COVID games

The country’s third wave of COVID-19 has been raging since March.

With COVID’s contagiousness and rate of death in the third wave, lax protocol adherence by some in the country, and a prior removal of testing requirements for vaccinated travelers, it ought to have come as no surprise that The Bahamas, much like other countries, would reach record daily cases and unmanageable hospitalizations this year.

By the time government moved to have the House of Assembly adjourned until September 22 back on June 22, over 60 confirmed COVID-19 deaths had been reported since March, capacity at Princess Margaret Hospital was stretched, and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had warned that the Delta variant could become the dominant strain in America.

When the government chose to go on a three-month vacation from Parliament, it was well aware that the current proclamation of emergency would expire on August 13, over one month before its vacation from the House was due to end.

We have studiously called for the implementation of a legislative framework to manage the pandemic, so that the country could move beyond a protracted suspension of constitutional rights arising from a state of emergency.

Though repeatedly foreshadowed, government did not follow through on bringing such proposed legislation to Parliament prior to taking its vacation therefrom.

With no legislative framework in place once the current state of emergency would have expired, and a declaration by several Cabinet ministers that the state of emergency would not be extended, there would have been no protocols with the force of law in place to manage the ongoing pandemic.

This meant that orders including those mandating testing, quarantine, mask wearing, curfews and limits on gathering sizes, would fall away with no laws to take their place.

It was soon speculated that Prime Minister Dr. Hubert Minnis may have been planning to dissolve Parliament before September 22, a suspicion fueled not only by government’s unfounded confidence that emergency COVID protocols would no longer be needed after August 13, but by Minnis’ call to Bahamians shortly after the House’s adjournment to get registered “in the shortest possible time”.

Now, due to the COVID situation that was not controlled prior to the House’s adjournment, the prime minister was left with no other choice but to approach House Speaker Halson Moultrie in accordance with House Rules and Procedure, to seek to satisfy him that the House ought to return at an earlier date due to the present state of the outbreak.

The House is now scheduled to meet on Tuesday, three days before the current proclamation expires.

This is what happens when you play a game so recklessly, that you play yourself out – but in this case, doing so with the healthcare system and the lives of residents who require healthcare at stake.

The prime minister as competent authority might seek to claim that the ongoing surge in COVID cases was sudden and unexpected, but this would be an argument that cannot be justifiably supported given the case trends, and connected factors that made conditions highly favorable for both ongoing community spread and unchecked importation of COVID variants.

Government might also seek to argue that science pointing to vaccinated individuals transmitting COVID-19 is brand new, and hence its move to continue the state of emergency is in response to new scientific developments.

But this argument is also tenuous at best since from the onset of emergency use authorization for current COVID vaccines, officials stressed that clinical trials did not yield conclusive evidence of the vaccines’ ability to block transmission.

This ought to have meant that The Bahamas, with its limited healthcare capacity, low vaccine uptake and inadequate contact tracing resources, should err on the side of caution with respect to its protocols.

That caution, of course, ought also to have been observed by all residents, since managing COVID-19 is not the job of government alone; and examples are numerous of residents in all categories of society not adhering to mask wearing, crowd control and social distance guidelines.

The alarming trend of COVID cases and deaths in New Providence is not a new development by any stretch, and should have garnered some targeted temporary measures – informed by data – to better control the surge before it got to its present stage.

Instead, the competent authority engaged in a relaxation of some protocols, despite there being no data during the third wave which would have informed him that the country was out of the woods.

Tourists are flocking to the Caribbean despite existing testing requirements, yet The Bahamas chose to increase its risks by removing some of its requirements for travelers back in May.

For a few islands, tourism is indeed “roaring back”, but the roar of the country’s runaway surge is a mortal and menacing kind.

‘PARTY ON’

Every adult is responsible for his or her own actions regardless of the actions of politicians.

Nevertheless, this does not negate the fact that leadership sets the tone for how the country and agencies of government respond to dynamics including the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Minnis administration has been roundly criticized for triggering on-the-ground campaigning well before the next general election is due, and while the COVID situation was showing early signs of worsening.

There are psychological ramifications for the competent authority’s suggestion last year that the COVID situation was good due to his leadership; for claims by ministers that “the world” is praising The Bahamas’ COVID response; and for political parties taking to the streets in large numbers to canvass and hold campaign events.

It sent a message to residents that they can relax, let their guard down, and settle into a heavily desired return to normalcy because based on the actions of those in authority, the situation is no longer as dangerous as it used to be.

And that is exactly what many Bahamians did, some perhaps unaware of the scope of dangers just ahead.

That deleterious message was further communicated when the prime minister irresponsibly told vaccinated residents to “party on” in the midst of surging case numbers, with the country’s chief medical officer recently acknowledging the likely role vaccinated residents are playing in viral spread given the high probability of the Delta variant’s presence.

It is apparent that though the prime minister seemed keen on an early election, he has been gun shy about pulling his premature trigger, hence the merry-go-round of decision making, public pronouncements and protocol gift-giving that hint at a nation’s leader who keeps choosing a play, then becomes skittish about directing his team toward the end zone.

This is one of the reasons the planning of an early election for the singular purpose of catching one’s opponents off guard, puts governments at a disadvantage with respect to their existing mandate.

The Minnis administration ought to have been focused on managing the pandemic inclusive of becoming more proactive in approaching early treatment options, and it ought to have been laser focused on rebuilding an economy shattered by Hurricane Dorian on Abaco and Grand Bahama, and by the pandemic’s effects.

Instead, the prime minister split the focus of his Cabinet between governance and a general election since last year.

Once a government shifts into election mode, priorities of governance change to securing a victory at the polls, and to efforts government thinks will make that undertaking a success.

One such effort seemed to be a refusal to take certain steps to address the third wave, for fear of upsetting segments of the electorate.

Such a stance amounts to using COVID-19 as a political football, thrown from position to position without the proper pandemic goal in sight.

Even a cursory look at the COVID situation by just the numbers alone, however, lets us all know that our present healthcare crisis is not a game.

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source https://thenassauguardian.com/covid-games/