“[…] Having apparently exhausted every avenue of encouraging vaccination apart from the obvious one, the official stance appears to be shifting to ‘well, we tried’. “On an intellectual level, I know why this is the most expedient approach… [However] if our Government, elected to lead in the best interests of everyone, …
Read More »MoE: We won’t put children’s education at risk; physical school reopens for ALL forms 4-6 students
Minister of Education Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly announced today that all students from forms four to six ‘and their equivalents’ must resume physical school on Monday 25 October, regardless of vaccination status. Online schooling will be discontinued for such forms from Monday. However, forms one to three will remain online for …
Read More »Dear Editor: Months of missed opportunities: how Deyalsingh and his experts dropped the ball
“[…] Evidence suggests a very strong link between Covid-19 and obesity. In March 2021, the Independent, Sky News and Reuters published an article which highlighted that 90% of Covid-19 deaths were in countries with high obesity rates (in 2018, T&T was ranked 6th in childhood obesity in the Caribbean at …
Read More »Free Speech Project: Charnell Lucien’s great ‘die-lemma’ of our time
Spoken word poet Charnell Lucien waxes lyrical on the great Covid-19 dilemma: More from Wired868 Should T&T government set Carnival 2022 as our pandemic end goal? “There is a difference between managing and leading, and so far the government has been doing the best it can Read more Letters to …
Read More »Dear Editor: Charles is wrong, the health minister was obliged to defend T&T on Daily Show
“[…] The minister of health had an obligation to embrace the opportunity to appear on the show, as the matter raised by Ms Minaj had received widespread international coverage both on conventional and social media platforms. “[…] More particularly from a health perspective, T&T’s vaccination programme has been hampered by …
Read More »Demming: Thank you, Nicki Minaj, for this big break; the ball’s now in our court
Where is Trinidad? Thanks to rapper Nicki Minaj, that question topped the Twittersphere recently. This came about after Minaj tweeted that her cousin’s friend had taken the Covid vaccine and ended up with ‘Swollen Testicles’. Her tweet led our hard-working, super-busy minister of health to admit that he and his …
Read More »Dear Editor: When will our young people be allowed to return to the field of play?
“[…] We were already behind before Covid-19 hit; how far off the pace would we be when and if football, or sports on a whole, is ever reopened? “Players and coaches alike are all feeling left out as we hear at every press conference news of sectors being opened or …
Read More »Tye: T&T’s governance model ‘breeds deep mistrust’—as such, ‘forced vaccinations’ would be a mistake
I certainly empathise with the government as they are navigating difficult decisions in the management of the economy and society during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Yet, the issues facing the society are mostly not due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but deeper social issues that have never been properly addressed by …
Read More »Daly Bread: Rapid-fire threats posed by Delta variant and CoP’s FUL flurry
The Delta variant is a rapid-fire version of the Covid-19 virus. It is capable of killing many and killing quickly. There are also a growing number of pediatric cases—children having been spared from the original virus. Two weeks ago the New York Times reported that ‘one in five ICUs (intensive …
Read More »Dear Editor: Open letter to T&T’s women—vaccinate your children and your households
“[…] Sisters, I urge you to make the right choice and ensure that all our eligible children are vaccinated, so that they can carry those school bags into their schools again. “Just as we carried them as babes in arms to get their first vaccinations, let us now ensure that …
Read More »From vaccine hesitancy to hierarchy: will any port do for Covid storm?
“[…] Pfizer is widely perceived to be at the top of the tree, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson just beneath that, followed by Oxford AstraZeneca, Sinopharm and Sputnik. I don’t know the extent to which this is driving decision-making, but I’ve heard several people say that they’re prepared to wait …
Read More »Noble: The virus and our democracy—the problem with ‘us’ and ‘them’
The Covid-19 pandemic hit our shores at the wrong time. Indeed, there is no right time, but the state of our nation had made us incredibly vulnerable. We were in a crisis, adjusting to the economic woes and experiencing lowered trust levels in our leaders. In the heat of Covid-19, …
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