Ned Brown | Take a seat, Mr Stewart

“It’s better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it, and remove all doubt.” Mark Twain

Which brings us to Squire Adam Stewart, who was born on third base (using a baseball metaphor), and believes he hit a triple. Stewart, son of the great and self-made Butch, attained the position of Sandals Resorts International executive chairman after the untimely death of his father. In his mind, younger Stewart likely believes he worked his way up the ladder to the top spot. He reminds me of the comment made by the hapless Fredo Corleone to brother Michael in The Godfather – Part II, “I’m smart, and I want respect!”

Not satisfied with being a hotelier, Stewart has weighed in fancying himself now as a health and public policy ‘expert’ when it comes to handling the COVID-19 pandemic in Jamaica - sort of a Dr Anthony Fauci/Bill Gates rolled into one. It appears that Stewart has taken a page from Donald Trump Jr’s Twitter handbook commenting that inoculation against COVID-19 is a personal choice, and calling for the scrapping of face mask mandates - positions totally opposite to those of the government. But Stewart doesn’t stop digging the proverbial hole deeper in which he has squarely put himself. He puts out a tweet that reads, “It’s going to be a long road ahead if more leaders don’t take a page out of (Prime Minister Boris) Johnson’s book”- referring to the UK’s recent moves to roll back mandates. Not to be deterred by facts, Stewart fails to acknowledge that Jamaica’s fully vaccinated rate is just 21 per cent (just slightly ahead of that other Caribbean tourism ‘mecca’, Haiti), while the UK is at 72 per cent. Stewart’s comparison between the two countries’ starkly different situations is like comparing apples to elephants - to twist a metaphor. Stewart also seems oblivious to the two-year continuing burden the pandemic has placed on Jamaica’s already ill-equipped healthcare system. But, of course, any time Adam needs to see a doctor, he can jump on his private jet, do the quick one-hour flight to Miami, and visit his private healthcare provider.

REAL SCIENCE FRONT

On the real science front, just this week, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) proclaimed, “COVID isn’t finished with us, and any feeling of safety can change in a moment.” He correctly noted that the highly contagious Omicron variant originated in unvaccinated Africa, and that new variants could emerge in under-vaccinated countries. The WHO’s new priority is to get under-vaccinated countries on par with higher-vaccinated ones as the former places a threat to all. Jamaica take note.

Fortunately, saner Jamaican minds have weighed in. Just this week, Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett, probably Jamaica’s finest overseas diplomat, tried to throw his major patron, Stewart, a lifeline by commenting, “Some players are merely anxious for normality. I think that we are looking at how each of our competitive destinations is responding to the pandemic, and we’re anxious to get the lion’s share of the visitors that come to our region.” I’m waiting to see the new Sandals or Beaches television advert that proclaims, “we don’t require our employees to get vaccinated or wear face masks”. That’s a ‘winning’ message to the 35 per cent of Americans who remain unvaccinated. Stewart is correct about one aspect of ‘choice’: tourists will not return to Jamaica at pre-pandemic levels if they don’t feel safe- either from COVID infections or crime. Butch Stewart must be shaking his head.

Ned Brown is an author and political advisor in Washington, DC, who lives in Charleston, South Carolina.