A pandemic's paradise

THE PANDEMIC and crises by nature punish ineptitude and sloth – that punishment is unevenly distributed with the poor and dispossessed shouldering the brunt. But hey, perhaps poverty and stomach-twisting austerity build character.

Think of the various systems representing the apparatus of governance as a country's immune system in this interminable medical emergency. Healthcare, transportation, state social services, communications – these are all anti-bodies, if you will, meant to defend the public body against the ravages of catastrophe.

In this scenario, TT is gravely immunocompromised. Public institutions fail us more often than not. In some perverse way, this country is purpose-built for covid19 – the perfect host.

Of course, no country is perfect. It's likely impossible to identify a nation whose response to this global disaster has been conspicuously flawless. Still, it's easy to discern where countries with inherently robust systems and sound strategies have fared better than we have.

In TT our failed systems come into sharper relief as the pandemic entrenches suffering. Even so, our incompetent governance dispatches sentinels not to defend the holes in our systems, but to defend their existence. Failed structures and poor planning have us falling back on the only resort of restrictions, indefinitely shuttered borders, and a host of other non-action actions.

This isn't surprising as inertia is as Trini as doubles and peeing at the side of the road. It's one of the main reasons the borders were closed relatively quickly and remain so – a Freudian recognition of our institutional incapacity to cope on any level with adversity.

Recently, a young woman returning from abroad chronicled her misadventure through a video. What she described was chaos incorporated – filling out copious paperwork, only to be forced to fill out the same paperwork again and again. From a riotously helter-skelter process at the CAL check-in counter to the choreographed buffoonery on arrival in TT, that young woman's story would be hilarious were it not so deflating.

This, though, was in stark contrast to her in-transit experience in Barbados. According to her account, she and her fellow passengers were processed efficiently and quickly by Bajan authorities.

In TT where repatriation flights are few and far between, we simply can't pull together some semblance of order and planning. The systems have never been tested for performance – only for their capacity to frustrate. The cracks that are mere everyday nuisances to us become yawning fissures under the rending forces of crisis.

Only a few weeks ago the health minister announced an online registration system for vaccinations would be trialed. That dress rehearsal should have taken place at the beginning of this year – but then, who knew vaccination was going to be a thing.

TT's institutionalised incapacity also has a way of serving up suffering with a side order of indignity.

A large number of citizens thronged lower St Vincent Street in the capital city last week. The reason? They were there to collect promised food cards and grants for the disabled. The manufactured mob were previously told by workers at the post office branch they could return on the day which they had. As it happens, the office was closed. So in the height of a pandemic, the in-built shortcomings of the public services saw people gathered in large numbers.

What TT is good at is artifice – the pretence of having systems. There is an illusion of functional departments of governance – this illusion relies on those of us sufficiently apathetic to the fact that very little works, or too dispassionate or politically blinkered to notice.

This artifice – the flurry of paperwork, wonky online registration, unenforceable regulations, etc – are all facades meant to mimic systems designed to produce a result. The artifice, though, is the only result.

Recently Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Hsien Loong, in an address to his nation, soberly reflected on the reality of covid19 becoming endemic in the world. It will never disappear. He implied that the only way humanity can carry on with life is through the efficient deployment of systems designed to keep people safe while maintaining commercial activity and freedom of movement.

In TT we have all the appearances of relying exclusively on vaccination salvation. This echoes our disproportionate dependence on lockdowns – to the exclusion of comprehensive education on living with the virus and the activation of systems to make that possible.

We learned nothing during the pandemic and are therefore unprepared for a future with its aftermath.