CIG goal is elimination of virus
(CNS): Following panic in the business community that the Cayman Islands’ economic shutdown will not be lifted for many months if government is waiting to eliminate COVID-19, Premier Alden McLaughlin said he is convinced that this could happen sooner than people think if they follow the rules. He said he believes that the actions taken at an early stage to restrict movement here has put the country ahead of the curve and bought us time to learn from other places.
With 54 positive cases of COVID-19 since the first one over one month ago, Cayman still has only one death, the unfortunate cruise passenger who was brought here after he had suffered a heart attack on the ship and was later found to have the virus.
This indicates that Cayman’s “aggressive approach” is working to curb the virus spread, the premier stated.
McLaughlin explained that the measures, based on the advice of health professionals here and in the UK, have achieved social distancing and that is critical in curtailing community spread. Cayman has around 64,000 people, he said, and it can attain the objective of elimination.
“It is absolutely achievable to eliminate the disease here. We have the capacity to test every single person that is here,” he said.
With the borders closed and the only people allowed in subjected to a full quarantine for 14 days or more and tested before release, he said it was possible to achieve a completely virus-free state in these islands. But he warned it required the collective determination to do so across the community.
He said the advice is that if we can get to a point of fourteen clear days without a positive test, Cayman could start to phase out the restrictions.
The premier accepted the hardship, the massive economic problems, the inconveniences that the curfews and significant restrictions are having. No one was immune, he said, noting the endless requests he gets for re-opening businesses and services so they could have their lives back.
He listed his own home repair problems that needed addressing, acknowledging that other people were facing far worse, but said we all had to “make do and live life at a lesser standard than we are used to”. He said letting technicians to your home was inviting in the virus.
“We just need to bear in mind what the goal is,” the premier said. “We are doing these things… because we want to get to the other side,” he said, explaining that was opening the economy back up.
The premier spoke about watching what was happening elsewhere around the world to get a better idea of how a phased re-opening could happen here.
“Because we have bought ourselves so much time, we are able to watch what is happening around the world and what works, what doesn’t work,” he said.
McLaughlin said he was concerned about the dangerous views in the United States about opening up some areas too soon and he was waiting to see how that transpires. But he said that Cayman could stand back and look at what every country has done. When it comes to opening up Cayman, he said it would be a phased approach based on the areas that are the least risky first, he added.
But the premier explained the initial aim was to begin aggressive testing, starting with front-line workers, isolating those who are positive and then more broadly into community testing. Then, if Cayman goes fourteen days without a positive test, the step by step lifting of restrictions could begin.
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Category: Business, Health, Medical Health
Good luck with your quest to keep the country in lock-down until you win your virtuous battle to eliminate the corona!
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/doctor-fears-new-coronavirus-strain-21863963
There are other possible causes. Not necessarily a new strain.
yes…should we shut down every winter because of seasonal flu??
Of course not.
All your base, are belong to us. You are on the way to destruction You have no chance to survive; make your time. Ha, ha, ha.
I fail to understand why some in our population seem to think that this is not achievable. How do these persons think that other virus die off? WE simply stop spreading them by staying away from other persons. Then the virus is elimated as each infected person’s body kill off the virus WITHOUT passing it to others. For example, if we get a flu WE stay home until we are better and if we are thoughtfull the other members of our household do the same or at least stay away from the sick person.
After you eradicate the virus and remain isolated from the entire world until it is eliminated.
That could take from years to decades.
Well Professor, does the flu virus die off? , it’s been going strong since the Spanish flu killed 50 million 1918-1920 and there’s plenty of flu here right now.
Are you for real.
The beaches. The final frontier. One man’s inability to prevent group gatherings meant a cessation of access for all.
How about this –
open the beaches but prohibit sunbathing/lounging.
anyone can walk, maintain social distance, swim.
and sure, stop us paddleboarding (why?!) and whatever
but to close the beaches? come on now
let us back on the shorelines, most of us are sensible, and none of us will complain if you lock up the covidiots that decide to abuse it.
why no sunbathing?
unCaymanian.
11.31am Sun tan lotion is not an essential commodity.
Generational Caymanians frown upon those of darker complexion
Sadly, the police did try limiting access to approved activities, but it was grossly abused by those with no honour code and unworkable to police. I don’t necessarily like it either, but I accept it as the temporary reality…we live among idiots and must share their fate as a community. I agree with Dr Lee that staying home for a few weeks is a much better fate than the trenching mass graves.
garbage…the police were unable or unwilling to enforce the law…hence as usual they opted for the easy option of total lockdown.
Covidiots..love it.
Doom and Gloom brigade 0 – Government 0.5
Contrary to the gloom and doom brigade that is active on social media, the evidence from other island nations shows that the Cayman Islands CAN eliminate Covid-19 if people just follow the guidelines. However, contrary to what the government seems to be suggesting, we are unlikely to be the first country to do so.
The Faroe Islands, and possibly a few other island nations, are likely to achieve this objective before us using the same basic strategy that is being employed by our government. For anyone not familiar with the Faroe Islands, this country is in many ways a cold water version of the Cayman Islands. It is a prosperous semi-autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark comprised of several small islands in close proximity to each other. It has a population of approximately 45,000, with a traditional seafaring and fishing economy and more recently has developed a rapidly growing tourism sector including cruise tourism.
The first case of Covid-19 in the Faroe Islands was confirmed on 3 March 2020, 9 days before the Cayman Islands first Covid-19 confirmation. Soon after that, the Faroe Islands enacted measures to shut down its airports and cruise ports to prevent the importation of Covid-19 cases and took steps to ensure social distancing just as the Cayman Islands has done. The Faroe Islands also began, and rapidly accelerated, a very widespread testing programme (more than 10% of its population so far), accompanied by rigorous contact tracing and the voluntary isolation of persons testing positive.
The success of this approach is clearly demonstrated on the Faroe Islands government website:
https://corona.fo/statistics?_l=en
Although initially the Faroe Islands had more than 180 cases of Covid-19, far more than the Cayman Islands, more than 90% of the Covid-19 patients in the Faroe Islands have now fully recovered and no one has died. As of today’s date, 15 April 2020, the Faroe Islands have had 8 consecutive days with no positive tests and expect a Covid-19 free phased re-opening of their economy starting within a matter of days.
The Faroe Islands is now probably 3 – 6 weeks ahead of the Cayman Islands in suppressing the virus, assuming Cayman’s testing can be very rapidly ramped up and the population continues to comply with the government’s measures.
If the people of the Faroe Islands can comply with an obviously successful strategy to defeat Covid-19, there is no reason we cannot do the same. Last point for the government to note, THE FAROE ISLANDS ACHIEVED SUCCESS WITHOUT ANY PROHIBITION OF EXERCISING ON THEIR BEACHES!
PS for Wendy – would you mind asking the government at today’s briefing why they don’t add some of the good news examples like the Faroe Islands to their daily briefings. People are tired of the daily grim stories from the US and Europe. All of us could benefit from some good news and examples offering proof that the strategies the government is deploying, apart from closing the beaches, have been successful elsewhere!
Theoretically C19 can be eradicated but not eliminated, but it would take quite some time. And if the territory self sustained itself, no problem, live happily ever after completely separated from the rest of the world.
How can there be so many dunce resident comments in favor of suffering the same inept fate as those trenching mass graves elsewhere? Please call the number and expedite your departure arrangements if you can’t sit on your own sofa for a few weeks! We don’t want to throw-in with your nonsensical “herd immunity” action/death plan. The futility of that plan has been the dire lesson of the last 4 months.
11.06am The Danes have a lot more self discipline than we have here. Just wait and see. Have you checked the figures for the Channel Islands (Jersey and Guernsey) very similar in size to us.
Climate wise they are different.
No one analyzed yet how the virus behaves in different climate zones. Sun, humidity and temperatures are the factors that could possibly affect the virus longevity, spreadability and strength.
The Indians have been working on this for some time. Google coronavirus latitude.
So no deaths and 180 cases. So that 21% death rate that some claim about is now 0% there. Hmmmmm
Perhaps we should now start calling for all the non essential civil servants to take a 50% pay cut.
….and the double-dipping pension-salary cronies to loose either one or the other. So much wasted capital that we really need for a disaster reserve fund.
11.36am Don’t forget the all encompassing gold plated medical benefits which are provided free.
why just a pay cut?..why not treat them like alden does with the private sector…?
‘tough luck …no go home’.
You mean all of them, then.
Up to now I have fully supported the Premier in his approach, even though I have personally disagreed with a number of the tactical moves made by the Government and the Police. However this is a turning point. My biggest fear was the lack of a long term plan and we now understand why this has not been communicated before. The concept of eliminating the virus is alluring, especially to those who have relatively short term or narrow viewpoints. However the reality is it is both unachievable and ultimately redundant. The Premier has stated that we would need 14 days without a positive case before local restrictions are eased. We now know that many infected people can be asymptomatic which means it will extremely difficult to eradicate the virus and if we can, it may take many months to achieve the 14 day threshold. When other jurisdictions are beginning to open up their economies when they have moved past peak virus why wouldn’t we do the same?
It is redundant because the virus will be with the world for the foreseeable future and people are conveniently forgetting that Cayman’s whole economy is linked to either tourism or financial services and both of these require substantial physical presence of people visiting from outside these islands. Quarantining business people and tourists for 14 days before letting them access Cayman is not a viable strategy past the short term. We have to be realistic and understand that isolating ourselves off from the world is not a viable option and never has been. We need a different plan that recognizes the need to protect the vulnerable while moving to an open local economy followed by opening to the broader international community when the virus has subsided in their areas.
If we continue down the eradication route it will mean that the cure will become far more damaging to our society than the illness itself.
Please stop with your sensible remarks.
Zero sofa-related deaths recorded thus far.
Don’t worry – they’re coming. Couch potatoes don’t live that long.
Alden needs to resign now. We are better off taking our chances with Bernie at the helm.
Mac & Bernie to lead us into the abyss. West Bay’s finest.
All the world leaders must be queuing up to speak to our Great Leader to find out the secret of completely eliminating the virus.
Does he want to eradicate or eliminate?
Eradication refers to the reduction to zero (or a very low defined target rate) of new cases in a defined geographical area.
Elimination refers to the complete and permanent worldwide reduction to zero new cases of the disease through deliberate efforts.
Closing the beaches was an overreaction and a mistake. If you look back at the comments, most people were generally in favor of govt until that point. But restricting access to the biggest advantage in actually fighting this that we have (exercising near or in the sea), opened people’s eyes to the lack of logical thinking about how to handle this.
Logic would have been to encourage people to exercise to be in better condition to fight this while waiting for a year or more for a *potential* vaccine. Logic would have been to have the police do their job and arrest / disburse those gathering on the beach sunbathing or drinking. Logic would have been to consider the maths on what will do the most damage – families destroyed by lack of ability to put food on the table, mental health, etc, or the actual potential for people to get very sick when Cayman relaxes some of these restrictions in a smart and logical way.
Govt did a really good job in locking down quickly and decisively to prevent an overrun at the hospitals. Now that we’ve gotten past that initial hurdle, it is time to start to logically move to protect Caymanians against the far larger threat against their lives. This is not about ‘getting our lives back’, not many believe we are going to go back to normal next week. It is about saving our future, and our children’s future by acting before we’ve lost too much.
Slowly, carefully start opening things back up to save all of us. Now.
Alden McLaughlin and his government are the most myopic in history. Things will only be getting worse!
I really would like to know where are the other elected officials are on these actions? We are on life support and not concern to get of economy back on track.
Re 9:36, You are spreading misinformation about COVID-19. Exercising or swimming at the beach during the pandemic will not reduce chances of infection. It does not ”boost” your immune system. It is incorrect that sun or saltwater kills the virus.
The only thing that can help one cope with infection better is to already be in good general health, being fit and eating a good diet. Risk factors that make COVID-19 more deadly include diabetes, hypertension, smoking, and obesity. A few days or weeks at the beach won’t fix those problems if they already exist.
Alden McLaughlin is taking expert advice and making intelligent decisions. He’s trying to get through this safe and fast. What else can we ask? Would you rather have a corrupt moron like Donald Trump leading us right now?
#lame
10:42 am
You are stuck in the 18th century science.
10.42am “Expert advice” – the Minister of Health, “intelligent decisions” – closing the beaches to all instead of punishing the transgressors, – allowing covid positives to self isolate without proper supervision. How about Donald Duck?.
@10:42, I think you may actually be the one spreading incorrect information. Much of what you say is true – general heath, and risk factors. However, I think the original point was that exercise over a longer period
will help reduce the chances of infection. Against a regimen of sitting at home, more so. Further, the ultraviolet light from the sun will most certainly kill the virus. Not sure where your science is coming from, but that’s a known fact.
CNS: Can you kill coronavirus with UV light? – BBC
While many people are congratulating the premier on his leadership, I would like to ask this. The premier has assumed control of our lives aimed at saving them with a unilateral ‘stop order’. That is the easy part. Now comes the hard part. How do we reverse this? If people are told they can go back to work, contract covid-19 and die then their relatives are likely to sue the government for placing them in danger resulting in death. This is a very difficult problem to solve and really demands that everyone is tested and the borders remain closed until immunisation is available and visitors able to enter only if they are virus free or inoculated. Obviously our front line workers must come first, so do those who work from home have to continue doing so, until a vaccination is ready? Maybe that is part of a solution, but it isn’t a whole one. Do we start to allow businesses to open but with the stay at home order still in place and the alphabetical system remain?. What do we do with the permit holders who have lost their jobs and can’t go home? We are morally now responsible for their welfare.
Nobody sues CIG ever!
Nobody can sue any government for deaths caused by a pandemic.
One can sue a hospital if it didn’t exercise due care during treatment. This is impossible to prove.
There will be no vaccine for this new coronavirus. No vaccines were ever made for any other coronaviruses.
While “freaking foreigners» literally saved B.Johnson’s life, they are being viscously attacked here and neither Premier nor Governor say a word.
While the rest of the world is being actively engaged in assisting the needy, here in Cayman people seem to engage in blaming and verbally attacking each other.
Disunity, hatred and bullying happening here seem to slip off Premier’s radar.
you can only sue goverment if you can prove deliberate negligence (which is near impossible)
hence why the civil service and cig view themselves as untouchable…
welcome to wonderland.
On the contrary, one only has to look at the payouts the government has had to make to individuals and corporations from the government. Please do no misunderstand, I am supportive of the measures taken. I am compliant with the rules and since the government aim is to ‘eradicate’ that can only mean that if people die of this after they are comfortable with it being ‘eradicated’ and order everyone back to normal, the government by definition has taken responsibility.
Everyone is saying to choose between making sacrifices OR see deaths. What if thats not the choice we are making here. What if its more like choose a lot of sacrifices AND deaths or just a few sacrifices and deaths? Everyone calling for a 14 day total lockdown does not understand this virus.
In theory, 2-3 weeks of no new positives, to provisionally reopen some things, and full resolution of all the known cases (which can be several weeks) to be fully in the clear. We would still need to watch with aghast horror at the nightmares unfolding elsewhere, but at least we won’t be burying our friends and family here.
No, you will be burying them financially.
After just the first few weeks?!? How do you figure? Any Caymanian business person can fill out an application form for a grant, or low-interest bridge loan. Who is being buried, and what was their Hurricane recovery continuity plan (ie 6-8mos recovery time)? Adios and good riddance to all of those fly-by-night business planners that can’t weather the easiest pandemic recovery scenario on the planet.
Insurance covers business interruption due to hurricanes but not viruses so there’s that…
But no new positives does not mean it has gone until everyone is tested, at 500 a day we are still talking circa 100 days from now
Many will die as as a result, their blood will be on the hands of this no plan Government
To be honest I thought the Governement were doing a good job until this 14 day 0 case announcement. I own a business employing 20 people and had hoped and planned for the lock down restrictions to be eased at the end of April. If Alden is serious I don’t see when it will be possible to function again and have no option but to begin layoffs and then redundancies. There seems to be no consideration about the economic well being of the island and people generally and an over reliance on the advice of the medical professionals. These guys aren’t concerned about the economy and would lock us down all year if they could. I agree we need to be cautious but a staged reopening with social distancing measures in place should be possible soon with targeted screening and isolation as necessary.
Yet, we are all doing it. Any business that can’t weather a few weeks shutdown payroll, probably should go out of business for the good of the community. Vipers like these shouldn’t be equated to “our economy”. Read the news, and wrap your head around the global situation. After months of international examples, how could any sane and morally-centered business person believe we’d be back open to full strength in weeks? It’s also hard to garner sympathy when any Caymanian can just fill out an application and get a low-interest bridge loan from the CIG, after satisfying a basic business plan audit.
Get off your white horse. Half of the world’s businesses only manage to break even, still they make an essential part of world’s economy.
Only in Cayman people are being paid for doing absolutely nothing. But everything comes to an end they say. Right? Unless money start growing on trees here.
He says they have 20 employees rocket scientist! The government loan scheme is for small businesses with up to 15 staff only. “Vipers like these” employ a huge chunk of the population and just want to keep people in jobs.
Go plead your problem to curfew time or call one of the business audit firms and have them route the request. Suggesting there aren’t people and resources to help is false.
What an incredibly pompous assuming response. Nobody is saying we are going to get back to normal anytime soon but there is no reason that if case numbers don’t mushroom why there can’t be a lifting of some restrictions to enable money to start flowing around the local economy again. See you next Tuesday.
i smell a civil servant…
You could say the same thing about unhealthy people
It’s more than a few weeks shutdown payroll.
The only way to eliminate it is to close us down for up to 2 years. There will not be a global vaccine before 18-24 months. The only way out of this is a managed approach to opening up sometime in 2-6 weeks. The government have done great so far, based on the knowledge at the start, they were right to shut us down. But now we know the vulnerable, we can manage society for a couple years by helping them and opening up while maintaining social distancing and other sensible procedures. The virus is coming back around the world at least once and maybe twice between now and next summer (2021), so we can’t just eliminate it and shut down the borders. It will cause more damage and deaths than the virus.
BTW – many people do not like exercise, they enjoy home DIY. Please open the hardware stores and operate them like the supermarkets. insist on social distancing, hygiene, masks, alphabets. But please, let them open. We could all be repainting and fixing up stuff we never had the time to do – it will be a mental health relief for so many of us also.
Good comment.
I believe the team are doing a great job for Cayman. its sad to see so many idiots arrested and breaking the laws. I value my precious life here in paradise. I would love to see a 14 or 21 day total curfew to put us in an even stronger position once and for all. then we can concentrate on total island testing too.
There will be no life to have in Cayman if they shut the boarders till a vaccine is out.
This is tragic
Leave!
Charter me a plane that will take me home across the world.
Dumping me in Miami won’t work.
I am ready to leave this wasteland with its very un-kind people.
Great! Thank you for your service!
There was no life here anyway! This island is a sandy prison before with dumb inmates and it will be a sandy prison afterward!
8.23am Elvis was a great musician but not celebrated for his brains.
Yeah well, you ain’t nothin but a hound dog…cryin all the time.
Absolutely agree.
It would be a great service to the country if all the negative posters were to shut up and stay at home.
Thank for your positive comment.
agreed. The government is trying to save our lives and all of these businesses/ persons screaming for essential status if allowed to open up and freely mingle as they would like are only concerned about their cash flow. If after a few weeks they are broke then perhaps they shouldn’t own a business. The problem here is there are too many rinkydink businesses plying for the same customers for any of them to make money. Perhaps it is better for some to cut their losses and pack it in. The actions of a few careless irresponsible law breakers are only making life more difficult for the rest of us.
Cayman Government (largest employer of Caymanians) is a business that needs a huge amount of free money coming in to feed and house its workers. How much money do they have coming in now? Are they still paying huge amounts of money to the now non working workers? Perhaps better for them to cut their losses and pack it in?
11.07am We need pool maintenance not to make money for the service providers but for vital health reasons.
A time frame has to be loosely supplied. If a date was given say May 30 for soft openings, stores like the hardware, paint ,pool supply and basic home needs can work on a plan because social distancing will still be with us. We know tourism is dead Should all construction sites be closed till Sept 1? That would give a clear picture to permit holders there will be no work soon.
Hurricane season is around the corner, home owners need to prepare. A controlled soft opening has to be thought thru carefully be it has to happen
There are daily press briefings with all the info you are looking for. The plan has been absolutely steadfast from Dr. Lee from the first press briefing. Stay home until the testing shows we can reopen locally. Use “end of May” as an educated local business planning target, or call one of the small business advisory Audit firms and they will give you their latest estimated consensus on realistic reopening date ranges. Maybe it’s sooner. Stay home so we can get there asap.
You can call all the audit firms you like. No one has a crystal ball on when we will hit Alden’s magic number of 14 days with no new cases – or know if Alden will change the goal posts. He hasn’t exactly been consistent so far – during the same presser he switched from 21 days to 14, and all he in fact said was that restrictions would be progressively released, without saying which restrictions or what progressive means. Any business right now is planning in a information vacuum, and it wont take long before businesses that cant operate under the current environment and with no indication of when an end date may be in sight decide to layoff all their staff and save their cash to try and restart the business once trading restrictions ease.
How this works is that the “no new case” target resets as each new cluster of cases pop up, on advice of CMO, with consultation with Premier, COP and Governor. Much as I dislike this regime, Alden doesn’t fully control the virus’ timetable. There is no static target date until our local cluster infections are significantly contained and/or stamped out, and we’re trying to head in that direction, if everyone would just get on the same page with the common objective. This week and next we should see material changes in clinical recoveries for active cases, which would be welcome news for all, and another couple steps closer to starving out the virus in Cayman and reopening for local business. Keeping in mind, that international travel and tourism isn’t happening, and that the rest of the planet will necessarily be closed for at least months.
10.49am Tell that to the c0vid positives in “self isolation”.
Rotfl at the title….guess they have lots of goals, prehistoric ones too, that died HARD just like the “dinosaurs”…..we have gotten no where in the past 15-20years~ but have developed as if we were creating utopia…who for?
Congrats to the Premier, the minister of health, Dr Lee and the panel of experts for their great work over the past 5 weeks or so in trying to get ahead and on top of the spread of the virus. The goal of having the Cayman Islands wholly virus free is a good one but for it to be achieved there needs to be a change to the serious flaw in the government’s current protocol of returning persons who test positive for covid19 to their households.
I heard Dr Lee address the thinking a couple weeks ago and the premier yesterday confirming it. I am however asking the premier and his team to revisit this fundamental error and also look carefully at the countries which have fared best in controlling the spread of the virus….Jamaica, St.Lucia, Barbados, China, etc. Immediate mandatory quarantine for those testing positive is a must. Isolation must be reserved only for those having exposure to persons who have tested positive. Expansion of testing is the right thing to do but to then place those who tested positive back into their households is madness even though there are attempts to police it around the clock which is highly expensive and resource hungry.
As testing is ramped up and the number of positives inevitably grow the govt will fall woefully short of having the resources to police what is really an honour system which with the best intentions and responsibleness of households will have shortcomings and breaches will occur. The policy of sending positive persons back into households is the government putting the other members of that household at severe risk of infection and is plainly wrong. No amount of care by family members, alcohol, lysol and dettol wiping can adequate protect household occupants unless you have a huge house like Cuomo on cnn who has a large basement in what must a be sizable house to be safely apart from the remainder of his family. But that is the exception as most people live in a normal size apartment with one or possibly two bathrooms with 4 or 5 family members. We all read that Rihanna’s father returned to Barbados from New York last month and once he tested positive was immediately sent to Paragon, one of 4 quarantine facilities in Barbados until he recovered and tested negative. It didn’t matter who he is or that he lives alone in a large home bought for him by his daughter. I absolutely disagree with the premier that there is a stigma associated with contracting covid19 and this is the overarching reason for sending infectees back into their households. There is absolutely no stigma associated with contracting this disease as compared to say AIDS or HIV. Anyone who is unfortunate to contract the covid19 I believe would be willing to accept a protocol which calls for quarantine vs returning to your household to potentially infect members of their household. Our neighbor Jamaica with a population of nearly 3M have less than 100 cases, st.lucia population 181k 15 cases, Barbados 285k, 74 cases. So whilst we jumped out the gate very early with briefings, curfews, lockdowns, etc. 54 cases with a population of 65k is not particularly impressive! And so far only 600 or so tests have been done. As testing is ramped up the numbers will naturally increase and many of the new positives that will come would have been caused by persons who were tested in the early stages and sent back into their households. The contact tracing will confirm this. The current policy is akin to identifying a couple bad potatoes in bag and putting them back into the bag to potentially spoil or at least expose the other to spoiling.
The US and UK has such appalling results and out of control results because the only people who are retained in a government run facility are those too sick to return home and are hospitalized. Asymptomatic and those with mild symptoms are simply sent back home and told to isolate. This is the same as in Cayman, and currently only 6 persons are in hospitals, the remainder 40+ are in their homes and potentially infecting their healthy loved ones.
The government is touting social distancing as probably the single most important behaviour in stemming the spread of the virus, but their policy of sending those who test positive back into the public domain/their homes is perhaps the most egregious breach of this protocol. You can’t effectively or easily socially distance in a 2 bedroom apartment of 1000 sqft .
Whilst some of the information from China is questionable they do have a rigorous quarantine not isolation requirement for persons who test positive and they overall result are stellar for the most populous country in the world. I read in the Jamaican Gleaner that the our neighbors Jamaica with such impressive results to date not only employ the same immediate quarantine for those who test positive at a government facility but also workers at those facilities are also quarantined. This is impressive as it not only immediately physically ring-fences persons who test positive from the rest of the community until they get well and are tested and confirmed negative but it also prevent workers at these facilities going home and infecting their families who then spread it into the communities innocently, when they attend the supermarkets, etc.
I urge the government to immediately review their policy and hopefully move to one where all new positive cases are quarantined and existing households with positive testees vigorously managed and tested and retested until those complete households are cleared. If the current policy remains in place the extensive testing which will soon get underway will be purely a waste of precious test kits if they continue sending persons who test positive back into their households. We still have a chance to achieve the desired result but we need to change now.
Trying to set a Guinness World Record? The Man who eradicated the virus!
Should continue practicing on green iguanas… Several millions later green iguanas are thriving… The Man who spent the most in the attempt to eradicate iguanas!
Haha..love the iguana analogy. Beat them back pretty good but those son of guns are still around…..and making a come back.
Anyone has a power over such a lunacy? He must be thinking he is God to eradicate the virus. Not a single deadly virus or bacteria were ever eradicated.
If you are waiting on the vaccine…bad news…No vaccine has ever been made for any coronavirus in history and it is very unlikely for this one virus.
Meantime elsewhere:
Alaska’s cumulative case count now stands at 285. The total test count thus far is up to 8,348. Coronavirus case count climbs by 8, as of Tuesday, state says it will slowly reopen economic sectors. They are starting with certain elective healthcare procedures.
‘We came to the conclusion that society is better off if we open this sector,” Dunleavy [Governor] said. “This would be the sector that could lead us into opening other sectors. There will be a risk in everything we do, but with metrics we can watch carefully, we can fine-tune the approach.
“We may be back in four or five days saying, ‘There was an outbreak here,'” he said, “and that would cause us to throttle back.”
Clearly all these covid positives supposedly in self isolation are under minimal supervision, govt have never admitted what this consists of. This is a major risk to everyone and mandatory isolation has to be imposed. Nobody has any idea how many of these people have been out in the community.
For the Premier to repeat the same claim made by the CMO that mandatory isolation would stop others from seeking help if they develop symptoms is ludicrous. If given the choice between dying an awful death from slow asphxiation, or spending 2 weeks in quarantine what sane person would choose the former.
This stay home policy is futile unless all these people with the disease are properly contained.
This plan is delusional. It is hard to believe that our Governor thinks it is rational. It will be impossible to achieve as any person who reads what is going on beyond these borders knows. Such a plan is delusional and frightening. We will live in a police state forever and human spirit can’t overcome such draconian limitations without hope of an end in sight.
What a contrast from that glowing Forbes article probably timed and orchestrated by CIG’s highly paid foreign PR firm last month. Did that create this addiction to power? Let them do a follow up now of the misery in this country. I pray for us all.
alden it has. been s month and no word sbout pension just last week we were to know. this is my money i sm out f work why is it taking so long
Listen man, the goal is zero dollars, sorry I mean, zero cases.
Let us assume that the virus is removed from the island. What is the plan then? Keep in mind that vaccination is only 60% effective on the flu, so that won’t work. Testing everyone coming to the island will not work if a false negative slips through, and reinfects a significant number of people. Is the plan to lockdown the economy every time the virus reappears? Or is it to prevent people from coming to the island forever?
Every country in the world has the same problem. We have the opportunity to eliminate it completely, and must not fail in that. Nobody is going anywhere for months, ergo no reappearance opportunity. Hopefully by late May there will be a reliable antibody test agreed internationally as an approved standard, and where certain key people with immunity may eventually be allowed to travel again with certification and quarantine measures. Some are using their own empty hotels like we are doing for 14 day quarantines. Mainly though, if you are really itching to get somewhere, you’d best wrap your head around what is going on globally, call the gov’t number, and get there now before you can’t. The rest of us are going to get comfortable using Facetime/Zoom Meeting and watch the horror show from a safe distance.
You keep telling yourself that your are happy in 12 or 24 months when the rest of the world is traveling but you are on the Island with a close border…. BUT hey you will have no cases!
54 with the virus! Not good. I live in San Diego county. We have 55,500 in our zip code. We have 10 positive covid cases. The only difference is that our illegals aren’t running around on the beach
The bigger difference is that Cayman has no illegals. You didn’t know that? And your positive cases are up to about 2,000. What’s with the lying?
Not in my ZIP CODE. Some of us can understand what we read
Yes, but unlike thick North American denial, and freewheeling community transmission, our total active cases are limited (so far) to controlled clusters of household infections. Our isolated active cases are expected to be revised down sharply in days ahead as clinical testing moves those asymptomatic previous positives into the negative recovered category. We still have a very good chance of total elimination of COVID virus, as like Greenland – so long as people stay home.
9.39am So you truly believe all these “clusters” and other “self isolated” cases are “controlled”. There’s no way these people would stay in voluntary lockdown for 2 weeks or more. Just wait and see how our cases increase from community spread. Comparing us with Greenland is like comparing us with the moon, they are both a “world apart” from Cayman.
San Diego. Unlike you, we don’t have illegals. Our Immigration is extremely strict. If our lock down of the few with the virus as half as strict as our Immigration we would not have 54 cases. Perhaps you should focus on Trump. You have some work to do.
Hmmm. I do wish this would be possible. It is a noble thought, a return to the closest version of normal, or pre-covid19, that we could hope for. It is a tantalizing goal, but the words “the only country in the world” uttered in the same paragraph might reveal the chances this is actually possible. There simply are too many people and I fear the virus just doesn’t work as simply as we all would hope.
I do think the governments response has been better than many of us expected, and all involved should be proud of what has been achieved with the response. Suppressed distribution and it appears there are good medical outcomes for those infected. Now we need to be realistic about where we go from here. How long do we hold out in limbo for the eradication of coved in Cayman before we move on to a more realistic gentle opening of society. When do we begin increasing what businesses open and social interactions are acceptable in balance to ensure limited infections that have a solid medical treatment backstop for all. Certainly slow and steady with great caution is warranted.
I will also ask this about our planned eradication. What happens 12 months from now when the rest of the world has widespread virus circulation that is suppressed by herd immunity? At that point we could not open the country up because we would all still be vulnerable and have no herd immunity protection. At that point we can only rely on a vaccine to save us.
To be fair, there are no easy choices here for our leadership. And it might be easier to let the countries finances and bankruptcy force us to come out of hiding rather than lead the country into a path that potentially means unfortunate deaths by choice.
To you leaders who sit visibly at the head of this I applaud you in whatever decisions are made. To you who do not bear the burden of making these choices please be quiet unless you have something to build our society and be helpful. Complain to your shoes, they are lonely and could use the company even if that company is boring.
Many tiny countries still haven’t got any. Greenland had 11 cases and now has zero. We wouldn’t be the first, or the last to eradicate the virus locally, if we get there. Most other countries are in a different category of transmission that the Cayman Islands “cluster cases” – if we just stay home, we’ll be across the valley in a few weeks. This is going to be deadly months and months slog elsewhere. We are super lucky to have a clear avenue to get out of this.
9.11am Go to Greenland and you will see why.
Greenland will be the new Florida after a few more years of global warming!
Unfortunately, I wanted to give the government the benefit of the doubt, unfortunately now I believe this radical and totally unrealistic proposal spells it out. It’s either some radical idea fueled by God knows who or what, not well thought out, or articulated, or much worse, they don’t have any idea what they are doing not only from a medical crisis perspective, but just in general governance. Maybe the time as come to hire someone for the government that actually has dealt with disasters URGENTLY, because they are about to burn the country down to ashes. OPPOSITION, NOW IS YOUR TIME TO SPEAK!!
To say the goal is the ELIMINATION of the virus, means to cease the existence of Covid-19 in the Cayman Islands. {Unless elimination means something else to them}. So HOW DO YOU MEASURE -elimination- so we know when the goal is achieved?
They suggested 14 days without any “new cases” of Covid-19. If that’s the measurement, that is seriously flawed in a very very bad way and based on what we know and are being told….. 14 days of no “new cases” means absolutely JACK-SHIT! That does NOT validate anything AT-ALL based on we know, especially that we have “eliminated” the virus. That’s the first thing. Second thing, based on the actual data from the CDC, a person can be totally asymptomatic for 14 days with the Corona, then, have an additional 7 days to as much as 14 days worth of the flu after that depending on how bad.That means any single person can possibly test positive for up to 21-28 days with the Corona.
That leaves many scenarios where this can and very likely will bring disaster on Orders of Magnitude worse than this virus.
One example of a very possible bad scenario: Next month, May 1-May 13 as we are in progress of testing ourselves towards the “elimination of the virus” and there can be no “new cases” testing positive for those days…. Everyone rejoices as we are about to begin lifting some of the lock-down on the local economy….. But…., day 14 and 15, we get 2 supposedly “new” positives. This is certainly very likely considering a) the duration of which someone can be positive, and b) There is no way in hell your are going to test 65K people (That we know of) by May 15th and c) unless you prevent people from even going to the groceries and leaving their houses AT ALL, contamination STILL remains a very real possibility as we STILL DON’T KNOW who and how many has the Corona. So on May 15th, now we have ANOTHER 14 days continued lock-down! Then the cycle repeats until??? Who knows!!! This is why this makes you wonder how in the hell they can come up with this measure of success?! Let alone on top of that PUT IT INTO EFFECT!! Another very likely outcome based on this measure, and depending on just how many people have already contracted the Corona, we could EASILY end up being in full lock down for MANY MANY MONTHS based on this standard. Almost no business can survive this, at least not unless they fire everyone and go dormant until things open back up. And STILL, even after those many many months of this absolute clusterf*ck, there is no 100% way to ensure no one can possibly contract the virus after this period, unless you plan to put Saran-Wrap around the island and allow absolutely NO ONE IN AT ALL. The fact that goals like this are being put on the table to the public WITHOUT VIRTUALLY ANY INFORMATION is nothing short of mind boggling, especially considering the absolute destruction that could come from this!
At best, let’s presume we are able to test EVERYBODY (and I means every single person without missing one that could possibly have the Corona) by end of May.. (Good luck rounding up everybody for that) and we allow for AT LEAST ANOTHER 21 days on top of that to “eliminate” the Corona from any possible person that may have contracted it. That puts us into end June in lock down AT THE VERY BEST! Because we WILL find many more positives with the Corona!
Anyhow so now after this all is hunky-dory, and great! it’s now mid July, we have effectively tested everyone and “eliminated the virus” in Cayman. So then the question becomes, a) First and foremost, who has survived this financially, and b) has the REST OF THE WORLD “eliminated” the virus? What about the US? Even if we don’t open the airport STILL by July. What about people coming in through shipping companies, what about people working at FedEX for example? They can’t possibly bring the corona back and reignite this government sponsored shit show? When will the world be Corona free so that we can THEN open our borders “safely” and “danger-free”? Or do we plan on totally isolating Cayman from any potential corona people coming in for years or until there is a vaccine?
And what if by some chance, a worker from a shipping company contracts it and restarts the chain of infections, are we going going back into full lock down for another 6 months?
I’m not sure of anyone in gov is paying attention, but the US is already planning and starting to open states back up. So will the rest of the world soon after that. Because they realize that THIS IS NOT SUSTAINABLE!!!!! What if the USA and other part of the world adopts a let’s get low-risk people immunized approach? Are we going to stay here in our fishbowl and starve until mid 2021?
This approach has some SERIOUS holes and even more absolutely devastating consequences possibly far worse than Ivan. Even shortly after Ivan, people were allowed to move and open businesses where they could. This is literally months worth of a neck choke hold. And hold a choke hold, held long enough, the outcome won’t be a good one.
What if the Corona is a bit more resilient that you all planned and hangs around for much longer than your great plan calculated for? {A plan that no one else in the world was able to achieve by the way…}
THEN ALL YOU ALL DID WAS EFFECTIVELY DESTROY PEOPLE’S LIVES AND THAT’S ALL!!!!!
Maybe just maybe its time to consider that not everyone will die if they contact the virus, and maybe we should gear all of our efforts to protect those at high risk instead? And accept that some people will get the Corona and we can manage THAT situation rather than try to put THE ENTIRE POPULATION in a Godforsaken fishbowl to starve and lose their entire savings, homes and business in the process during the next 6 months?? And ultimately Why? Because they want to prove they can highhandedly beat the Corona!? At WHAT POINT will we even take a glimpse at the FACT that no one is dying in Cayman from the Corona to date. And at WHAT POINT will you consider that what IS happening is people ARE being financially destroyed EVERYDAY.
Can we please look at the stats from the CDC reasonably, instead of counting every dead body every damn day from around the world? Can we do A SINGLE press briefing, where we are not peddling the body bags from around the world? Imagine we did that with car accidents or other diseases?? We would never leave our houses EVER!
PLEASE someone please bring some calmness and turn the hysteria dial down some at the table.
Why don’t you ‘ turn the hysteria dial down’? You’re ranting like a mad person. Thank goodness we have calmer people looking out for us.
LMAO!! Using all caps (yelling) and then your last sentence… “PLEASE someone please bring some calmness and turn the hysteria dial down some at the table”
Ironic
The above two only have the mental capacity notice caps.
Is that the end goal? That will never happen. I absolutely believe this is (in large part) Alden on a power binge and all is good ole people let this become a police state real quick. Not one actual law passed- everything being done in the secretive cabinet room with no opposition. This is scary.
Another pipe dream brought to the Caymanian people by Emperor Alden McLaughlin. The only thing worse at this stage is imagining his hand picked successor the unqualified empty shell Joey Hew attempting to lead the country during an economic crisis. God help the Cayman Islands.
another day..another nothing update from the premier as many families and businesses are facing economic ruin.
i demand a strong, direct response from the chamber of commerce asap.
so in no-plan-alden’s magic world….the rest of the world will need to 100% eradicate this virus before we open our airports and port?
where else in the world is following this logic?
at this s tage i’m starting to lose faith in dr lee and the governor for sharing the same platform as alden and jon-jon.
no-plan alden has a plan that won’t work.
he incompetence knows no limits.
governor needs to step in….
Economy will be eliminated before they eliminated the virus.
Dude, we mere weeks into this. After Ivan, many businesses were on ice for 6-8 mos+. We have a good chance of eliminating the virus in the next month, crossing the valley, and allowing phased-reopening of local businesses. That’s way faster than any post-hurricane scenario, and months faster than our first world neighbours. Perspective please.
totally wrong regarding ivan…there were challenges but most business if able were able to work straight away…
Yes, BUT 2 years later with no vaccine where will we be with not open boarders?
Everyone believe this magical vaccine will just pop up. Well if it does and has not been tested properly how many will die?
You are completely wrong. Most business had no complete shut down for weeks. As with many others. It was a hard and trying time and maybe our business was not optimal at that time but we were still open. Work resumed right after the initial storm. You also have to take into account the local economy received a massive fiscal stimulus from insurance payments. A not so good comparison could be the amount of insurance payments received vs. what had been tabled for the reconstruction of this economy. Keeping in mind those were funds coming out of private business vs the government.
Yeah, that 4 billion in insurance coverage had nothing to do with recovering. How much insurance cover is available now?
It is too late to follow Sweden’s approach?
in no-plan-aldens stubborn world…yes.
You mean the one they abandoned because it turns out you can’t rely on people to be responsible adults?
Yesterday in Sweden there were 114 deaths from the virus and 497 new cases identified. As predicted a few weeks ago, the spike in deaths and cases has started.
Sweden on a per capita population basis now has the highest death rate in Europe.
Not an approach for Cayman to follow.
Poster @ 7:06 pm the premier does have a plan love him or hate him , plans don’t hatch overnight, it’s really hard to believe how dumb people can be ! with all the deaths that this virus is causing around the world some people still think it’s business as usual, if it wasn’t for the premier and the government and governor, we would have buried many people already from this virus, just take a look next door to Jamaica, 33 people from 1 work place ! is this really what we want to open up to ? this virus is truly like playing Russian roulette you never know when you are going to get the loaded chamber , some people are lucky to have mild symptoms, and others are not with us any longer it could be me you our family our friends innocent people, we never know who is going to find that loaded chamber, so we can’t play games with this virus we have to do everything we can to stay safe, # stayhomecayman
Does this mean Plan A, the Honor System, has been abandoned?
Thank God he is in charge. Can you imagine what the other guy would be doing now ?
How many tests a day? If we assume 1,000 that’s 64 days. On the last day, assuming no one has tested positive, we have to add 14 days. So, best case scenario we are nearing the end of July. One thing politicians, on a whole, don’t have to worry about is their business dying. So they neither understand nor care until election time and voters are hungry. If this is indeed, the government’s “plan” it is (and I can’t believe I’m writing this) to have as few people here as possible. The fact is, there will so few jobs to be had anyway. Of course, if we can do 10,000 tests per day, the logic changes. But even then, the goal has to be zero cases and that may NEVER happen.
If the Premier’s toilet is leaking so what?. If his pool is turning green , the water going putrid and smelling, and then when the rains come and he breeds millions of mosquitoes along with the thousands of other pools on the island and we suffer an outbreak of dengue fever this is NOT a case of so what!. It’s a major health risk!. Did he and his cabinet of yes men consult with the Dept of Environmental Health, the MRCU, and the CMO before deciding pool maintenance was not essential even if it did not offend the social distancing policy.
It’s time our tin Gods thought through the consequences of all their edicts, it’s not just the mental or economic consequences, our health is involved.
In the meantime all our alcoholics are free to continue drinking themselves into oblivion as their supplies have been guaranteed
How, in this country can alcohol be an essential service when green infested pools ( some bigger than olympic pools) are green and are going to cause a health risk be allowed. ANY pool service or cleaning company for apartments / Strata MUST be essential services if the local alcohol store is.
Once this is over, the swim clubs would love to know where the island has a pool bigger than an olympic pool, as you claim. They’ve been asking for a smaller olympic pool for 25 years. They still train in a pool half the size. Only alcohol can get us through posts such as yours.
Oh my word….
Here comes the “pool guy” again.
😂😂😂😂😂
next time you go to the store buy a few gallon of bleach and dump it in the pool. No mosquitoes. Stop whining about the freaking pools.
11.22am and your pool maintenance qualifications are? bleach damages the pool equipment that’s why chlorine tablets are used which are 20 times the cost of bleach.
Trump defunded WHO today!
Yes, because on 14 February the WHO backed a Chinese claim that COVID-19 couldn’t be transmitted by human-to-human contact when it quite clearly could. That then delayed international response and was a directly contributing factor to the current spread of the virus.
Fake news. He threatened to. Takes a special person to believe what he says. The Chinese have encouraged him not to withhold funds while simultaneously stating they aren’t putting more in. So the U.S. is in fact subsidizing the Chinese. The irony.
Half of the WHO staff are Americans. How could they hide something from America?
Perfect we have the answer for some of the plan….. elimination OK.
So a quick question moving forward..IF we ever get to eliminated stage and the virus is still out in the world some place, how will we open the boarders?
We can’t wait for a vaccine that could be years away. Is there any type of planning into this?
Pre boarding thermal systems before boarding a flight / on arrival to Cayman Airport AND seaport? And other plans?
I applaud the government on their efforts this far. It is no east feat to contain this very deadly and contagious virus. We could be in very dire circumstances had government not taken such swift and effective action.
To all the idiots who say otherwise, well your idiots, what else is there to say ?
Hello East Feat. The taking of hard and fast action was the right thing to do. The problem is we took SOFT and fast action. Hard action would have TRULY locked down those with the virus and inform the public. This is one time Caymankind has worked against us. So before you go calling people idiots …
8.22pm Spoken like a true Caymanian!.
10.05 am Remember this will be taken as a compliment, sarcasm is not a recognised concept here.
8.22pm Look at your thumbs up and down and see who’s the idiot.
Alden.
This will not be achieved here – anytime – or anywhere – soon.
CVD-19 is with us, at least, until effective vaccines are developed and widespread global inoculation is achieved.
We must have a planned and phased approach to reopening the economy. Maybe first with the construction sector – test – and move forward slowly from there.
Exactly….re open because covidiots deserve what they get and I am willing to take my chances! Monitor the people with Covid and let us get on with life! This island is already dead anyway!
Ok great. We should know after 3 weeks of zero positives that we’re in the clear. Why then do the kids need to stay home 4 months more till September? We can’t go back to work till they go back to school!
Good point!
Its not like the airport is open and we can go on holidays anyway!
How about this… You want us to believe your plan. In return, you start sharing real data on the positives. Not personal info… Information such as: how they map to other positives, where they may have been out in the community, and how many contact traces we are doing. When a contact trace is successfully followed, let’s call that out. That way we can feel like the measures are working. For now, I feel like we are being jailed so that you can regularly fly back new groups from the UK, release them to the community on their own honesty, and then declare new cases so you can jail us longer. All while assuming that the beach is more dangerous than having people walk on the (lack of) sidewalk on West Bay Rd. When will the police receive their ticket books? Or is that all part of the delay? And when will “extensive” testing ACTUALLY begin? Or is the lab overworked doing 50/day already? When will we see our first day of 500 tests completed? Ms. Olde should be asking for answers!!! Poor lady can’t even go for her swim anymore. $2.2 million so you can sell off kits and pretend you got this under control?
Good, smack on comment!
8.02pm You have it back to front. The passengers returning on the BA flight ARE under very tight lockdown, I know as my daughter her husband and 2 young children have been locked up in a hotel room and not allowed outside for some fresh air for even 1 minute after 10 days with 4 more to go.Our local covid positives are all under self quarantine in their own homes, spread around the island, and seemingly allowed out in the community with no-one being the wiser. This is the BIG problem that will affect us all.
No. No. No. No. You cannot eliminate it. You can’t only listen to doctors. You must look at the data. This virus is far from world ending. The death rate is 0.5%. The hospitalization is high-ish at 15% but thats ignoring society social separation. To think you can eliminate it, and to insist thats the only option? No.
Someone must be in cabinet able to at least challenge the focus. There is an obvious way out of this before more die from economic clampdown and associated mental health, domestic violence, etc. You cannot only listen to doctors, they are naturally risk averse.
Social distancing can continue for years, thats ok. No restaurant dine ins, ok. No team sports, ok. No Cinema, ok. But no economy. Not ok.
More people will die from diabetes, heart disease, car accidents, assault, cancer, etc than COVID19 in Cayman. Because we are abiding by social distancing, which is the game changer in all the models until a vaccine comes.The original fears are way off base. Yes its horrible but its not going to end us all. Our reaction will if crater the economy.
Someone stop this square focus on elimination, its not going to happen. Instead, a slow reopening locally with a careful focus on isolating and helping the known vulnerable (old/ill/etc).
we were going quite well until this elimination theory came out. Public Health England endorsed it? Have you seen the sh*tshow in England?
Come on. We can manage our way out of this and be up and running by mid May with some rapid testing of a few thouasand. Its not hard. Its data and logic, not emotion.
Yes we can, and we must. Total Global Closed Cases are 621,212, 492,322 (79%) of which are now Recovered/Discharged, and 128,890 (21%) are Dead (now understood to be under-reported by as much as an additional 15% in some first world countries). Even then, death is absolutely the wrong yardstick. 20% of confirmed cases have required emergency medical assistance and prolonged hospital stays to ensure survival. Many Recovered/Discharged have diminished lung capacity, scar tissue, and possible brain damage from encephalitic symptoms endured. Greenland has successfully halted community transmission and is now 100% COVID free. All we have to do is sit at home on our own sofa and we will get there too, in a matter of weeks. We will still have to watch the crisis everywhere else, but we have a choice whether we live that nightmare ourselves. If you are anxious to find the virus, and infect yourself, family and others, then call the gov’t number and get on the next one-way BA flight out of here.
Got it, an awesome plan. Now do the unusual and follow up by working hard to move these out of work work permit holders off island, police more often and fire the lazy cops, clear the T&B L holders that are defrauding, implement the ENGLISH TEST properly, press the back pay to pension accounts from cheat employers, get GAS prices down, make all public beach access points registered in planning dept, rid the public beach of private vendors, stop all illegal catering trucks to construction sites, register all marine vehicles as you do cars/trucks, police shore fishing without a license, spend more money on public eduction not only facilities,………..what have I left out?
What you need gas for?
Only 1 thing… give every child under the age of 11 a lollipop each day…
That your an idiot, racist,bigot, and not a nice person, how is it the fault of expatriates being stuck here with airports closed, think before you speak,
How about protecting your ungrateful ass and a couple thousand people around you? You should have mentioned that also.
Beaumont I must chastise you for your language, but not your sentiment, it is unlike you not to use restrained language no matter what the cause.
Cancel the port! Fix the dump!
How about spending some of that surplus and actually providing an education to the islands children so they’re better prepared when or if something like this happens to this island again?
Buy more hospital beds for those who will need them for all the mosquito borne illness that will kick in this summer. More beds for people attacked while being robbed. More beds for the malnourished. More beds for the covid patients because WE CAN NOT stamp this out forever. We need a plan on how to manage it. Which should have included enforced confinement for suspected positive and positive cases. But no, let’s continue to kill whatever economy we have left to get to some unreasonable goal posts.
CIG doesn’t have the money to bail out small business and if you’re not in lodge you will be lucky to have a can of corned beef delivered next election cycle.
You left out get rid of lazy do nothing locals who only live of the economy that you are getting rid of and can not feed themselves and do nothing in return but complain about everyone else. Like you.
But you left out priority # 1 after solving the virus problem, move the damn DUMP.
The bomb is still ticking there.
What bomb? What UXB? Where, where? Duck and cover. You need to air your dirty laundry on TikTok
common sense?
7.34pm Your brains.
Alden: The man with no plan. Unnecessarily decimating the economy for the second time in his career, all just to prove he is in charge.
Go back under your bridge troll.
7:06pm. As you appear to want to contract the virus, I invite you to move to New York. Cayman Airways will be flying into Miami on Monday and will have seats. From there you can get to the city where there is a plan. But don’t bother coming back. We need people with intelligence here.
No, I don’t want the virus. I’ve stayed home without complaint. I’ve done my best to social distance when getting basic groceries. But more importantly, I do not want my family to go hungry should the company I work for go under, and it seems very likely to happen. I’ve already had one uncle die, miraculously not from Covid-19, and it was impossible to attend the funeral. Why does a certain part of our population assume that if one contracts the virus, it’s certain death? This reminds me of the Rollover. So many persons ranted and raved at how good it was, until they were personally affected.
And what would your plan be.
Sweden’s plan.
And keeping Cayman from turning into New York?
You don’t understand population density in the slightest.
Ah, New York, the US’s very own dry dock cruise ship. A cesspool of filth and disease long before Covid-19
I hope WORC is hard at work going through every W/permit. Make note of all closed businesses and how many permits are really needed and if the permit holder actually works for the applicant. The T& B licenses that people take out for small businesses just to be able to get W/permits and then let the persons loose to look work needs to be investigated also.This is our chance to clean up Cayman. Too much criminality been going on for too long.
7.27am Yes we must have every Caymanian employed (Civil Service?) that’s far more important than Covid-19.