Yes­ter­day, the cul­tur­al fra­ter­ni­ty was thrown in­to pan­ic with news that well-known for­mer ex-tem­po monarch Joseph Vau­tor La Place­lierre, more pop­u­lar­ly known as Lin­go, was fight­ing for his life at hos­pi­tal hav­ing con­tract­ed COVID-19. His wife Chanelle, cousin Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters and col­leagues at the Blind Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion were clear­ly in some dis­tress as they urged the na­tion to pray for his safe re­cov­ery.

And we ex­pect those re­quests to be ful­ly an­swered. Af­ter all, as a mem­ber of the vi­su­al­ly im­paired com­mu­ni­ty, Lin­go’s sto­ry has been one of re­silience and beat­ing the odds in ris­ing to the top in ex­tem­po­ra­ne­ous ca­lyp­so and se­cur­ing not on­ly four na­tion­al ex-tem­po ti­tles but a hat­trick from 2007-2009.

Need­less to say, the pub­lic and his lov­ing fans, in par­tic­u­lar, will be pray­ing that they will be able to hear Lin­go belt out his wit­ty lines again once the coun­try re­turns to a sense of nor­mal­cy that al­lows live per­for­mances for a Car­ni­val sea­son in fu­ture.

Hours af­ter news of Lin­go’s sit­u­a­tion spread, how­ev­er, an­oth­er fam­i­ly from San­gre Grande was bury­ing moth­er and son Joyce­lyn and An­tho­ny Doyle, who both suc­cumbed to the virus last month. Their sto­ry was an­oth­er sad case of the lives of in­di­vid­u­als who still had much to con­tribute be­ing tak­en away.

Be­fore the day was out, the Min­istry of Health re­port­ed an­oth­er 11 COVID deaths, tak­ing the toll to 38 in three days so far this week and 1,720 over­all since the virus hit our shores last year.

There are al­so more re­ports of new cas­es at sec­ondary schools where stu­dents in Forms Four to Six, both vac­ci­nat­ed and un­vac­ci­nat­ed, have re­sumed phys­i­cal class­es.

All of this comes against the back­drop of of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of Health con­tin­u­ous­ly send­ing warn­ing signs of in­creas­ing cas­es and deaths. They have al­so not­ed the bed space woes in the ICUs and HDUs across the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem, not­ing the ma­jor­i­ty of pa­tients need­ing crit­i­cal care have been un­vac­ci­nat­ed.

In case the pic­ture is not be­ing paint­ed for all, T&T is cur­rent­ly at an­oth­er cross­roads in the fight against the pan­dem­ic. The more vir­u­lent Delta vari­ant is now well en­grained with­in com­mu­ni­ties and new cas­es are al­so not trend­ing down­wards.

What is most un­for­tu­nate at this stage, how­ev­er, is that the one game-chang­er—vac­cines—con­tin­ue to be un­der­utilised in the cur­rent sce­nario. In­deed, de­spite all of the hav­oc that COVID con­tin­ues to wreak, on­ly 605, 396 peo­ple had com­plet­ed a full vac­ci­na­tion regime as of yes­ter­day.

We find it hard to fath­om that while the pub­lic wish­es the Gov­ern­ment to ease the COVID re­stric­tions to al­low for a re­turn to nor­mal­cy, those same peo­ple do not see the im­por­tance of giv­ing them­selves an ex­tra lay­er of pro­tec­tion against the virus. The 3Ws alone can­not stave off the virus. The sci­ence shows vac­cines give per­sons a fight­ing chance to pre­vent se­vere cas­es and ul­ti­mate­ly save lives. In the face of all that has tran­spired so far this week, there­fore, we again urge cit­i­zens who have not done so to get vac­ci­nat­ed. Let’s, there­fore, pray for Lin­go and go out and take so that we can fight off this pan­dem­ic.