and the country’s food security.”

Tourism is the top economic driver of The Bahamas. We risk turning our coastal tourist destination into an oil nation. The nation’s tourism industry relies on clean, swimmable waters and healthy ocean ecosystems to thrive. Oil drilling and exploration threaten clean coastal economies.

Furthermore, The Bahamas is known to be one of the most vulnerable nations on the planet to the impending impacts of climate change, which is now recognized as an existential threat to The Bahamas. The country, our people, and our way of life could disappear if we are not successful as a global community in reversing the factors of a changing climate.

The Cay Sal Bank Marine Protected Area (MPA) was declared a protected area by the Bahamas Government in September 2015. The Cay Sal MPA protects thriving marine life inclusive of commercially important species, most notably one of the last remaining viable populations of the queen conch. This large MPA also protects crucial marine mammal habitats, coral reefs, seagrass meadows, and open ocean ecosystems.

The country would be sending a careless signal of hypocrisy to the world. The benefits of fossil fuels are finite and insignificant compared to the cost of global climate change. We should not compound the damage of increased storm activity and sea levels due to global climate change with the risks associated with oil exploration. Drilling for oil would require us to ignore the damage of Hurricane Dorian and other storms. We would be overlooking the harm done to Grand Bahama in the Equinor spill. We would be turning a blind eye to obvious risks to our own well-being.

The Bahamas has stood in the presence of the United Nations, demanding urgent action to combat climate change. We cannot, therefore, cry out to the world that our country is being severely threatened by climate change, and still allow the exploration for fossils fuels, one of the main drivers of climate change on the planet.

To learn more about the role that the BNT plays to manage terrestrial and marine national parks, protect species that inhabit them, and inform environmental policy, please visit its website: www.bnt.bs and follow/subscribe to various social media channels: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.

Source