The poor will be the real victims

As one watches the developments, discussions, and  debates taking place since the scourge of coronavirus attacked the world, it is not difficult to remember the words of Walter Bagehot, the late British journalist that 'Poverty is  such an anomaly to rich people, that it is very difficult for them to figure out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.'

Unfortunately, the vast majority of the world's people who are going bear the brunt of this virus, are the poor and they, in reality, are close to being the majority of the world's population.

It may appear simplistic, but I have such difficulty watching the thousands of people in high-end air-conditioned vehicles, lining up all over the USA to collect food from the food banks. For these people who are claiming to be needy, have no reason to be so for they live in a country with lots of security blankets that most in the world can only dream of. 

And if those people are really having difficulty finding food, what must be the plight of the really poor people all over the world, for this virus is affecting everyone.

It seems the choices facing the really poor, therefore, may probably even boil down to slowly dying from starvation/malnutrition or taking a chance that the virus will not get to them. 

Take my own home Jamaica where under 10% of adults were up to recently said to be unemployed. But at the same time, we must recall that approximately a fifth of those who are registered as employed, include small farmers whose existence is determined by the elements. Worse off are those who hustle day by day, driving route taxis or selling anything from sweets to a few fruits to earn enough to buy food daily. 

The day these people do not do that, is the day they may not have food for their children.

Recently, a Business Process Outsourcing company, (BPO) in Jamaica was found to have a significant number of persons suffering from the coronavirus. These companies in Jamaica have been a major source of employment, providing jobs for some 40,000 people, mainly women. According to the reports, one of the main companies involved in that industry had not been practicing hygienic practices and that is where the virus spread exponentially, causing Jamaica's contagion rate to double overnight.

What bothers me though was the panic reaction from some influential quarters calling for the BPO industry to be locked down and some are even urging the government to lock down the country entirely!!

Those proposing that solution in my humble opinion, are either complete idiots, people who think what happens in the USA must be emulated regardless of other circumstances or fall into Bagehot's description of the rich as quoted above. 

For the question arises, if these establishments are closed, what will happen to the  40,000  people who depend on the paycheck earned in these establishments if they are closed?  (It is estimated that every working head of household, supports a family of 5 others in Jamaica).

Yes the rich USA and European countries can afford to lock down indefinitely,  but very few third world countries can afford to.

In Jamaica, already our tourism industry has been devastated, there is little demand for bauxite and even remittances have dried up.

As far as I am concerned, the government has been making the right moves by closing the schools,  testing as many people as they can, tracing those who they have come in touch with, quarantining selected areas where many are affected and instituting a nightly curfew.

However I don't know if closing down the parish of St. Catherine was necessary.

Yes, the problem occurred in Portmore and that is a structured community so a lockdown may work. 

But the rest of St. Catherine is not like that but more like  Kingston, where 'hustling' is predominant. 

I think the better move is to intensify the testing, quarantining and blanketing the airwaves with public education about washing hands, wearing masks and social distancing and of course the nightly curfew. 

This is the successful template South Korea followed, balancing economic concerns with the public health realities, and they are receiving condemnation from all over the world for the success of their practical strategies.

Happily, a number of entertainers have rallied to the cause, making music to encourage their fans to do what's right and that will have a great impact and we have an added advantage. This is based on studies by scientists all over the world, who are now concluding that the BCG vaccine against TB that children in many third world countries were forced to take before entering the primary school from the '50s, seems to have strengthened our immune system against this particular virus.

Walking the thin line between economic devastation and public health has to be the strategy, for cutting off the majority poor from their daily bread can only spell disaster, in both the long and short run.

I have always maintained that the worse thing that could ever happen to an individual is to be poor and sick. Right now,  the 'sick' part will not apply as far as this virus is concerned, for the vast majority of us will not be adversely affected by it.

Blacks as lab rats? No way

Millions of white people have throughout history, maintained that they are the ‘chosen ones,' and that blacks are not fully human. 

Not only have they promoted this by any means possible over the centuries, but even more disgracefully, they have even successfully co-opted religion to promote this evil doctrine.

For, from Christianity was established and recognized by the imperial world power in Rome, as the 'true religion'  their depiction of Jesus as white with blue eyes, strengthened the campaign.

Latterly too, the  Dutch Reform Church in South Africa was for decades, masters of this ‘spiritual’ doctrine,  as has the white evangelical movement in the USA, though they have been a little more subtle.

Unfortunately, this evil doctrine has not only been super successful among millions of whites but also, they have even accomplished the mammoth feat of convincing a large segment of the black population that this is true.

As a result of the success of this doctrine, black people have often been used as lab rats, to test different types of medicines necessary to keep the white man healthy, without a peep from most people.

Some of the best known and recent examples of this abuse in the USA have been;  

From 1932 to 1972  the public health service along with the Tuskegee institute  established  a program called “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.”  Under this program, 200 black men in Tusgagee diagnosed with syphilis, were never told of their illness and were denied treatment. They were then used as human guinea pigs to allow the scientist to follow their progression and symptoms of the disease. They all subsequently died from syphilis and their families were never told that they could have been treated. 

The study continued for four decades. (NBC News.)

In 2014, according to the Atlanta Black Star, reports emerged that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hid results from a test of experimental measles vaccines that actually increased the likelihood of black children developing autism. Dr. William Thompson, who has been with the CDC for more than 10 years, told The Examiner that the authors of the study manipulated and hid data that proved black babies were more than three times more likely to develop regressive autism if they were given the vaccine before the age of 3. Parents of the black babies who were receiving the vaccines were not made aware of the risk of their child developing autism.

In the 1950s Henrietta Lacks, an African-American woman  was the unwitting source of cells which were cultured by George Otto Gey to create the first known human immortal cell line to be cloned for medical research. This was done without the lady's knowledge or consent, from a tumor biopsied during treatment for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. 

Allegations are that doctors have grown roughly 20 tons of her cells since her death.

Only recently too,  the rumors that AIDS drugs had been tested on Africans were confirmed when Jean-Paul Mira, head of intensive care at Cochin hospital in Paris, was speaking about the global health crisis. He was  participating in an online the conversation when he suggested carrying out a major study in Africa in the race to find a vaccine for the Coronavirus.

According to  Yahoo News  on April 3rd, 2020, he declared; "If I could be provocative, shouldn't we be doing this study in Africa, where there are no masks, no treatment, no intensive care, rather as was done with certain studies on AIDS, where things are tested on prostitutes because it's known that they are highly exposed (to HIV)?" Mira asked. "What do you think?"

Camille Locht, head of research at the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) in Lille, was also in on the discussion and was said to have agreed with the suggestion declaring; "You are right. We are in the process of thinking about a study in parallel in Africa!"

The head of the WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus who is an Ethiopian was quick to declare that he condemned the suggestion adding;

"Africa can't and won't be a testing ground for any vaccine."

While that official agency most likely will not sanction the move, what is to prevent private investors from doing it in their haste to enrich pharmaceutical companies? 

I will tell you what; only constant vigil by persons of color throughout the entire planet can guarantee that this will not be done. For as Edmund Burke, "All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good man (people) do nothing. 

So it is to our own peril if, in 2020, we the black people of the world sit idly by and allow the continuation of the evil practice by wicked scientists and other exploiters, who treat our brothers and sisters, wherever they are, as lab rats!

It's gonna be alright

I don't know which misguided person said 'time heals all wounds' but that is a bit of an exaggeration, for time certainly cannot heal some wounds. What it does though is to make some unpleasant situations eventually become nothing but faint memories.

It's sometimes easy to start feeling sorry for yourself when you are as restless as I am and feeling stuck, especially after they closed off the gym and pool in our complex.

I was therefore forced to put things into perspective.

Heck, what am I complaining about when the late, great, Nelson Mandela was stuck in total confinement in a much smaller space for 25 years! But who am I to want to compare myself with such a unique person, for such tribulation would have driven the ordinary human totally crazy!

The point is though, millions, at some time or the other, have had to remain in one place and most survived, put it behind them and moved on.

I remember watching an interview with a Holocaust survivor who was kept hidden by himself in the attic of a kind non-jew for three whole years from he was age nine. He was over 90 years old at the time I saw the interview and he had survived, prospered and lived a good, successful life.

I also read the story of a Rwandan lady who was hidden in the bathroom of a pastor for three months during the genocidal campaign in that country. She eventually got out, moved on and is a successful teacher in her country today.

And didn't I, a few years ago, ride out a miserable six weeks without electricity, without a means of making a living and eating tinned corned beef almost every day?

Yep, that was from September to  December 1988 when a wicked category 5 hurricane named Gilbert, devastated my little island and some of us in the capital, Kingston, never got back electricity for months as most of the light posts on the island were torn down.

I was totally unprepared for that event although the Met Service had been giving several warnings that a direct hit was inevitable. The problem was though, every year we got those same warnings and no hits, so I had stopped preparing for hurricanes!

I, therefore, had nothing stored up for that rainy day, so to speak.

But although I was left in the dark for six weeks, I really cannot now even remember the day to day trials and tribulations of what must have been an unpleasant and stressful period.

We were not under quarantine as we are now and our freedom of movement was only curtailed because trees and light posts blocked most roads for days and even weeks. Thank god I have never been without my trusty bicycle though!

I do remember that because I was unprepared, I did have difficulty with basic foods and other stuff, for even where you could find a shop open, the shelves were bare. Besides, farms had been wiped out and because so many roads were blocked, even where businesses had any goods to distribute, vehicles could not get through for weeks.

I was by then a single mom with two teenage children and no financial assistance from their father, no fridge, not even fans to keep us cool and only lamps to light the dark nights. Luckily, I had the lamps and candles as power cuts in Jamaica had been regular and unceasing, although none really lasted more than a day at a time before that stupid hurricane.

Now, I don't even remember how I managed financially, as most businesses in the city were closed as they could not operate without electricity and because I had just set up my Public Relations business, it must have been a particularly dry time for me.

One of the few things I recall about the aftermath is how it took me years before I could even think of eating corned beef from the tin, for as a  rabid carnivore without a refrigerator, I remember always having to turn to that for meals. when I could find any to purchase.

You know, there is a popular adage in Jamaica "good fren betta dan packet money" and it did prove to be so true during that drought, for whenever friends saw anything available, anywhere, they would get extra for others.

It took me years too before I could drink room temperature water, for without electricity we had to boil the water and with the natural heat on our island, we never had a chance for the water to really become cool, for we had no ice.

Oh, yes, we did get ice for a while, for when the roads cleared a bit, a friend of mine used to drive some 16 miles daily to Spanish Town to buy ice until we heard that the water they were using to make the ice, was the irrigation water in the canals!  Those waters weren't even used for irrigation alone, for whenever you drove by the canals, you would see kids swimming, people bathing and even animals in them.

In retrospect, we used that ice for many weeks before the rumor (?) stopped us in our tracks, but it never killed us!

I recall with much love how when I told my brother who lives in the USA about that dilemma, he offered to send me a cooler (as neither coolers nor things like generators, were to be found anywhere on the island). Yes, he sent it,  but with everything virtually closed down for months, it arrived about six months after the electricity was finally restored!😡😡😡.

It must have been a difficult and stressful period, but now all I have are vague memories of quite insignificant things like the above, for we survived, we overcame, we rebuilt and we moved on.

The point is, no matter how dire things appear to be at the moment, nothing lasts forever.

I, therefore, predict that by next year this time, those of us who don't get killed by this invisible menace, will forget the confinement and will probably be laughing about some of the trivial discomforts that occurred during leap year 2020. 

Always grateful

Today is the 1st of April, a day when I normally mess around with my friends, thinking up and playing silly pranks.

Not April 1, 2020, for today is not just another day when the world stands still in the face of Corvid 19, (as the damn virus is called) but also, men, previously thought to be  'all-powerful,' continue to tremble in fear of the unknown.

A pool of my own

Today is also supposed to have also been an especially significant day for me, for it was the first time in my life that I was due to set foot on the great continent of Africa.

My plan had been to land at Nairobi airport this afternoon, have a whale of a time then go on to Ethiopia in the middle of the month.

Ethiopia, like Kenya, has always been on my bucket list.

Kenya to get up close to wonderful, rare, exotic wild animals and Ethiopia because of its intriguing history and the fact that all our lives, my daughter and I have had constant queries from strangers as to whether we are from that country.

 Hilarious, since neither of us has ever been there and have no relationship through our ancestors to that country. (My daughter did the ancestry thing and it revealed that our roots are in Sierre Leone. That confirms what my grandmother told me decades ago as she had always insisted that we were from the Mandingo tribe).

But this trip was not to be so I must move on, stop complaining and be grateful for what I have.

I think after my son was killed 24 years ago, the thing that helped me to heal best was learning about gratitude. I don't remember who explained to me the healing power of gratitude, but I remain grateful for whoever it was that opened my eyes.

So, for decades now, I have practiced finding things to be grateful for every day.

Even last night as I had an awful pain in my wrist and was about to feel sorry for myself, I found myself smiling instead as I remembered how painless that felt, compared to what I went through with chikungunya.

Chikungunya became my barometer for pain some years ago.

For the information of those not familiar with that disease, it is spread by mosquitos and it ravaged at least 50% of the Jamaican population in 2014.

Before I got it, I thought the most painful thing in the world was delivering a baby. Chikungunya proved me wrong.

To begin, whereas the baby pain lasts only a few hours at most, the excruciating pains accompanying that disease can linger up to a lifetime. While that disease raged through my body, there were times I could not even stand up, because every inch of my body hurt. Many days I even found myself crawling on the ground to get from place to place while wondering if I would ever walk again!

That disease is really evil as it targets every joint in the body, especially where there had been previous damage. I had heard the after-effects lasted five years, but that is not true. For as a child, both my thumbs had slipped out of the joints and my wrists damaged, when I was learning to roller skate. Chikungunya not only targeted them both during its evil reign but also, for every now and then, even last night, the severe pain returns to those joints.

Now, why did I stray so far? 

Oh, I remember, I was telling you about being grateful for having had chikungunya so I know what real pain feels like thus can dismiss the frequent tinges that come with old age.

The abandoned golf course all to myself. Nice

This morning, April 1st, as I enjoyed my early walk, I could not help being very grateful for my current environment which includes having a huge, closed down golf course all to myself.

Lots of birds and even iguanas love this golf course too and while I hate the reptiles, the ducks, geese, and egrets are always wonderful to have around.

I once saw a raccoon in one of the ponds but that was months ago. Maybe he still sees me but I don't see him.

Last week,  I also saw the most beautiful orange and black bird in one of the trees too.

Then there is the pool that I can have all to myself when I am finished. Although there are some 30 units in my over 55 complex, the place often feels like a morgue, as I rarely see anyone else outside, so have most facilities to myself.

I am absolutely amazed at how people love to or are even able to stay indoors. I seem to have a more serious case of claustrophobia than most other people. When I see on television what's happening in places like Italy, I cannot but wonder if I wouldn't crazy having to stay totally indoors. Even when I visit cold places like Colorado and am not forced to stay inside but do so more than normal as it is so cold outside, I find it intolerable.

So once again, here I am giving thanks for everything as we go through another day when we are once again reminded that so-called powerful humans are not in control, but an invisible virus.

Ironic but true.