The country in a state of ferment. Never before has so much been talked about by so many big mouth.
Can you believe: The rise of Womantra and the Gymnastic Association of T&T? Too bad they don't include the Girl Guides Association!
The tidal wave of social media, where every know-it-all can pontificate his or her personal prejudices without fear, which has taken over the country, to the point where traditional backyard gossip, telephone aunties and radio hate talk seem appealing? What passes for civil discourse on social media is appalling, petty and often hateful.
The economic downturn. The dollar weekly depreciating. The Budget not balanced. Nobody yet explain how $63 billion expenditure equals $43 billion of revenue. The $32 billion blocked in Central Bank? Government borrowing? Tax increase? A more efficient tax collection system? Really? The perennial question "Whey de money gone?" The excuses, "The Minister in a meeting", "the cell phone turn off."
Vat scams! Diversification talk hot to trot, by the traders of cloth or toothpaste for cash. Carnage on the roads. Parents breeding monsters according to politicians in power for longer than most children have been alive. Education woes. Student assassinations. Police inspector vs pastor son bacchanal.
Real issues, drugs (a "cancer affecting everyone in society", according to former Archbishop Pantin), corruption (the basis of crime), the lack of meaningful participation by citizens in our democracy, is hardly ever discussed. Fear undoubtedly plays a role in this and that itself is something that should be discussed.
On the international scene, the Taliban shuffle; the Isis wine; the Russian troika; the Venezuelan joropo; American exceptionalism, also known as the little broken house on the prairie. Man United down. Pope Francis up.
FIFA have a new bank account. Bernie vs Trump or Hilary vs Marco? Does it make a difference? Brexit? Brexout? China up? China down? Cricket 20:20 championship. Again? They didn't have one last year somewhere in India? Two cricket leagues for Test? West Indies in the lower.
Perhaps it's best to stay in my crease and talk about health in T&T. But even there is commess: Couva Children's Hospital, which is not a children's hospital but has been so labelled. It sound good! No way to open it. No money, no access (the road fall in), no doctors, no nurses, no lab technicians, no radiographers. Didn't they know that before they built the hospital? Of course they did. It was a political decision to build a hospital in Couva. Obesity rising. Non-communicable diseases raging.
The national plan for infant and child nutrition still being discussed, like diversification in the business sector. Soft drink industry going to willingly decrease the sugar content of sweet drinks. Yes ai!
It's been a month since Zika hit the news. I think that should be safe until I see a letter from a fellow claiming the Health Minister is a "badjohn" because he wants to increase the fines for non-maintenance of property. Trinis will look for any excuse to explain their laziness.
Let's stick to what's new about Zika, nuh? Three things. One, despite local opposition, the link between the virus and microcephaly is getting stronger.
On Friday CDC reported the outcome of nine pregnant American women who became infected with Zika during their pregnancy.
One woman who developed Zika in her third trimester delivered a healthy infant. So did a woman whose symptoms appeared in the second trimester. A third with second-trimester symptoms is still to birth.
For the six women who reported Zika symptoms in their first trimester, the outcomes were mostly grim. Two miscarried, two aborted their pregnancies, a fifth delivered an infant with microcephaly and the sixth has yet to deliver.
One of the foetuses aborted showed severe brain atrophy and hydrocephalus. Zika virus was detected in the amniotic fluid. This is certainly not definitive but again suggests that Zika, at least in the first trimester, is causing microcephaly.
On the same day a study reported 14 more cases of sexually transmitted Zika. In each case men had travelled to an area with Zika, returned with Zika symptoms and infected their female partners, some of whom were pregnant.
Note who is infecting who! There is no evidence that women can transmit the virus to a sex partner. Is man doing the infecting. How long the virus remains in semen is unknown.
It seems remarkable then, that in some Latin American (Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras and El Salvador) and Caribbean (Jamaica) countries it is the women who are being advised not to have sex and not to get pregnant. It's the Eve syndrome all over again, the woman is to blame. They should be telling men not to get women pregnant. I suppose that would be too much of a shock for macho men.
What's also interesting in these societies is that up to one-third of all pregnancies occur in girl children between the ages of 10 to 18. As one joker said, "They haven't even gotten to the point where they know how to get pregnant, so how can they know how to avoid getting pregnant?"
If Zika really does turn out to cause disabled children, what will happen to them? Who is going to care for them for the rest of their life? Ah, we can open the Couva Children's Hospital and place them there. So they won't grow up to be monsters.