Kamla still fighting covid ghosts

THE EDITOR: The Opposition Leader’s latest attack on the integrity of covid19 vaccines as “fake” comes as no surprise. It follows a four-year-long political tirade to bad-mouth all the efforts of the Rowley-led government to curb deaths by securing scarce vaccines from international providers in a bid to save lives.

Kamla Persad-Bissessar and the UNC have used every argument to seek to destroy the Government’s successful handling of the pandemic.

First, they challenged the Government’s border security measures, then they used the racial bogeyman to suggest the Government was allowing border passes based on race. In some instances, they sought to challenge their claims in the court.

TT lost some 4,033 souls to this killer virus, according to Ministry of Health figures, but tens of thousands more who contracted it managed to survive after taking those same vaccines the Opposition Leader is now calling “fake.”

Lest we forget, World Health Organization (WHO) director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus praised Prime Minister Rowley for his leadership and management of the covid19 outbreak in this country, and is quoted in newspaper reports in February 2021 as telling the PM, “I would like to recognise that Trinidad and Tobago, your country, has done very well in this pandemic and this is because of your leadership.”

He was speaking during a WHO media briefing in Geneva at which the prime minister had made a virtual contribution. Even more meaningful was the fact that he credited and commended the prime minister for managing the outbreak even before the vaccines became available by using non-medical interventions such as the public health regulations and other safety restrictions.

This country also got commendations from Oxford University and the European Union for the manner in which it successfully navigated the covid19 pandemic, which wreaked havoc globally in other more advanced countries than TT.

Letter writer V Lalla on April 29, 2020, praised the Government’s response for imposing measures such as social distancing and self-quarantine, and also pointed out that a report from Oxford University had ranked TT as second in the world in terms of preparedness to come out of the lockdown.

Lalla said this “speaks volumes” about the success of the Government’s initiatives, not only to contain the virus, but to manage imported cases, as well as to keep the population informed.

Former British high commissioner Tim Stew, in April 2020, in a letter in the Newsday, praised this country’s response to save lives, as he made mention of the 20,000 deaths in England at that time due to the covid19 virus.

Calling it the “greatest health challenge” faced in a generation, Stew felt that his country could learn from our successes, and indicated that he was going to follow up with Rowley “to compare notes on the virus and the situation in the Caribbean, and also to discuss how Commonwealth countries can support each other in the face of this global pandemic.”

It was because of this widespread public acclamation of the effective measures pursued by the Rowley government that the UNC and its supporters have been desperate to find at least one rational reason for criticising those measures. But after four years, they could find none. So why not invent this irrational “fake” vaccines narrative? Because this is exactly what it is.

I agree with the many who believe this is the Opposition Leader’s latest attempt to score cheap political points. If Persad-Bissessar is seeking to win office when the election bell rings on the basis of astute leadership, then it simply confirms the fact that the UNC political leader has absolutely no respect for the intelligence of the people of TT by making such baseless accusations.

By her utterances, it is clear that had her administration presided over our response during the pandemic, there is no doubt in my mind she would have plunged TT into a state of chaos, confusion and more deaths.

The question is: Would she have withheld those so-called “fake” vaccines from us? Imagine what TT’s death toll would have been today. Now that we know we could not have trusted her sober and focused leadership during the pandemic, we also have to ask: Could we have trusted an administration under her leadership to steer us to economic recovery and to have a clear path to rebuild TT post-covid, like Rowley did and continues to do? The answer is clearly no since she still seems to be fighting the ghosts of covid.

IRENE MEDINA

Arima