#BTColumn – Sacrificing lives to “save” an economic policy is morally wrong

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by this author are their own and do not represent the official position of the Barbados Today Inc.

I completely agree with economist Carlos Forte’s comments reported in Barbados TODAY:

“The Mottley administration’s recent decision to reopen Barbados’ international borders to facilitate international travel reflects the Government’s haste to reboot the local tourism industry. This is premature and may prove to be counterproductive,” he said. “The Government of Barbados is playing Russian Roulette with the lives and livelihood of Barbadians.”

On Saturday (Jul 11), “Minister Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Bostic announced that while one person tested positive last Saturday (July 4) for the dreaded virus that has developed into a global pandemic, last evening, five of those who tested negative last Saturday are now shown to be positive.

“These persons would have been in quarantine, as mandated by the Ministry, and constantly monitored. Their positive testing now suggests that the virus would have been contracted prior to arriving in Barbados, but would not have developed to the point where it was manifested in the initial test.

“Minister Bostic said this was precisely what local health authorities had been warning about. The disease takes up to 14 days to present itself in the PCR test used by local authorities.”

Thursday’s report stated, “Someone seated close to one of the five that tested positive last weekend, has now, on their third examination, tested positive for the coronavirus,” eleven days after arriving, proving that the 14-day delay is real.

But Sunday (July 12), the protocols were relaxed and only one negative PCR Antigen test taken 72 hours (now one week) before arrival is needed for visitors from low-risk countries to avoid having a second test and quarantining for the intervening five days.

Maybe the Government believes like White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said, referring to President Trump’s insistence on full reopening of schools, “The science should not stand in the way of this.”

The Protocols have been changed slightly, but the risk is still too high given the time needed after infection to register a positive test. Persons travelling to Canada on Sunday reported to a Bajan family that masks were removed by most passengers immediately after departure and replaced just before touchdown in Canada. Airline staff wore masks, but did not ask passengers to wear theirs. Chances of contracting the virus on a plane are high if some passengers have not been tested and are not wearing masks, as happened on the July 4 JetBlue flight.

One of the first flights to arrive with new Protocols in place on Sunday was the private jet carrying rapper Drake and his entourage, who had previously uploaded negative PCR tests, which were validated at the airport. After this, they were free to go and mingle with Barbadians, as they apparently did in St. Lawrence Gap at a nightspot, without masks and without social distancing as shown in numerous photographs.

If any of them had recently contracted the virus, or on a commercial flight, caught it on the plane, such behaviour could have infected many Bajans and started a wave of community spread the health authorities could not handle. This is the type of threat to which Mr Forte is referring.

Speaking about the new July 12th Protocols, a relative repeated the Trump White House mantra that “the economy MUST reopen”- which Barbadians seem to have accepted as unquestioned gospel – which for us means opening to visitors even at risk of the lives of seniors who might succumb to the re-introduction of the COVID-19 virus. They emphasized that I should understand that economic policy required the prompt reopening.

I am glad to see that a qualified economist opposes this and agrees that a second shut down would be more devastating than a few weeks delay and that the risk to Bajans’ lives is too high.

Economic history tells me that if the ultimate sacrifice of human lives is required to “save” the Government’s economic policy, that policy is ethically offensive and immoral. Economic policy should serve the people, not require people, at risk of their lives, to serve the economy.

This is what I was taught by my revered history teachers – Monica Skeete and Dame Elsie Pilgrim – and by my father. In our studies, as well as in hundreds of historical novels, I learned that to subjugate human needs to economic growth promotes evil.

There is evil in the desire for economic dominance which caused the many European wars; in colonization of the Third World; in the introduction of slavery in the Americas; in the economics of the Industrial Revolution, particularly the English textile industry, with its abuse of women and children; in the conflicts on the Indian sub-continent during occupation by the commercial East India Co. and later full colonization; the war fought by the United States to free itself from economic domination by the British; the suffering of slaves and indigenous people in the Americas. Supremacy of economic ideology results in suffering for large groups of people.

Over the last 25 years, our Governments adopted, under the aegis of the international financial institutions where some Ministers actually trained, the American approach which began with Maggie Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in 1979/80, referred to as conservative – meaning a throwback – which reasserted the pre-World War industrial dominance of economic needs of investors over the health and well-being of citizens. This approach is encapsulated in the phrase “Businesses create jobs” which is used to justify Government policies which benefit the rich with huge concessions, tax cuts and cheap money supply, while reducing services to working citizens and insisting they pay for them by means of service fees and increased consumption taxes.

Under this doctrine, the Government rushed to reduce Corporation Tax to please the off-shore industry, change the Severance Pay Act to “save” the hotels and to prematurely reopen our borders to rescue the industry. Yet they have declined to adjust the NIS regulations to allow seniors to take early retirement and find part-time work at home to reduce their exposure to the dangerous virus and save their lives.

In spite of pleas to Vector Control and notices on my gate that prolonged exposure to the poisonous “fog” could prematurely end the life of my terminally ill dog who has only months to live, they stopped near my house and continued spraying on foot for an additional 15 mins. A procedure begun under this administration, as previously they drove through the area, down the cul-de-sac and returned spraying both ways, then left. I was able to keep him with me in a hot and airless back room during the almost half-hour of spraying, and we had to sleep the night in the living room to avoid the residual vapours in the bedroom.

Under the debt restructuring, this Government seized money intended to provide part of the down payment for my home; my relatives also lost money. In the retrenchment, another relative was deprived of a job after 15 years with only four hours’ notice. The replacement position was recently advertised. Now, our very lives and that of my beloved companion of ten years are put at risk by people who simply don’t care.

When you understand that because of laws passed, policy, or other actions by the Government, you are in fear of losing your life, property, or that of your loved ones, you know that “something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”

Ch. III of the Constitution of Barbados “PROTECTION OF FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS OF THE INDIVIDUAL” includes:

(a) life, liberty and security of the person;

(b) protection for the privacy of his home and other property and from deprivation of property without compensation;”

It says nothing about preservation of corporate entities. Government’s prime responsibility under the Constitution is to preserve the lives and property of Barbadian people.

If concern is for the abnormally high unemployment resulting from closure of the tourism industry, this is a direct consequence of BLP policies since 1994 to dismantle 40 years of manufacturing and agricultural industry policies and depend only on foreign purchases of property, businesses and tourism development. The Party boxed itself in on this one.

Now they want to gamble with my life and those of other pre-retirement seniors, including my closest family, to “save” their economic policy.

Ann Walcott