Ronald Thwaites | Plenty parties, uncertain schools

Let’s face it, COVID-19 is now the pandemic of the unvaccinated. Despite the few instances of persons inoculated who become reinfected, even those evince only mild symptoms. The scourge of the third wave is among those unable or unwilling to be protected.

So, plenty parties in the height of COVID’s third wave; growing uncertainty about full-time resumption of school, and half the country still confusing vaccination with the mark of the beast or some other hocus-pocus. That’s Jamaica at 59 years of age: side by side with the examples of Jamaican discipline, self-sacrifice, focus, cooperation amidst competition and world-beating talent in Tokyo. That’s us, too. But which tendency is in the ascendancy, and why?

Watch the television coverage on Friday evening of the bacchanal in Negril. Hundreds of nubile humans, scarcely a mask; ‘faghet’ social distancing, all blessed by the authorities, who tell us of the deadly surge in the same west and the bursting at the seams at the Lucea and Sav and MoBay hospitals.

We are condign fools. Watch what is likely to happen after these superspreaders, by which we choose to define our nationhood. No wonder no media is allowed at the party. We use our freedom as a cudgel for our own destruction.

CHURCHES GUILTY

Even the churches sometimes are guilty. Many statements, saccharine, ambivalent or downright opposed to the vaccine which scientists, inspired by the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, have developed and recommend for the protection of life and the advancement of the common good. Shame!

A welcome exception comes from the bold Catholic Bishop John Persaud of Mandeville, who unequivocally encourages everybody to be vaccinated as a moral duty. Hopefully, there are others giving similar leadership. But since the churches are so selfishly split up, smug in their sinful, divided weakness, they are missing once again the God-impelled opportunity to guide people towards the best chance of healing and well-being. How can you be pro-life and anti-vax at the same time?

The default of civil society and institutions of conscience invites the very authoritarian response from government which is about to overtake liberal democracies. There is a wall of cynicism, selfishness, superstition and mistrust infecting our people which many of us don’t know how to scale.

I longed to see Andrew and Mark pictured together, not in separate statements, on Independence Day, encouraging everyone to come out to combat a peril, worse than the most severe natural disaster. What a start to positive politics that would be! After all, what is the purpose of cohering as a society if, when faced with deadly risk, we fail to cooperate like those four world-beating, beautiful relay runners did at the Olympics?

Jimmy desperately needs a job. He is a cook and can deliver food. He is lucky. There are employers who will engage him in their restaurants, provided he is vaccinated. But his pastor, heavily supported by some Trumpists in Bible Belt America, is telling his congregation that people who take the jab will be extinct within five years and that Jimmy should exercise his ‘human rights’ to refuse the jab. “God will provide and protect,” he intones.

Yes, Pastor. Exercise your personal freedom and decline the injection, but recognise that you have no freedom to come around others and expose them and yourselves to your likely contagion. There will be no work for Jimmy. Hunger, dependency and sickness become his spiritual rewards.

As for school: wait for the bam-bam. Teachers (and other public servants) are able to stay home, work or don’t work in the virtual space, and still get the money very regular from the Government. As for the hapless pickney dem, few learn, most don’t learn. Check the exam standards; and let the ‘dreamers’ party on. We are in danger of choosing revelry and self-centredness over effective education.

VACCINATE

The greatest stimulus to vaccinate – now we seem to be anticipating a constant supply, (are we really sure about that?) – will be the likely requirement of the United States that entrants to that country must show evidence of vaccination. Let that be a condition for a visa and watch the doubtful flock with rolled-up sleeves.

One cannot avoid noting the role of social media, the addiction of our time, in this confusion. Our capacity to cooperate, to exalt the common good, those most indispensable of civic virtues, are being undone by the technology we thought would bring us together. Confirmation bias is the substitute for national unity, while “the people are dedding” and the wealthy and famous glitterati, now suitably melanized, grow exponentially richer.

Florida teachers, promoting masking and wanting to get back to class safely, are demonstrating against the imbecile governor who is basically a COVID denier. Will Jamaican teachers do the same? Over 600 US colleges mandate vaccination as a condition for September enrolment. Will UWI, UTech and the others do the same? Why not?

I support the Government’s thrust to get us all vaccinated. It is beyond urgent if schools are to open. It is worth repeating last week’s plea that all school personnel should get priority for the jab, and that replacement be found for those who, without good medical reason, refuse to comply.

The issue of when individual rights have to give way to the common good will always be contentious and open to abuse. There was no demurrer entertained when seat belts were mandated; when smoking in public was prohibited; or when the polio or smallpox vaccines became available. This instance is equally clear.

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.