#BTEditorial – A day of good news, bad news

It is coincidental, we believe, that on the day the International Monetary Fund praised Barbados for meeting “indicative targets under the Fund-supported programme for end-June 2021”, our political leadership reminded us of how off-target we are trending with COVID-19 infections.

It was a good news-bad news day, representative of the odd paradoxes we are facing as a nation. On the one hand, we represent a positive example in the region for getting a sizeable portion of our adult population to become vaccinated against COVID-19.

We now boast that one in three adults on the island is either completely vaccinated, or has had at least one dose of AstraZeneca, Sinopharm, or Pfizer vaccines available.

That is a worthy accomplishment in an environment of increasing vaccine hesitancy, rising COVID-19 misinformation, and an outright anti-vaccination lobby.

Prime Minister Mia Mottley, meanwhile, is using her significant political capital and, we daresay, popularity, to rub shoulders with those wary of taking the vaccine and try to convince them to come over to her side of the issue.

Today, there is an admission, not that the state has lost the battle against those pushing the anti-vax message but that more still has to be done to convince those on the sidelines that it is in their interest and the country’s, to add another layer of protection against COVID-19 through vaccinations.

The revelation that 48 new infections were confirmed on Thursday, moving the total in isolation to 203, is a serious wake-up call. The report, too, that more than 25 children are being treated for COVID-19 is indicative of the shift in this disease from one impacting the elderly, to one of the unvaccinated who is mainly our young people.

So it was a day of paradoxes. The IMF said we remained bang on target and “in this very challenging environment, Barbados continues to make good progress in implementing its ambitious and comprehensive economic reform programme”.

Officials from the Washington headquarters of the IMF, who concluded a virtual visit to Barbados, commended our international reserves position which received a further boost from a recent special drawing rights (SDR) allocation of US$129 million.

But despite our ability to affect important economic reforms, even during the worst pandemic in more than 100 years, the IMF has had to admit our economy is in deep recession.

The IMF staff led by Bert van Selm stated: “Barbados’ economy remains severely depressed by the ongoing global Coronavirus pandemic. While tourism is expected to recover gradually in the second half of 2021 and the first half of 2022, risks to the outlook remain.”

Our foreign reserves stand, however, at a healthy US$1.4 billion. But for a Mrs. Brathwaite from Eagle Hall or a Mr Johnson from Dash Valley, life in Barbados is still very hard.

The question has to be asked: What does the partly flattering IMF report mean for Barbadians who are confronted by a rising cost of living that has forced too many citizens to cut back on the number and quality of meals they can afford to consume? How is the young man or young woman struggling to find a job since the full force of the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, comforted by kudos from the IMF? While many of the issues facing the country are endemic and structural in many cases, some attempts at reform have been undertaken by the administration. But clearly, those reforms have not been enough and are as extensive as to impact lives for the average person in a positive way.

At the micro-level, more citizens must come to the realization that the first order of business must be to control the spread of COVID-19 on the island.

Life on the island will not return to any kind of normalcy when the disease is spreading so rapidly. We cannot have a situation where two out of every three adult Barbadians are in an unvaccinated state.

As the medical professionals have warned us, we run the risk of developing our own variant on the island if we continue on the current path.
The interconnection with the economy, the social and economic conditions facing Barbadians, and the spread of COVID-19, needs to be clearly articulated to citizens. Will it take Barbados being placed on Britain’s red list again for the message to get through? We are at a critical juncture and firm decisions must be taken.