Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by this author are their own and do not represent the official position of the Barbados Today.
by Trevor Went
One of the reasons COVID-19 is spreading and will continue to spread is that the protocols to contain it go against the grain of us being human beings.
We are communal creatures who greet, mix, mingle, play, fight, argue, make love, shop, work, rob, violate, torment and abuse each other and do so within six feet of each other.
Social distancing is unnatural.
The protocols are the correct measures we should all follow but machines and robots are best placed to follow those protocols associated with the virus.
Wearing masks is unnatural unless scuba diving.
There is no supermarket on earth where one touches a bag of onions, looks at it, puts it back and an attendant immediately rushes to sanitize it. And then repeats that sanitization process with the bag of grapes, bottle of wine, or expensive cat food which you touched and replaced. Such activity kept to the letter of protocols would be a sight to behold.
Human beings are touchers – they touch the postal service counters, the pen to sign for their parcels, the shop counters, the ATMs, the trollies, the money change they received from the fish vendor, the parked car that is not theirs, their parked cars that someone else touched, the high-heel shoes in the store that didn’t fit them as it didn’t the lady before them, the rails coming down the plane’s stairway that someone else touched going up. And on and on it goes.
Man’s best hope with COVID-19 is for a viable, safe vaccine to stave off this fiend in our midst. Left up to protocols, COVID-19 is going absolutely nowhere. But in the meantime, please let’s all try to do the inhuman and stick to the protocols.
