A fascinating letter was published last Wednesday in the T&T Guardian. It was titled “Parasram must return his ORTT” and written by Wendy Lewis. I have no definite opinion about whether or not Dr Parasram should return a national award, although I do believe that he was heavily influenced in his medical opinions by his political masters. But that is the nature of the job of a CMO, it is a political one and not an easy one.
The letter raises interesting issues about medical decisions taken during the pandemic, which have not been properly addressed and need to be if we are to be spared a repeat of the sorry spectacle and trauma that we underwent during those three terrible years, 2020-2022.
It’s also necessary to say that for at least the first nine months of the outbreak, the medical profession did not understand what it was up against and made honest mistakes confronting the virus. But by January 2021, we knew.
We knew what to do and yet we continued making the same mistakes, locking down people unnecessarily, banning people from travel in and out of T&T, closing schools and trying to force vaccines on everyone.
Amazingly, people still believe that government did a first-class job of protecting its citizens. The media unquestionably accepted whatever the CMO said and our Medical Association disappeared from public view for those three years and never gave advice to the public. In fact, the Medical Association has had two Medical Updates since the pandemic ended and there have been a grand total of two papers on COVID presented at those two “updates” on what was the pre-eminent outbreak of disease in the history of T&T.
I applaud Ms Lewis for her courage in raising these matters in a country where every problem is swept under the carpet and people merrily go along their way saying, “Wha we cud do?”, instead of asking questions and discussing them quietly but seriously. Well, a “serious Trinbagonian” might be considered an oxymoron.
Ms Lewis raises the court ruling against the Government’s border re-entry policy during the epidemic, which kept thousands locked out of T&T and which was described by the court as the “epitome of arbitrariness” and “not guided by science.”
We knew this. She points out that the court found that the ban on Hindu cremations was discriminatory and unconstitutional. We knew this. The attempt at mandatory vaccination was and still is medically questionable, especially in the case of children. That attempt almost destroyed people’s faith in vaccines.
Our death rate was among the highest in the world. Of over 200 countries studied, we are at #29, something we could be proud of if it were a FIFA World Cup classification. Instead, our death rate is among the worst in the world. The world death rate from COVID is 892 deaths per million cases.
We are at 2,934 deaths per million. That’s three times the world figure. We are the worst in the Caribbean. Barbados is at 2,300. Grenada 2,035. Guyana 1,596 and Jamaica 1,279. Even St Vincent, the poorest island in the Commonwealth Caribbean, had a death rate of 1,214.
Yet people insist we did well. Ms Lewis correctly writes, “It was horrible and no one has been held to account.”
The government could probably be forgiven for the mistakes they made the first year: the inadequate testing and tracking of patients; the poor communication strategy with the public and especially later, on the benefits of the vaccine; the failure to consult the private, independent medical sector; the arbitrary decisions concerning masks and outside activities, including the closure of parks and beaches to innocent children. These can all be forgotten, typical examples of government’s inefficiency.
COVID highlighted the problems in the systems that govern us. All the inequities that we were able to tolerate and gloss over in the public health system in the past came back to haunt: the lack of a functional strategic health plan; the absence of an underlying health philosophy; the inadequate buildings; the deep void about statistical health information; the lack of basic medication; the scarcity of surgical equipment that forces surgeons to bring in their own tools; the organisational incapacity that gives 20 to 30 people an appointment at the same time; the gross understaffing at all levels but especially the nursing level.
What cannot be forgiven is the excessive mortality and the unnecessary closure of day care centres, pre- schools and primary schools for three years, one of the longest in the world and which has damaged a generation of children. The biggest lesson from COVID remains how we failed our children.
To think that Trinbagonians believe that their government did well during the pandemic is unreal.
