Stay home if there's no need to go out, and wear a mask if you do. Keep a phys­i­cal dis­tance from the next per­son, for­get the bars, birth­day par­ties, neigh­bourly limes, vis­it­ing un­cle, aun­tie, nan­ny, and nen­nen. Skip the wed­dings, bach­e­lor and bach­e­lorette par­ties—in short, don’t con­gre­gate. Even when you do all these things, there's no guar­an­tee you wouldn't get COVID. Man­ag­ing the pan­dem­ic calls for dis­ci­plined be­hav­iour, which is some­thing many aren’t com­fort­able with.

It is in­cred­i­ble that with the click of a mouse one can re­search facts, yet many peo­ple think that clos­ing bor­ders and na­tion­al lock­downs aren't nec­es­sary and are part of some ne­far­i­ous gov­ern­ment agen­da to con­trol us. Yet, they can’t ex­plain why would any gov­ern­ment ma­li­cious­ly choose to lock down a coun­try, know­ing the se­ri­ous eco­nom­ic and so­cial con­se­quences. They ad­vo­cate that lock­downs aren’t nec­es­sary, that there's noth­ing sci­en­tif­ic about wear­ing masks. Oth­ers use valid ar­gu­ments about the neg­a­tive ef­fects on chil­dren’s emo­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, the fear, stress, de­pres­sion, anx­i­ety lev­els ex­pe­ri­enced by in­di­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies, and the in­crease in do­mes­tic vi­o­lence. Cer­tain­ly, these sit­u­a­tions are con­cern­ing, but what is the al­ter­na­tive to cur­tail­ing the rate of the virus spread­ing and death. The H1N1 pan­dem­ic of 1918 flat­tened over 500 mil­lion peo­ple and took 50 mil­lion lives.

The world is lit­er­al­ly fight­ing a war against a virus that’s caus­ing death and cat­a­stro­phe. What are the op­tions to lock­downs if peo­ple refuse to take vol­un­tary mea­sures to pro­tect them­selves and re­spect the health and lives of oth­ers? If we heed the COVID reg­u­la­tions, we’re more like­ly to weath­er the virus storm with less pain and suf­fer­ing in the long run, and with­out over­whelm­ing the health sys­tem.

The Gov­ern­ment is ob­lig­at­ed to en­sure that the health sys­tem isn't swamped by COVID pa­tients to the detri­ment of oth­ers need­ing crit­i­cal care. It is not on­ly a mat­ter of car­ing for peo­ple with the virus; re­sources must be avail­able to sup­port the nor­mal dai­ly flow of pa­tients who need health­care for heart prob­lems, can­cer and oth­er ill­ness­es, and ac­ci­dent vic­tims.

There’s a choice to be made: Ei­ther face a sit­u­a­tion like In­dia and Brazil by let­ting the re­cent sharp rise of in­fec­tions con­tin­ue with­out in­ter­ven­tion, re­sult­ing in the health sys­tem col­lapse, high death rates, and cat­a­stro­phe, with con­se­quen­tial busi­ness clo­sures, job loss­es, and hunger among the most vul­ner­a­ble. It makes sense to take lock­down blows in the short-term for brighter prospects in the medi­um to longer term.

Based on re­ports from the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion and oth­er au­thor­i­ties, COVID-19 is here to stay, but it will be­come less dead­ly, trans­form­ing from the cur­rent pan­dem­ic stage to the usu­al sea­son­al, en­dem­ic flu stage. We must learn to live with it. There's no mag­ic bul­let to pre­vent it from in­fect­ing all of us over time how­ev­er, vac­ci­na­tions will re­duce its sever­i­ty and the in­ci­dence of deaths.

COVID has shown up the fragili­ty of small economies, as it has high­light­ed the clout of high-in­come economies to stock­pile cru­cial sup­plies, leav­ing oth­ers scram­bling to pro­tect their cit­i­zens. Re­port­ed­ly, rich coun­tries se­cured about 53 per cent of all dos­es al­though they ac­count for about 14 per cent of the glob­al pop­u­la­tion.

As said in a pre­vi­ous ar­ti­cle, COVID-19 has taught many lessons and re­vealed deep so­cio-eco­nom­ic and eth­nic fis­sures, glob­al­ly. What lessons have we learned? Why must we al­ways re­ly on some­one else’s largesse and in­no­va­tion? There’s no space to ex­plore those ques­tions in this ar­ti­cle, suf­fice it to say that the re­gion, through UWI, has the Caribbean In­sti­tute for Health Re­search, which has a laud­able vi­sion about “trans­form­ing lives through in­no­v­a­tive re­search and ef­fec­tive health in­ter­ven­tions.” What is the re­sult? Re­gion­al gov­ern­ments have in­vest­ed bil­lions in ed­u­ca­tion, but many of our tal­ent­ed peo­ple mi­grate to oth­er shores where they thrive un­der work­ing con­di­tions con­ducive to in­no­va­tion, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and ca­reer ad­vance­ment. Some are em­ployed with lead­ing in­sti­tu­tions, re­search­ing and de­vel­op­ing cures for the world. They made a choice be­tween op­por­tu­ni­ties to ex­plore their “na­tive ge­nius,” and the frus­tra­tion of in­ef­fi­cient, sti­fling and di­vi­sive sys­tems. There’s a lack of re­gion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion to find res­o­lu­tions to thorny is­sues af­fect­ing the re­gion and to re­alise the po­ten­tial of CARI­COM.

Let us heed the lessons of COVID-19, and the lock­down reg­u­la­tions.