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Friday, July 25, 2025

What did we learn from the lockdown?

by

1900 days ago
20200512

As the Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced the first steps to re­lax a strict lock­down in the bat­tle against an in­vis­i­ble en­e­my, there is a nat­ur­al mood of op­ti­mism among the pop­u­la­tion. I ex­press con­grat­u­la­tions and grat­i­tude to our lead­ers, es­pe­cial­ly the pub­lic health of­fi­cials who di­rect­ed us through this chal­leng­ing time thus far. Many times you have been called up­on to make dif­fi­cult de­ci­sions and in the face of op­po­si­tion and dis­agree­ments made them. So far, so well.

How­ev­er, we must not let this eu­pho­ria of this mo­ment to trump cau­tion. The 1918 pan­dem­ic taught us that sub­se­quent waves of vi­ral threat could be more dev­as­tat­ing, and da­ta from oth­er coun­tries high­light a pos­si­ble spike in cas­es as per­sons at­tempt to re­vert to a state of nor­mal­cy. Un­til a de­fin­i­tive treat­ment or vac­cine graces hu­man­i­ty, we will have to ad­just to a new nor­mal.

The eco­nom­ic and so­cial fall­out from these months gone, and ahead is not over. We will have to find in­no­v­a­tive ways to cope with this chal­lenge. More than ever, we will have to be­come ser­vants of so­ci­ety, pro­tect­ing the vul­ner­a­ble. We will have to rise as pa­tri­ots of Trinidad and To­ba­go and put the coun­try be­fore our ide­olo­gies.

Hu­man­i­ty ought not to be striv­ing to re­turn to the old ways. As Cli­mate Change Ac­tivist Gre­ta Thun­berg said, “there is a lot of talk about re­turn­ing to ‘nor­mal’ af­ter the COVID-19 out­break. But nor­mal was a cri­sis.” I can­not help but agree with her on this is­sue.

Dur­ing this lock­down, we saw a few sil­ver lin­ings. Most no­tably is what oc­curred glob­al­ly in the en­vi­ron­ment. In In­dia, for ex­am­ple, the Hi­malayas stunned North­ern In­dia for the first time with their grandeur seen for the first time in decades. Air qual­i­ty im­proved in cities, and rivers cleared up. If re­turn­ing to nor­mal, means we are go­ing back to our filthy pol­lut­ing ways, then I am not sure I want this lock­down to end.

We saw un­prece­dent­ed eco­nom­ic de­cline hit in­dus­try and fam­i­lies. We, how­ev­er, al­so saw gen­eros­i­ty to help our neigh­bor, though self­ish­ness and hoard­ing of­ten cloud­ed this. If we are go­ing to re­turn to our bit­ter, greedy habits, I am not sure I want this to end. We saw no end to the vi­o­lence, though we may have for­got­ten it for some time. If we are go­ing back to the con­tin­ued loss of re­gard for life, why would I want this lock­down to end?

But it has to end. For the sake of the poor, the hun­gry, the chil­dren who need an ed­u­ca­tion, in­dus­try, and house­holds that re­quire an in­come, it has to end. And as it ends, we will see if we learned any­thing from our seclu­sion.

Yours re­spect­ful­ly,

Ve­david Man­ick

San­gre Grande

via mail


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