The hard, painful lesson of COVID-19: Lockdowns are a death wish
From as early as four months into the novel coronavirus pandemic in 2020, this newspaper had started insisting that we all must learn to live with COVID-19. It was not that we were insensible to the need to observe the safety protocols — in fact we actively promoted them.
However, we had determined quite quickly that this virus would be here on Earth for a long time. As such, mankind would be forced to exist with it, just as we have been doing with the common cold, flu, HIV/AIDS and many other ailments since time immemorial.
We recall, as well, that when we voiced opposition to the lockdowns we received heavy flak from those who, at the time, saw that measure as a panacea. However, as the full impact of the lockdowns started to really hit hard, many of those people experienced a wake up call and had to rethink.
Specifically, the lockdowns devastated the economy. Many Jamaicans lost their jobs as many businesses either folded or scaled back, and the Planning Institute of Jamaica reported a 5.7 per cent contraction in the economy for the January to March 2021 quarter, when compared with the corresponding period the year before. Tourism, our saving grace, was obliterated and is only now just recovering.
The lockdowns also resulted in thousands of children being robbed of their education. In fact, the full effect of the learning loss is still not yet quantified. At the same time the country saw an increase in stress levels and other health-related issues among the populace.
In March this year when the Government brought an end to the Disaster Risk Management Act (DRMA) and told Jamaicans that they had a responsibility to manage their health, we had commented that it was the correct decision, as to do otherwise would have destroyed the economy and the lives of many Jamaicans.
After all, the health ministry’s goal of achieving herd immunity through 65 per cent vaccination rate in the population was a lost cause, as almost 75 per cent of the people refused to be vaccinated.
Additionally, the Government was painfully slow in licensing laboratories to make testing easier and affordable. The upshot was that heartless people with means profiteered from the health crisis by charging exorbitant fees that prevented the majority of Jamaicans from being able to determine their status through testing.
In the meantime, the price we paid for putting all our pandemic strategies in one vaccination basket was dividing our people into a small minority of the vaccinated and a larger majority of the unvaccinated.
We stand by our firm support for the reopening of the economy because, as the evidence shows, lockdowns strangle businesses and have a devastating impact on the ability of people to earn a living, particularly the poor and vulnerable. Add to that the dislocation in education, as well as the psychosocial disadvantages and you get a clear picture of why we should not go that route again.
Jamaica, as Prime Minister Andrew Holness said earlier this year, “cannot keep our economy under restrictions”.
We continue to encourage Jamaicans to live safely by observing healthy hygiene practices, washing hands frequently, wearing masks where necessary and, if infected, staying home.
Any thought now of returning to a lockdown is a death wish.