And there we
were three years ago in this very space. Contemplating, against some
considerable odds, the triumph of science over politics and the vain folly that
accompanies privilege.
One inspired
moment had led to a hurried huddle at the Trinidad Hilton, led by CARPHA and an
assemblage of journalists, to consider the threats and challenges of an
encroaching pandemic.
We stood near
the podium, about five of us, chuckling while considering appropriate non-touch
greetings. Kiran offered ‘namaste’ and Carlon a light touch of knuckles.
Already, the offer of a “virtual” event for greater reach – particularly to a
somewhat sceptical bunch motivated by any of several factors that often emerge
against the tides of scholarship.
Then came the
news on Dr St John’s phone that a pandemic had been declared by the World
Health Organisation (WHO). So unfamiliar were some that everything from
institutional jurisdiction to international membership to “virus” was quickly
Googled and the room took on a different look and feel.
This, some of
us thought then, was it. But those who felt protected by professional
credentials, political status, or religious creed commenced the rigid erection
of doubt and scepticism. I took the screenshots and recorded many of them in
order to plot curves of conversion … if ever they occurred. In some instances,
they never did. Even three years after. Even now.
This was to be
nothing but a bad flu’ through which institutional, partisan, corporate, and
geo-political advantage was to be gained. Its origins dark and dank out of a
monster live and raw encroaching and extending tentacles intended to rebalance
tentative equilibria of global power and influence.
Through the
gates of misinformation, disinformation and old-fashioned ignorance came plots
fast and furious. We, the small and weak, were to foot a tragic bill. A single
government in a small twin-island state had conspired to shut itself off from
the rest of the world in order to “protect” us little folks from an imaginary
peril.
I was uncharacteristically
compelled to publicly dispel absurd untruths. No, the rest of the Americas had
not remained “open for business” while we closed. No, slavish obeisance to WHO
dictate was not intended to impose a regime of needless caution. Caution was
being interpreted as “panic” intended to reinforce control of all that
officialdom purveys.
There were
“sheep” everywhere. Led to slow torture. They, who claimed to unravel the plot,
lay safely apart with all the appurtenances of privilege and advantage. But
boxed in from outward flight, as is their wont at times of trouble. This time
locked away through plandemic device and the designs of lesser mortals.
Such was the
outflow of determined misguidance the global response found tacit expression in
the public domain as contrived “overkill” with overwhelming consequences for
vulnerable economies and the balance of power big and small.
Had science
really prevailed over common sense? Had cold calculations in laboratories
replaced warm passion and belief? Or could it just be that some were right and
others outright wrong?
Having looked
before at the contention science often attracts, much of it remained at least
vaguely familiar. I had by then witnessed and recorded some of the more
accessible scientific evaluations of the anthropogenic contribution to climate
change and the accompanying crisis. Many, to today, do not accept the point.
Among them
remain those in blissful denial who now lay claim to seamless association with
COVID-scepticism and the accompanying unease over pandemic measures. One such
advocate pointed repeatedly at the financial fractures being sustained and
surmised that livelihoods outdid lives – particularly of the older, sicker,
more expendable variety. Almost as if human circumstance routinely subjects
itself to simple measures of bipolarity.
But surely, the
plot is as deep as it has been wide. How far away, indeed, from contentions
over the spherical dimensions of our planet? So much common space for
anti-science/anti-proof and the sterile distance social and economic privilege
accords.
After all,
“don’t you know who I am?” At the vaccine site. At the hospital. At the table
around which sit the poor, infirm, the young, the old, the heavily pigmented,
those who will live and those condemned to die.
At the very end
of this, if some finality were to ever come, we would likely have found that
the triumph of science and proof has proven far more elusive than what is
pronounced by some to be real or unreal. Put that way, nobody ends up winning.
