Re-examine the state of emergency

The streets of New Providence are packed from morning until night.

Churches have as many attendees as they are allowed to hold.

Children are back in school.

The movie theaters have reopened.

Gyms are operating smoothly again.

Funerals are now allowed with up to 40 people, who are not officiants, at graveyards.

Weddings can be held with allowable capacity in churches.

Outdoor dining is booming; those restaurants attached to hotels are frequently filled to allowable capacity on weekends.

And the prime minister informed this weekend that there is the possibility that those who receive their first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine may be allowed to dine indoors without testing two weeks thereafter.

Beaches are covered with people on their days off as the weather warms.

And on-the-ground campaigning is in full swing, replete with parties on parks in constituencies.

The major hotels have been open for months and cruise ships are soon set to sail again.

With promises of Independence Day celebrations to come and Junkanoo this holiday season, we seem to be staring at a new normal on the horizon.

Aside from the curfew, one would be hard-pressed to believe that there is a state of emergency in effect until May 23.

Yet, there is.

In January, the nation was told by the prime minister in the House of Assembly that without the state of emergency and had COVID-19 in The Bahamas ripped through this country as it had the United States, “every Bahamian within The Bahamas would have been dead”.

It was just one emotional argument among many undergirded by flawed logic in a speech intended to invoke fear rather than explain the scientific reasoning for the continuing use of the emergency powers.

“Well,” you may remark, “surely the situation has changed for the better.”

But has it?

In January, the prime minister foreshadowed widespread suffering and death if the emergency powers were allowed to expire.

According to the Ministry of Health, the country added 175 COVID-19 cases from January 1 to January 21 – 147 on New Providence and 28 on Grand Bahama.

However, from March 1 to March 21, according to the Ministry of Health, the country added 289 COVID-19 cases – 136 on New Providence and 153 on Grand Bahama.

On January 27, the day the prime minister gave his address in the House of Assembly, there were reportedly 17 people hospitalized with COVID-19 – three of them in Grand Bahama and none in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).

Yesterday, there were reportedly 23 people hospitalized with COVID-19 – three of them on Grand Bahama and three in Doctors Hospital’s ICU.

Health officials claim Grand Bahama is not experiencing community spread and “the rise in these cases may be due to the increase in attendance at events and smaller gatherings”.

One would think that with the surge in Grand Bahama, we would have seen the tightening of emergency restrictions on that island, but have yet to see that.

Meantime, New Providence, where 80 percent of the population lives in a dense concentration of one of our smallest inhabited islands, has not experienced a surge as restrictions were loosened but still has tighter restrictions than Grand Bahama.

Science appears to inform very little at this point.

The prime minister has displayed hope that the AstraZeneca vaccine will give rise to more freedoms and a return to normal.

We share his optimism.

However, we are nowhere near the 60 percent minimum threshold of vaccinated people needed to achieve herd immunity.

And with so many apparently reluctant to become vaccinated, we may take a while to get there.

The focus should now be on getting more buy-in from key stakeholders.

While we are clearly not out of the woods with COVID-19, we see no reason to continue the emergency order other than a lack of will to amend legislation to govern the necessary health protocols and actually let science govern them.

A state of emergency is so serious a situation that a clear, present and imminent threat should be evident to warrant its implementation.

Full-throated campaigning does not suggest such a threat looms.

The point of the state of emergency was said to be to reduce hospitalizations and death, not to indefinitely control Bahamians with an iron fist at the population’s whim.

No one, not even the prime minister, should possess so much power for so long with so little accountability, lest he risk the danger of becoming comfortable with it.

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source https://thenassauguardian.com/re-examine-the-state-of-emergency/