OPINION: When idiot Caribbean politicians put citizens lives at risk
By Nathan ‘Jolly’ Green, February 2020
Most Countries in the World will do anything to protect their citizens and visitors from the Coronavirus. But not in Saint Vincent, the Caribbean mainland island of St.Vincent and the Grenadines. There Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves has taken an unprecedented risk of exposing his citizens and tourists to an illness that may well kill them.
A cruise ship named ‘Adria Perla’, who has among its crew Chinese and Filipino nationals, both from places where the Corona Virus is killing people, docked in Kingstown, Saint Vincent.
Gonsalves gave the final permission for the ship to allow its passengers to go ashore, even though 137 people, including crew, had been affected by a presently unknown respiratory, pulmonary virus. Twenty-three of those, apparently mainly crew, have been quarantined on board ship.
The ship was refused landing rights in Saint Lucia and also Dominica, but SVG welcomed them. As two thousand passengers came ashore, not a single handheld thermometer was in site, no health checks on disembarkation. There are no health checks at the airport, no sign of handheld thermometers there either. But there is a good reason for that, they do not have such advanced equipment, yet we the people have been assured that SVG is ready for such a crisis as Corona Virus, we are not.
But on Sunday, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves defended his decision to allow the vessel to dock two days earlier, saying, “we have to act sensibly with the protocols and don’t panic.”
Gonsalves said that onboard the cruise ship “there were 23, I think 23 persons, who had some kind of virus.
“But they were isolated on the ship. They were crew members and some passengers,” he said on WE FM radio.
The frightening thing is Senator Luke Brown Minister, the Health Minister, who knows zilch about anything medical is in charge of the situation. Now tell us, is that supposed to instill confidence in us? It most certainly has the opposite effect for most of us.
Some countries have been panicking,” Gonsalves said.
But anyone with half a brain would not describe it as panic. It is sheer common sense to take proper precautions to protect the people of SVG when there is an unknown virus onboard a cruise ship. This may well prove to be the Corona Virus, or it may not be, but it may even be something worse than Corona. We quite simply do not know, so best to err on the side of sensibility and caution, and take all precautions, and more.
Gonsalves went on to say, “Look, there are protocols which have been laid down through WHO (World Health Organisation), PAHO (Pan-American Health Organisation), CARPHA (Caribbean Public Health Agency) and which we apply,” he said.
Is he following the protocols? I for one simply do not trust the word of Gonsalves and certainly do not believe or support anything which is under the control of Luke Brown.
“It’s not every incident that you just assume that it is the coronavirus,” the prime minister said.
But common sense tells us anything that is un-recognized, un-identified, and is passed from human to human must be treated as being dangerous, and all precautions are taken until it is proved harmless to the general population and our few tourists.
The prime minister said that Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Simone Keizer-Beache, had explained to him that when the cruise ship came, there were about 135 persons who had on the cruise “reported some kind of a discomfort.” Well, that is a wishy-washy explanation that only makes many among us even less trusting of the handling of this matter.
The discomfort Dr. Gonsalves, was they had difficulty breathing, and some remaining in quarantine have developed pneumonia-like chest infections.
Gonsalves then said, “If you see it is 135 active problems, then that’s a different number than 23, but you have to go through the detail to see whether there is something active and whether somebody suffered or is suffering and none of them was connected to the coronavirus.”
That is the point comrade, we and especially you, have no idea what the infection is, it may be a new virus many times worse than Corona.
In Italy, the cruise ship Costa Smeralda ship – carrying 7,000 people, including some Britons – had been kept on the ship after a 54-year-old Chinese woman from Macau came down with flu-like symptoms. Italy’s health ministry has now confirmed that two Chinese cruise ship passengers tested negative for the virus that has killed 170 people so far in the city of Wuhan.
In May 2019, the cruise ship owned by the Church of Scientology was quarantined in Saint Lucia because of a single measles case, health authorities on the Caribbean island made sure no one left the ship.
https://news.yahoo.com/scientology-cruise-ship-quarantined-caribbean-measles-case-212150101.html
You see the difference, the Italians tested for the virus and never let anyone off the ship until after it had been quarantined for several days, and it was proved that the coronavirus was not on board.
The Saint Lucians did the same no one on, no one off until the measles case was given the all clear.
Left Luke Brown, Minister of Health
Right Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister
If Gonsalves acted on the advice of Luke Brown, who he has let handle the problem and advise on it, that could have signed the death warrant for hundreds if not thousands of Vincentians and tourists. This is nothing like the actions that anyone would expect from a real statesman.
If Gonsalves were in America, he would have been impeached for his handling of this matter alone, a very foolish act on his part, in fact really stupid, if not downright criminal.
For the readers further information, there is currently a new outbreak of the H5N1 virus known as “Bird Flu” just ten miles from where the first cases of the coronavirus outbreak occurred in China. The Chinese are slaughtering chickens as they did in that last outbreak, which killed hundreds of people worldwide.
END – IMAGES supplied by author
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