The last days of the Coronavirus pandemic, the sunset of COVID-19. That seems to be the reality at last. It’s been two and a half years of fear, lockdowns and restrictions on life. Nearly 4,000 people have died from the virus in this country. Many more have lost jobs, businesses and peace of mind. Children have lost a couple of years of in-person schooling and that may affect their development of social skills. Inflation is sky-rocketing because of food and commercial shortages due to supply-chain issues, caused by staff shortages due to COVID-19. The war in Ukraine has exacerbated this and amplified it by pushing up the price of oil worldwide. The latter has provided a windfall at least for our oil and gas economy, if only for a short time. It’s been hard and everyone has had enough.
The pandemic is still happening, but daily reported deaths have reduced to less than a handful, mostly of the unvaccinated. We recently received a donation of over 43,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine from Spain, for children aged 5-12. But only about 1,000 children have turned up for this inoculation so far. This is despite warnings of passing the virus on to others at risk, or of the kids coming down with dangerous MIS-C. The Ministry Of Health is pleading with people to take the Pfizer booster shot before it all expires at the end of this month. I doubt that they are looking to source any more. We still have hundreds of thousands of Sinopharm and Johnson & Johnson vaccines with long expiration dates, but still few takers. Our population has achieved just over a 50% vaccination rate and this seems to have plateaued.
The Omicron variant is dominant in this country now, though the more deadly Delta cases are still being detected. Omicron appears to overpower the vaccines and give people a mild to moderate case of COVID flu. I know this as I recently came down with COVID myself, thinking it was just a bad reaction to the hazardous Sahara dust assaulting our sinuses. I felt rotten for a couple of days but I was over it in about a week. I have no idea how I caught it and I thought I was being very careful. Most of my family have had the virus and their symptoms were generally mild. Even those who are unvaccinated are experiencing no worse than any flu in the past.
The statistics showing new cases of COVID-19 must be many times under-reported. Most victims I know have just taken a home-test to confirm their positivity and then (mostly) self-quarantined as prescribed by health officials. Some people with flu-like symptoms just pass it off as an allergy or some other kind of flu, and don’t isolate at all. So this coronavirus is here to stay and probably should only be feared if you suffer from certain co-morbidities. Oh, the words we have learned in the last two years!
T&T has now lifted almost all pandemic restrictions. Masks must still be worn outdoors and in public places (and curiously in cars if travelling with non-family members), and you only require a negative PCR or antigen test within 48 hours of entering the country. I suspect that even these rules will be no more soon, in line with much of the rest of the world. There have been a number of crowded events recently with people not complying with the mask rules or social-distancing, yet no jump in COVID cases. It’s time for the population to take responsibility for its own risk with the virus.
I am looking forward to future sunsets, liming with friends, with no thought of masks or caring about social distancing. May it all end soon.
