T&T is tee­ter­ing on a COVID-19 precipice avert­ing our eyes from the al­most 1,000 body bags wait­ing for our leader to say, step back, save your lives.

Let's get the ele­phant in the room out of the way.

The Gov­ern­ment has made mis­takes, messed up with the pan­dem­ic ini­tial­ly, was care­less, the health sec­tor was over­whelmed, and the ini­tial roll­out was dis­or­gan­ised, peo­ple queued need­less­ly, the el­der­ly suf­fered in the rain, spread­ing the virus, and there was no pub­lic aware­ness cam­paign. We were forced in­to a lock­down that made peo­ple poor­er, even des­ti­tute.

Step back. You may see hafts of lights pierc­ing that heavy ce­ment cloud of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. With the 800,000 World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion-ap­proved Sinopharm vac­cines safe­ly here, and the Min­is­ter of Health's laud­able tar­get to vac­ci­nate 60 per cent of our adult pop­u­la­tion, at the rate of 20-25,000 peo­ple dai­ly till Sep­tem­ber in mass vac­ci­na­tion sites and health cen­tres.

Catch your­self. If we hes­i­tate too long with vac­cines, we will fall, and as a small is­land state, we will be crushed by a virus that has left 4.1 mil­lion peo­ple dead, in­clud­ing ours. We will see more busi­ness­es shut­ting down, more peo­ple ly­ing and dy­ing in COVID health fa­cil­i­ties, more des­ti­tu­tion.

Last week, lo­cal com­pa­nies moved to vac­ci­nate their work­ers, cit­ing the Gov­ern­ment's 'Vac­ci­nate to Op­er­ate' mantra and the need to "en­sure safe work­places," many em­ploy­ees kicked up a fuss, cit­ing hu­man rights and per­son­al rea­sons for NOT tak­ing the vac­cine.

Labour Min­is­ter Stephen Mc Clashie has re­port­ed­ly promised that the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee (IRAC) will present a re­port on the is­sue on Mon­day.

Even as the IRAC de­lib­er­ates on the work­er's rights, how it will bal­ance this with the hu­man rights of the peo­ple most like­ly to suc­cumb to the virus, the chron­ic dis­ease suf­fer­er–(we have among the high­est rates glob­al­ly)–the obese and the el­der­ly.

Does an un­vac­ci­nat­ed per­son have the right to pass on a dead­ly virus to a stranger? If the law pro­tects in­no­cent peo­ple from gun-tot­ing peo­ple, why can't the law pro­tect cit­i­zens from un­vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple who may be car­ry­ing some­thing worse than a gun–pass­ing on a virus that grows ex­po­nen­tial­ly to dozens, maybe hun­dreds of oth­ers, killing peo­ple they may nev­er meet.

What­ev­er the weapon, be it a knife or an in­vis­i­ble virus that is killing, it's manslaugh­ter, the Gov­ern­ment should move to pro­tect its cit­i­zens. Those who don't want to vac­ci­nate could ex­er­cise their free will and stay home.

France has done it. Made vac­cines manda­to­ry. It's the on­ly way. Last Tues­day, The Guardian (UK) re­port­ed that French Pres­i­dent Em­manuel Macron an­nounced that af­ter Ju­ly 21, 2021, "any­one want­i­ng to vis­it a the­atre, cin­e­ma, sports venue or fes­ti­val that had an au­di­ence of more than 50 peo­ple would need to show a health pass prov­ing they were ei­ther ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed or had test­ed neg­a­tive." The pres­i­dent made the vac­cine pass manda­to­ry in "bars, cafes, restau­rants, shop­ping cen­tres, hos­pi­tals, long-dis­tance trains and planes from 1 Au­gust." He made the vac­cine manda­to­ry for "health work­ers, re­tire­ment home staff and all oth­ers work­ing with vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple, with 'sanc­tions' for those not ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed by Sep­tem­ber."

Fol­low­ing this an­nounce­ment in France (the most vac­cine-hes­i­tant na­tion in Eu­rope), 926,000 peo­ple, most un­der 35, booked jabs on­line at the rate of 20,000 per minute.

Macron's strat­e­gy worked for those who refuse to be vac­ci­nat­ed, cit­ing a pletho­ra of vague, un­sup­port­ed un­sci­en­tif­ic bizarre rea­sons rang­ing from pro­nounc­ing the vac­cine lu­cifer­esque to be­liev­ing a mass con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry where some mys­te­ri­ous pow­ers at the top have drummed up a fake virus and fake vac­cine.

The Col­lege of Physi­cians of Philadel­phia re­ports that vac­cines have erad­i­cat­ed small­pox (a dis­ease that had once killed up to 30 per cent of its vic­tims and left oth­ers scarred or blind)–elim­i­nat­ed po­lio, con­trolled mumps, dra­cun­cu­lia­sis (Guinea worm dis­ease), and malar­ia, among oth­ers.

Now we can stay here, in our PJs and zoom work­tops ( those who still have jobs and work from home) frozen about the fu­ture, know­ing our na­tion­als are among the 4.1 mil­lion dead glob­al­ly, our peo­ple among the 114 mil­lion glob­al­ly who have lost jobs, our hearts heavy like lead about the spec­tre of the Delta and oth­er vari­ant blaz­ing through the glove from In­dia, to the US and the UK.

Or we can be true true Tri­nis, with sur­vival in our blood and an un­quench­able thirst for life, re­mem­ber we have sol­id backs and arms that hug tight and feet that can tap even to a dis­tant tune even amidst sor­row and death. We can un­der­stand the cards we've been dealt and choose life.