By Caribbean News Global contributor
CASTRIES St Lucia – Prime minister Allen Chastanet continues to live-up to the insufficiencies professed by his peers to be – “not too smart” – that further question how did Saint Lucia get to this point of pathetic intangibles, that proffer ill-advised assertions, irrespective of truth and fact.
Prime minister Chastanet on Tuesday declared that there are no cases of tourists affecting locals: “Not one. So despite some of the attempts by persons to suggest that there is a front door and a back door, we got this through the back door – there’s no argument about that,” Chastanet added. “ We’ve had over 18,000 tourists that we have had in this country so we have a large enough sample to know that the protocols we’re practicing are working,” Chastanet instructed. “Again, I am urging Saint Lucians – go to work and go home.”
‘No case of tourists affecting locals with COVID-19’
“After BA 2159 landed (March 10) the crew was given temperature test by health officials as they walked through passport control at Vieux Fort airport. The captain and a member of the flight crew exhibited a high temperature and were not allowed to board the bus with other members of the crew taking them to the terminal. Instead, they were taken to the hospital for tests and placed in self-isolation a precaution. He is only the second person to have contracted COVID-19 on the island and will remain in self-isolation.”
On Saturday, March 14, 2020, Saint Lucia recorded a second case of COVID-19. The patient is a fifty-three-year-old male with an active travel history with France being his last port of departure. The patient arrived in Saint Lucia on Wednesday, March 11, 2020, in the company of colleagues. He entered into our health care system on Friday, March 13, 2020, and based on the patient’s travel history and symptoms, health professionals suspected COVID-19.
On September 8, Saint Lucia recorded a new case of COVID-19. The individual was a 27-year-old male visitor who arrived in Saint Lucia on Sunday, September 6. On the evening of September 9, the visitor was repatriated to the United States via private airline.
Failed trickle-down economics principle
In the article, the politics of COVID-19 and the economy, Dr Alphonsus St Rose, said: “For 41 years since independence, the citizens have been sold a false narrative of increased stimulus and incentive packages (much of which has served principally the private sector and the upper 10 percent) fueled by an obviously failed trickle-down economics principle. Why?” […]
“This administration now has its fingerprints on taking us down the cliff of financial misery and the moral perils of insolvency while telling us that we do not possess cushioning capacity to compensate. Why then do we have a Central Bank? Do we possess monetary sovereignty? If so, why should we ever go “Broke”? Something seems amiss with our financial and economic narrative and reality.”
Up until now, Saint Lucia has not experienced a prime minister and a sitting of parliament pathetic to the illusions of politics, muddle the legislative process to benchmark the country to decades of debt, death and absurd nuance.
On Tuesday, November 10, the parliament of Saint Lucia reinforced COVID-19 restrictions; yet, continued extensive borrowing of $232.5 million in a manner that lives up to the good of times of tax and spend liberal economics, with no quick fix on the global arena.
Events on the international stage face the prospects that; even if a COVID-19 vaccine is finalized in the next few months, that wouldn’t provide immediate relief to New York City’s comatose $4 billion hotel mortgage sector, the Financial Times reported.
Earlier this month, the owners of two portfolios consisting of 130 shopping malls filed for bankruptcy after a spate of stores and restaurants either closed or couldn’t pay their rent.
“Could the coronavirus crisis lead, via the commercial property sector, to long-term problems for the banking and financial systems?” Slater wrote in a recent report. “We think it is a genuine concern.”
While the projection is for ‘slow road to jobs recovery for Latin America and the Caribbean: COVID-19’: “Unprecedented times call for unprecedented responses. This podcast is based on the new, ground-breaking report by the ILO and the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) that urges policymakers to urgently explore the potential of Nature-based Solution and seek to integrate them in their crises responses.”
Front door – back door
Concerning ‘The SLP MARCH and COVID-19’, John Peters writes; “We have been given several hypotheses to date, we have been told about the ‘back door’ and yet, somehow, the fishermen are immune to the disease. We have been told that it was the Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP) march and the link is not there. Those who do not support the government speak of the ‘front door’ as the gateway. I fully support closing the back door and leaving the front door open.
“I will close by repeating that we cannot fight a civil war in the midst of a pandemic, and the country is yearning for ‘Churchill leadership’ to bring our nation together to deal with the greatest crisis we have ever faced.”
COVID-19 cases and new protocols
On Tuesday, November 10, the ministry of health received confirmation of its second death of COVID-19.
The ministry of health on Friday, November 13, 2020, received confirmation of four new cases of COVID-19. This brings the total number of cases diagnosed in the country to date to 160, and the total number of active cases currently in the country to 112.
Meantime, new COVID-19 protocols, including the suspension of all social gatherings, will go into effect on Monday, November 16, 2020, in Saint Lucia.
“The lack of compliance [with protocols] puts us at a very critical position where if we don’t work to break the chain of transmission with immediate effect it would lead to our forecasting in our projections over the next 14 days to almost tripling the numbers we are noting to date,” chief medical officer Dr Sharon Belmar-George warned.
“Let’s get together as a country and let us defeat this virus,” the prime minister asserted Tuesday, albeit Saint Lucia projects record breaking visitor arrivals via the front door.
