Jenelle Thongs' strut on the cat­walk is fierce. When she speaks she ex­udes friend­ly con­fi­dence, ever so of­ten eas­ing in­to a smile that ful­ly re­veals strik­ing white teeth against her smooth, ebony skin. The Miss Supra­na­tion­al Trinidad and To­ba­go 2020 ti­tle­hold­er ad­mits that she has come a long way from her child­hood per­sona of a lit­tle tomboy who felt un­com­fort­able in her own skin.

Trag­i­cal­ly, sui­cide is not as rare as one may think. In 2018, glob­al da­ta from the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) re­port­ed an es­ti­mat­ed 793,000 sui­cide deaths world­wide. Most were men.

Near­ly 450 mil­lion peo­ple world­wide are cur­rent­ly liv­ing with a men­tal health chal­lenge, yet near­ly two thirds of per­sons with a known men­tal ill­ness nev­er choose to seek treat­ment. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has had a pro­found im­pact on the men­tal health of per­sons of all ages, sta­tus and walks of life.

To say that Suzette Louwe has ruf­fled some feath­ers on the lo­cal po­lit­i­cal and so­cial land­scape might be an un­der­state­ment. The busi­ness­woman-turned-pop­u­lar so­cial me­dia ac­tivist is in no way shy about voic­ing her opin­ion, even if it means earn­ing the ire of some very im­por­tant politi­cians. She be­lieves that the po­lit­i­cal and so­cial struc­tures in T&T need a re­vamp­ing...and that she is ful­ly equipped for the job.

The trends are chang­ing, we are ob­serv­ing younger per­sons suc­cumb­ing to COVID-19 and it de­rails us.

Let’s face it: there’s a de­bil­i­tat­ing virus out there and it’s not go­ing away any­time soon. And that means we all must make a lot of de­ci­sions that in­volve per­son­al risk. And for many of these dai­ly de­ci­sions, there is no sin­gle right an­swer. While we take guid­ance from Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol (CDC), World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion rec­om­men­da­tions, or ex­pert ad­vice from Health­care pro­fes­sion­als, it ALL comes down to our per­son­al abil­i­ty to as­sess our RISKS.

Mark An­tho­ny Cony­ers, for­mer man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Trinidad Pub­lish­ing Com­pa­ny (TPC), the fore­run­ner to Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed, died on May 4 at age 95.

Nir­vaana Sug­rim has al­ways marched to the beat of her own drum. At six years old, she sat among peo­ple many times her age, play­ing a male-dom­i­nat­ed in­stru­ment al­most twice her size. When one aca­d­e­m­ic de­gree did not ful­fil her, she pushed for an­oth­er. Cur­rent­ly an at­tor­ney, she wants to use her brazen yet hum­ble ap­proach to life to help oth­ers reach their full po­ten­tial.

It is usu­al­ly the case where af­ter Car­ni­val ca­lyp­so­ni­ans have very lit­tle work to sus­tain them­selves in the in­dus­try and are forced to find al­ter­na­tives.

As the pan­dem­ic rages on, ac­cel­er­at­ing in trans­mis­sion across Trinidad and To­ba­go, so do anx­i­eties and stress about COVID-19 and the vac­cines, with “FEAR” be­com­ing just as con­ta­gious in its pro­lif­er­a­tion, pos­si­bly even more dam­ag­ing health wise.

As an in­fec­tious dis­ease epi­demi­ol­o­gist, I feel moral­ly ob­lig­at­ed to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion on what we are see­ing from a trans­mis­sion dy­nam­ic per­spec­tive and how it ap­plies to the so­cial dis­tanc­ing mea­sures. Like any good sci­en­tist, I have no­ticed two things that are ei­ther not well ar­tic­u­lat­ed or not present in the “lit­er­a­ture” of on­line me­dia. (I have al­so re­lied on oth­er in­fec­tious dis­ease epi­demi­ol­o­gists for peer re­view of this piece.)