KINGSTON, Jamaica – With all the daily reminders   from the Prime Minister and Minister of Health about ‘social distancing’, the message is not getting through below Cross Roads in Kingston.

I went downtown recently and beheld people hanging out casually in large groups on street corners, crowds ‘bungle up’ in wholesales on Spanish Town Road and droves of children frolicking in the street quite indifferent to the COVID-19 threat.

The three-feet apart enforcement that I had just witnessed in an uptown fast food outlet in Barbican was a world away from the cavalier atmosphere downtown Kingston.

With the overcrowding in many of the dwellings and ‘big yards’ downtown, all hell will break loose if the virus ever starts to spread down there. The same indifference is quite apparent in many other inner city communities, with children who are now out of school having grand time as they turn their community streets into playfields.

If the virus should spread, I’m sure we’ll see some of these same people on TV cursing the government for not doing enough as they desperately plead for help.

Colin Wheeler