At the time of writing it is Thursday, February 17, 2022 and Jamaica has a night-time curfew beginning at 11:00 pm, apparently just before COVID-19 starts prowling the streets, and ending at 5:00 am when COVID-19 has had its fill of infecting wayward curfew breakers, thus bedding down for the day.

As I write there are vaccine mandate/measures protests taking place across the world as the unvaccinate and fed up vaccinated gather to demand a return of their human and civic rights.

Freedoms which have been encroached upon by government overreach are being slowly eked out under duress to citizens who are irate and insisting they want a complete and immediate return to normality. Harsh policies were imposed on the global population, but they didn’t seem to reduce spread as every mainstream media outlet kept us fully saturated with inflated COVID-19 infection rates and COVID-19-affiliated deaths.

Economies have been shattered, some fatally; countless businesses have died; and unemployment/underemployment has soared. Over the past two years we have seen depression and suicide rates rise; families and communities divided over vaccine status; education has taken a huge hit with the closing of schools; and the poorest among us have been excluded from simple life- and sanity-sustaining exercises upon being ordered, first, to stay home, then to refrain from doing anything which could provide profit or entertainment.

As with every other time I speak of the COVID-19 measures and the obvious negative effects, some folks will ask, “Oh gosh, Tanya, COVID again?” By now, anyone who asks that should just put on a dunce cap and go stand in a corner. This is not a random topic bred of opinion and shared with the intent to galvanise any superficial group. This is literally a fight for the freedoms to which every human on this planet is entitled.

What are the main arguments in favour of keeping us under house arrest?

1) A dangerous virus with an approximately 99 per cent survival rate

2) There really isn’t anything else. That’s it.

What are the arguments in favour of mandating the vaccine?

1) At first it was, “Take the vaccine so you don’t get COVID-19.”

2) Then it was, “Take the vaccine so you don’t infect the compromised.”

3) Then, when the vaccinated still caught and transmitted the novel coronavirus, it was, “Take the vaccine so you don’t get sick and overwhelm the health system!” And, with that, gold was struck. That one persists.

4) Added to number 3 is, “Take the vaccine so you don’t die!” Even as the sanctions against regular citizens who decided to opt out of this shape-shifting ‘care shot’ left them destitute enough to seriously consider suicide.

Let us examine the argument that the health system will be overrun by COVID-19 patients. How many intensive care units would US$274 million expand? That’s the money allocated to the Montego bypass development. How many desperately needed beds could have been bought with $422 million? That’s the amount Health Minister Christopher Tufton proposed for a vaccination marketing campaign, which many of us will agree seems to be his favourite spend after having doled out a total of $55 million with one company over a two-year period pre-COVID-19.

The tourism ministry was comfortable spending $17 million on a most underwhelming welcome sign until public uproar forced them to “tek off a ting” and reduce the bill to $14.7 million, which was still ridiculous. Yet these same politicians who spend taxpayer’s money on things which taxpayers don’t approve have the audacity to suggest that taxpaying Jamaicans who get ill and go to the hospital are somehow a burden to those (the politicians) who live entirely at the nation’s expense.

When all of this is over we will need to put measures in place to ensure this level of disrespect is never repeated. However, for now, we continue to insist, with empirical data on our side, that our freedoms be reinstated. If the Israelis, with one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, have now begun to protest the measures still being imposed on them, what then is the cut-off point? The arguments are extremely conflicting.

Whenever I mention Israel I’m told they don’t die from COVID-19 anymore, and their hospitals aren’t being overrun because they have reached the elusive holy grail of herd immunity. Yet Israelis are now taking to the streets because their freedom has not been returned.

When will these politicians and their handlers think it is time to release the prisoners of Earth? I’m not interested in engaging with anyone who says our freedoms haven’t been taken. Obviously such a person must have already been perched on a stick in their own personal box before all this began, popping out every hour to scream “cuckoo”.

This is especially alarming because pre-COVID-19 Jamaica invested very little in mental health care, and mid-COVID-19 Jamaica isn’t interested in early treatment or prevention of the very COVID-19 they claim to care about, so I wonder what will become of all the freshly minted mental illnesses born of all these unrealistic measures.

Who does Prime Minister Andrew Holness listen to? Maybe we need another Moses and Aaron par to approach yon Pharaoh Holness bearing the words of Yahweh: “And Moses and Aaron came in unto Pharaoh and said unto him, thus saith the Lord God of the Hebrews: How long wilt thou refuse to humble thyself before me? Let my people go…” Exodus 10: 3.

Tanya Stephens is an international singer/songwriter and citizen of Jamaica.