How to boil a frog and why it should terrify you
‘Oz’ writes: When the lockdown started the government talked about suppression and flattening the curve as the reasons for introducing widespread restrictions on our freedoms. Reducing the number of COVID-19 cases happening at once made perfect sense; everyone could easily understand the rationale of doing this and we happily complied. But somehow, and without our knowledge or consent, we went from suppression to eradication. This is a very different strategy and it places the government on a direct collision course with the whole private sector and society at large.
Even if we achieve eradication here, it’s not the end of the problem but just the start of it. The premier has signalled that closing ourselves off from the world and opening up the local economy will allow us to get back to a “new normal”. He’s right to a point, but as any student of basic economics will tell you, it will only last a short time.
One half of Cayman’s economy is built on tourism and the inflow of spending and investment from outside these islands. For the last two months and until we open up to the wider world there will be no inflow of spending or investment, which means after removing the lock down, spending in the local economy will go on for a while and then begin to decline rapidly as more and more people realise they have no source of income or a significantly reduced income.
The same is true for investment. One of the premier’s favorite topics is getting construction started again, and it will work for a few months. But who is going to be buying these developments if we are cut off from the world with no tourism industry and an uncertain future?
And if you think that the financial services industry will save us, think again. Both planks of our economy are services and need lots of qualified people from abroad to make them work. Closing our airport completely until at least September means people cannot come and go as needed. Financial services will be able to continue for a while, but when people see their home countries have begun to open their societies, Cayman will quickly lose its appeal. Attracting qualified people to Cayman will become impossible.
The premier has publicly stated time and again he is looking to a vaccine. This is a very dangerous gamble with our future. On one side, it is a known fact that there has never been an approved vaccine in the US or UK for any form of coronavirus and many scientists are doubtful an effective one can be created at all or in time before mutations appear.
On the other side, there is a huge international collaboration effort by many leading pharmaceutical companies to develop one. However, a consensus is now beginning to emerge that if a vaccine is possible, then it will only become available in volume, 12 to 18 months from now.
Following the premier’s “ethos” lecture on Friday and the decision to close the airport until September, it is now clearer that the government’s intended goal is to keep Cayman isolated from the rest of the world until a vaccine is introduced.
This is madness and the result will be a collapse in the Cayman economy, mass unemployment and a significant reduction of investor confidence in Cayman. The longer we remain isolated the worse these will become. The negative effects on our society will be enormous, resulting in potential widespread instability.
Why will this occur? Cayman has developed its economy since the 1970’s as being open and investor friendly. Over the decades people have invested in real estate and businesses here based on the solid belief that the government would not interfere in the free market. But that is exactly what the government is doing by proposing to keep Cayman closed off much longer than needed.
If the government had told us on day one they were going to close off the airport until at least September, close off the beaches and access to the sea, institute a 7 day a week lock down with hard curfews on Sundays and also were going to keep us isolated from the world until mid 2021, there would have been widespread resistance leading to civil disobedience.
So they are doing it piece by piece, creating an environment of fear that is largely unjustified to help sell their agenda. And where fear hasn’t worked they have either berated us for being non-compliant or asked for just another 10 days, just another 2 weeks before we make things better…
It doesn’t need to be this way. The government of Bermuda is taking a different course. It has publicly said it will bring its tourism industry back online as soon as feasible. It has already started to open up in well-defined phases with a continued focus on social distancing.
Above all it has been transparent about its plans for the future. It is time our government followed the same path and clearly outlined its plans for the next 6+ months, so people can have confidence in our future. The time for hedging their bets on detail and direction is over.
It is important to remember the fable of the frog that was boiled.
- Fascinated
- Happy
- Sad
- Angry
- Bored
- Afraid
You’ve perfectly expressed so many of our thoughts and feelings here!! We were all pretty supportive of the decisions and plan until it became clear it was turning into a plan seemingly driven by ego, pride and a Holy Grail vaccine. If history teaches us anything, it is we cannot outrun nature and or God. It is foolish to think we can here. We need a real plan. A plan for the living. A plan for the thousands of children that literally haven’t left the confines of their homes or property in 8 weeks! A plan for the people who desperately need dental services, medical services and surgeries that were canceled indefinitely while the hospitals sit empty. A plan for the living who are exhibiting severe depression and physical manifestations of severe stress this 24/7 lockdown is causing. A plan for the families that are suffering and grieving from so much loss and disappointment for their immediate and near futures as everything they had to look forward to has been ripped away from them and canceled. A plan for those who are looking for hope and grasping for something to look forward to.
Instead it feels like we are in the dark. We want to see and hear the real plans for ourselves. We don’t want to hear about ethos for the elderly when liquor stores were a higher priority from day one. We don’t want garbage data and unverified scare tactic stories being spewed. We don’t want guilt trips for wanting to be human and live and we certainly don’t want to be told, just wait a little longer.
Idea of the day….
Virus isn’t going anywhere. It will not be eradicated from the world for the foreseeable future and will start mutating.
It’s main targets are old people and people with certain pre-existing conditions.
Why not make the Brac the safe zone for these people? Move them to the Brac until a vaccine is introduced and has been shown to be safe and effective. If it take 2 years …. it takes 2 years. Any old or vulnerable who want to move, let them move. Any who want to stay make sure they understand the risks but let them stay. It allows the old and vulnerable in the Brac to live more open lives where they don’t have to be isolated all day.
This idea would create construction jobs in the Brac and would end up being far cheaper than keeping Grand Cayman locked down for too long. It would allow Grand Cayman to open up to foreign tourists quicker than if we didn’t do it as it removes a major concern about keeping these people isolated.
It is a reasonable way to protect people while allowing the rest of us to get on with things. Not suggesting that we would open up Cayman immediately but when things have settled down in the US. It may not be perfect but it solves some of the major concerns from people.
Feedback appreciated.
You those same old people that help build Grand Cayman, the place that you enjoy? Why not tell the Premier to ship all indigent Caymanians to the Brac so you don’t have to deal with us, the “nobodies “?
Your viewpoint is based on hyperbole and sensationalization, as a direct attack on the government, mainly because your financial situation has been most likely significantly affected.XXXX
Why don’t you mention that the Cayman Islands boasts second to testing efficiency in the entire Caribbean?
Where is the bulk of our tourism coming from? The United States. Do you want to go on vacation and be quarantined for two weeks? You may as well call that your vacation. Do you think, that the current mess in the USA which has been mainly caused by an election year, would make any country allow an American tourist to freely come to their shores?
So, if you are sensible, you will think that the Cayman Islands will open their shores way before your erroneous date of mid 2021. Yes we can, but mainly professionals who will go through the quarantine process.
You see, you are not on a bed with a ventilator over your mouth and wondering if you will make it, because you will be singing a different tune, if the government was found to be slow on responding and the virus caught like wild fire in the country.
Your last paragraph is absolutely nonsense because you don’t know that for fact.
I bet you are one of very few people (on this forum) who is suffering from pathological fear of contamination and germs as well as fear of death. The former falls into obsessive-compulsive disorders group, the latter is a form of anxiety. There are treatments options for both.
If we opened our borders then the Americans will come. Has nobody been watching the news and seen the carnage that has been happening there? If we allow them here everything that we have done will be for nothing. The virus will get in and destroy us for good and for what……Greed!
Carnage? Um, no.
Keep watching…
I think before society divides into pro and anti-lockdown camps we should just agree that the goal should be what David Katz calls “total harm minimisation” (and, yes, exactly what that means).
The anti-lockdown camp needs to stop acting like the lives of older Caymanians are expendable and the pro-lockdown camp needs to stop acting as if no amount of economic damage can possibly outweigh the value of a single human life (an idea we reject day in, day out in normal life).
There should be no disagreement here. We, as a society, need to prevent people dying from both COVID and starvation.
And the anti-lockdown camp has to stop acting like this is a no worse than the flu at worst, or maybe even a hoax or global conspiracy.
And the lockdown camp needs to stop citing erroneous models and turning a blind eye to the data showing massive and undeniable flaws in their lockdown strategies/models when comparisons and outcomes are made country to country.
Facts are stubborn things however. Saying the virus as it manifests here is worse than the flu is a bit difficult given the track record we have here on very limited hospitalizations or even symptoms. Whats your thesis – that there are two virus, the one caught by the 84 people, and another, far more dangerous hidden one that is going to spring out once people are allowed to go on the beach or back to work?
The phrase “scientific evidence” has become part of the dialect spoken in particular by lay people. It is thrown about like a hot potato during all kind of discussions.
But unlike in a court case, we are rarely told exactly where the evidence comes from and why it’s evidence. We don’t even know what scientific evidence really means.
So, there’s no such thing as proof in the scientific world! Read again: there is no such thing as proof. There is only evidence!
“Proof” implies that there is no room for error — that you can be 100% sure that what you have written down on the piece of paper is 100% representative of what you are talking about.
You cannot prove anything, but you can gather evidence-that evidence will never be 100%.
The government’s position has not been unreasonable. We need to get to the point that the population can feel reasonably safe going about work, leisure, and family live. We are getting there, but it is clear from the testing results In the last few days that we are not there yet.
You mention Bermuda: if you were checking on their numbers, you may have noticed that statistically they are very stable. Yes, they had one new case today and one unfortunate new death, but they appear to have a sustained flattened curve. That accounts for their confidence in opening up, which has just begun.
Bermuda and Cayman both know that visitors aren’t going to come if THEY don’t feel safe. In turn, we have to feel comfortable that visitors won’t be bringing in the virus that is raging in our markets at the moment.
It is not going to be easy to strike the right balance, to please everyone. In a case like this, Alden will have to do what I sense he is doing: “Trust your instincts, and make judgements on what your heart tells you. The heart will never betray you.” (David Gemmell, Fall of Kings.
First of all – compared to ANYWHERE else in the world the lock-down measures in Cayman are not (and fortunately do not need to be) overly intrusive or drastic.
Our law enforcement has been friendly, informative and supportive and they have not had to beat ppl in to their homes with batons or pepper spray – Cayman is still a paradise even with Covid 19 when compared to the rest of the world.
And as we are living in an unprecedented situation how could the government have told us ANY long term plans “on day one”? Did you have 3 month covid 19 plans “on day one”?
The idea of “herd immunity” will take at least a decade to confirm if it even works or if there is no long-term affect of exposure to covid as it is a new virus strain.
Take the bacterial infection syphilis for example, people caught it, and had some form of symptom or discomfort for up to the first 3 months after transmission – once that stage was over they lived fine, completely asymptomatic for up to 15 years!
Then all of a sudden their organs began to shut down (brain, nerves, eyes, heart etc…) after 15 YEARS of no sign of trouble from the infection. The only rescue was the development of penicillin but ppl who caught the disease before that could look forward to the scary and sudden reappearance of the deadly bacteria in their bodies after doing fine for over a decade after it was first caught!
Nobody knows how covid will play out and here we are getting the usual “save the economy and allow ppl to become immune!” message when no one in the world even remotely knows exactly what this virus is up to or capable of!
Our Government has to wait on statistics, data, information and expert advice not the whining ungratefulness of ppl who want to swim and sunbathe – also, they ARE phasing a reopening obviously.
And everyone is whining about beach access, I miss the beach, my kids miss the beach and there is no doubt the beach will reopen – the ocean is going nowhere, it is right there waiting for you when we get the all clear as Cayman Brac recently received.
Regardless of the high chance of surviving and recovering from covid based on what we CURRENTLY know – the PRIMARY issue many experts have with this virus is that it is a absolutely new strain which is thought to already be quickly mutating itself more than once already ! It has barely been 6 months that this virus has traveled worldwide… if it is mutating now then what will it be like in 12 months?
The best thing to do right now is to try to stay off the covid 19 statistics because NOBODY knows how this will play out. The economy can and will rebuild as it has century after century of similar interruptions. Modern humans are fortunate for the option to do business online and maintain some form of economic movement whereas people before us did not have that option.
MR at 4:15 am: check facts on virus mutating. I don’t think I have heard that. Also CB doesn’t have the “all clear”. Only LC.
One thing you’re wrong about is financial services. It’s never been busier. Wire transfers are flowing into Cayman banks like never before and from there (once they get through the comically inefficient bottleneck that is our local banking system) into local business and out again to staff.
i’m not sure you understand what cayman’s financial services are….
Perhaps you’re mistaken. We’re actually hiring so if you knew then perhaps you’d have a chance at a job
The leaders were face with two options: Herd immunity or Lockdown.
Herd immunity:
A percentage of the population will meet their demise but the death toll will be catastrophic. The UK started off with the Herd then Fear set in and they went into lockdown but not totally. This indecision is creating confusion and fear as they are about preparing for exit. This is not looking good as neither strategy was chosen.
Lockdown:
The other country took the lockdown approach – which is to sacrifice the economy and saved lives. With the economies going into free fall this is the ultimate sacrifice But the Rise will be greater. Did the economy crash or it’s still falling or the sacrifice is only being borne by some?
Sacrifice is ALWAYS only borne by some. The disparity between the have and have nots are ever so apparent during this time. It’s always apparent in my eyes, but we chose not to see it.
Today’s Guardian has a good take on Herd Immunity and its proponents:
Dr. Mike Ryan, the executive director of the World Health Organization (WHO) health emergencies program, said the concept of herd immunity is “dangerous.”
“This idea that maybe countries that had lax measures and haven’t done anything will all of a sudden magically reach some herd immunity – and so what if we lose a few old people along the way? This is a really dangerous, dangerous calculation,” Ryan said at a news briefing on Monday.
The term herd immunity is taken from veterinary epidemiology, where people are “concerned with the overall health of the herd, and individual animals in that sense, doesn’t matter,” Ryan said. “Humans are not herds.”
Moooooooooooo!
Bah!