New curfew opens up mixed bag of access
(CNS): There will be some relief for the community with the new shelter-in-place order (soft curfew) regulations that come into effect Monday but not everyone will be getting what they want. Premier Alden McLaughlin pressed home the message on Friday that, given the sacrifice that everyone had made so far, the lifting of curfew restrictions had to go slowly. This first phase, he said, was adding access to goods and services with the lowest risk of increasing interaction.
McLaughlin explained at Friday’s COVID-19 press briefing that the country was moving from level five ‘maximum suppression’ of social interaction to level four ‘high suppression’, based on the least risk assessment. The theme of the change is to focus on goods and services based on delivery, collection or outside work, such as pool maintenance, but not inside work, such as appliance repair.
The regulations (which are in the CNS Library) set out a long list of the businesses that can now re-open, provided that they follow the guidelines and rules surrounding social distancing. The changes should allow around 6,000 people and business owners to return to work and allow the public to buy things that can be delivered or call in services that can be conducted outside.
From the start of the curfew imposition, the priority was protecting human life and the health and welfare of the community, the premier said, which was still the primary objective. The decisions regarding the curfew have been informed by science and professional advice on how to reduce the transmission of the virus, he added.
This slight easing of restrictions, which will also see the nighttime hard curfew start an hour later, now at 8pm, and allow food delivery until 10pm, was about allowing some access to things people need without significantly increasing the risk of social gathering, he said.
Testing remains central to the decisions and steps government is taking over the level of social repression. The premier said the number of tests that have been done was a good number but it was still not a sufficient representation of the population on Grand Cayman that would allow government to relax the rules and have confidence in people mixing.
“The results this week have been hugely encouraging,” he said, adding that he was as close to ecstatic as he can ever get as they were certainly “trending in the right direction”, despite the one positive test today. But he said that “we are not there yet” when it comes to the level of testing to give the government a more certain picture of the prevalence of the virus.
However, as the testing continues to be ramped up, government will be able to ease more and more restrictions. Phase two is expected to be implemented on 14 May and that will see more stores opening and access to more services.
In the meantime, it is confined to delivery of goods or things going on outside. While not every service has been defined in the regulations that could re-open, the premier is advising that services or businesses that will not increase the risk of bringing people together that have not been outlined should contact curfewtime@gov.ky to get clearance.
The continued closure of the beaches and ban on non-commercial fishing for at least another two weeks is bound to make many miserable, especially those without a home pool.
The premier said the issue of the beach was a sore point, with relentless pressure on government to ease the shut-down. But he said the beaches present a major source of community transmission and that they are very difficult to police. McLaughlin begged people to be patient; he said he knew this would make people “feel terrible” but the risk was too high and “we have come too far” to risk the sacrifice.
But he indicated that lifting the beach restrictions would be under consideration for phase two.
See Friday’s full COVID-19 briefing on CIGTV below:
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Category: Health, Local News, Medical Health
Criticism is so sweet, when we don’t have to worry in the morning, how many Hundred
Lives was lost last night!
Please, please, please let us open up! Mr. Premier we are far safer than the businesses currently open. Give us a chance to save are employees jobs, and our children’s futures. Please be wise. We beg you.
I applied for, and received the exemption for retail delivery. Today two officers knocked on my locked store window to inquire if I had filed appropriate papers. I had, but nothing in Friday’s press briefing indicated that I needed to do so. I did so due to a heads up by a family member.
If our Government is going to open up sectors of the economy, and if businesses must file forms we should be given notice of said. It is irresponsible for them not to do so, especially if merchants are going into be threatened with fines or jail time due to our Minister’s omitting necessary information. Shameful!
“Holy Jesus” was in town this afternoon
Did he have an exemption letter?
It is now illegal to get into the ocean here in Grand Cayman. Never mind that you are alone and surrounded by salt water and safer than you are anywhere on land. The reason is that they could not arrest people who were not social distancing on the beach so now they can arrest you if you are social distancing in the water. The humans in charge of other humans on this island are still learning by making mistakes.
9:04 am said, “The humans in charge on this island are still learning by making mistakes.” I disagree. They don’t learn…. they just keep making more mistakes.
Like Seymours senseless rant again today. A none too subtle reading of babble about “leaks” of information which he likened to revelations about the First Lady.
The embarrassment continues.
Agreed. Start making social distancing a personal responsibility instead of treating adults like children. Force the police force to enforce the laws just on those who would willingly break the laws and let those who can understand and live within the laws free. If the police force here can not handle that then maybe its time to get the UK to send over some military force to help them do their jobs. Or try and keep us all locked up(except those CIG deems responsible and needed) and lose any respect we had for the “honorable for life by law” persons who would like to be my King.
caymankind = drama
SWFL:
“If you want to get tested at CenturyLink sports complex — all you need to do is pull up in your car and follow their instructions.
You don’t need an appointment, or a doctor’s note—and you don’t even need to be showing any symptoms.
They can do up to 400 tests a day and if your results come back positive—the Department of Health will get ahold of you.
They also have a team dedicated to coronavirus contact tracing.”
For all those blindly thinking that the government’s approach to lockdowns and curfews is a good thing there is an excellent editorial from Lord Sumption, former Supreme Court Judge of the UK in one of the UK newspapers. Some quotes to consider the next time you hear the authorities announcing another extension of the restrictions to our fundamental freedoms. The next time they do this, think about who is challenging them to limit these restrictions. There is no one.
“COVID-19 is not the greatest crisis in our history. It is not even the greatest public health crisis in our history. But the lockdown is without doubt the greatest interference with personal liberty in our history.”
“To say that life is priceless and nothing else counts is just empty rhetoric. People say it because it is emotionally comfortable and avoids awkward dilemmas.”
“What sort of life do we think we are protecting? There is more to life than the avoidance of death. Life is a drink with friends. Life is a crowded football match or a live concert. Life is a family celebration with children and grandchildren. Life is companionship, an arm around one’s back, laughter or tears shared at less than two metres. These things are not just optional extras. They are life itself. They are fundamental to our humanity, to our existence as social beings.”
“Last but not least, we have to ask ourselves what are the limits to the things that the State can legitimately do to people against their will in a liberal democracy. To say that there are no limits is the stuff of tyrants. Every despot who ever lived thought that he was coercing his subjects for their own good or that of society at large.”
“We, too, have to ask ourselves what kind of relationship we want with the State. Do we really want to be the kind of society where basic freedoms are conditional on the decisions of politicians in thrall to scientists and statisticians? Where human beings are just tools of public policy?”
“A society in which the Government can confine most of the population without controversy is not one in which civilised people would want to live, regardless of their answers to these questions. Is it worth it?”
“The fundamental point is that these questions need to be confronted and publicly discussed by politicians without the kind of emotive evasions, propagandist slogans and generalised hype that have characterised their contribution so far.”
What a bunch of wingers we are.
If I had a choice between absolute freedom and staying alive, which is the underlying proposition actually, I would have no hesitation.
And for those who are complaining about inclusion of dog grooming, the key to understanding selection of services at this phase in particular is the level of interaction with customers.
Groomers will pick up and return dogs. Payment will most likely be made over the phone.
And by the way grooming is not the domain of the idle rich. I get my dog shave regularly because her hair grows out of control.
I wish I could shave her myself and save that money, but I tried shaving her myself and it turns out shaving is not as simple as you may think.
I find it incredible when people keep making these binary decision points. It’s either absolute freedom and die or having lockdown and stay alive. Really? The other one is you are either for life or for money but there is no middle ground. Unfortunately this isn’t the way life really works where everything is a shade of grey and Lord Sumption does an excellent job of highlighting this.
We can debate whether the lock down was needed in the way it was done by this government but the reality is that is now in the past. What is in the future is what restrictions the government will keep in place going forward and are they reasonable. As an example is it reasonable for the government to have a hard curfew on Sundays and if so why? Think about it for a moment. Apart from the virus, which is at very low levels in Cayman, there is no other rationale. You can exercise on any other day of the week. Why not Sunday? They should not just be allowed to remove this fundamental freedom from society. They should be better than this.
It’s not acceptable for the Police to keep using the “resources” excuse. If they are going to continue to remove fundamental freedoms they have to have a really good reason. This isn’t about dog grooming or pool service or anything else. Its about whether they have the right to lock you in your own home for whatever time period they choose. They have assumed they can do what they want and that needs to stop.
The issue is that it is not a binary choice between absolute freedom and staying alive. First, the alternative is not certain death but a fraction of a percentage point chance of death. Second completely removing your freedom is only a protection if with a) it is maintained indefinitely or b) in the meantime someone comes up with a vaccine. Otherwise it’s just a timing difference. Lockdown doesn’t stop you getting the disease, it stops the hospitals being overwhelmed at a point in time.
Telling you you have to give up your liberty because otherwise granny is going to die is sophistry – makes the person wanting their personal freedom look bad, but doesn’t deal with the reality that granny, like you and me, will probably get the virus in due course anyway. The real issue is whether the medical services are in the best position to try and save our lives at that point – but that’s an adjustment to the mortality rate, not eliminating it. Stay at home or you kill granny is a lot easier a message than stay at home or granny’s chances of dying will increase by some proportion, but exactly what we are not sure.
3.04am we are going to the dogs.
Did you watch sci-fi “In Time”? Interference with personal liberty is a first step to total control.
I saw this view on the daily mail but what’s your view? Personally the lockdown wasn’t needed here but it did, so that’s what suppose to happened, now we should move forward and stop lamenting the fact that our freedom was taken away. However the virus is still out there and not going away anytime soon so we may have only delaying the inevitable.
Was this a giant psyop? Maybe…we as a population certainly complied much too quickly because fear was a huge factor. What have our leaders learned from this? And what have we learned about them?
They control us by fear. Simple!
A Lawyer trying to do and understand science, is never a good idea.
AMEN
And a lawyer trying to understand morality and human compassion is an even worse idea.
I’d suggest Lord Sumption volunteer to be infected along with his loved ones if he feels so strongly. Idjit
Sending all my Government handouts back home first thing tomorrow morning. #freemoney
Troll
Me too, made a small fortune selling all the supermarket vouchers they are handing out.
I sold six – for twice their value!
Hind sight is 20-20. Going into this crisis we were blind. I think our Government was okay. Not great, but decent. I think the knee jerk hard curfew was a big mistake. I think the letter plan of access to grocery store was wise.
Wish they would have quarantined early arrivers, but again hind sight.
Now we are coming out. We have more information. I think restrictions could be lessened. Maybe I am right, maybe not.
Yes, I agree…………. Maybe you are right, maybe you ain’t.
What makes you so sure?
I am not sure. That is the point. No one is. All we can strive to do is seek a balance. I think we are at a point that opening up more options is logical. If Buy Right at the Galleria is allowed to be open then why not ALT? It seems a bit silly to me. It should be more about the prevention measures than the products sold.
Okay, if you have something helpful to add, that is appreciated. If you just want to be a drunken troll, not so okay. This has been hard for everyone, not just you. I lost family members abroad. I could not attend their funerals. So yes, maybe I am wrong. But I am at least trying to find positive solutions to this problem.
Hi Wendy
If you have a chance and you are asking about opening of other partially essential buinesses opening, include the vaping shops, as no-one else caters to vapers anyone more and don’t want to start smoking again.
While many will not see this as essential living 24/7 with someone in nicotine withdrawl is pure hell, and unnecessary
Thank you
all kind of withdrawal could quickly escalate into a medical emergency… yet CIG is “saving” people from COVID19 only
“CIG”. – funny
Can we please open Vape shops, even on a pick up basis. No service stations sell it anymore thanks to the news hype last year and the CI gov banning them, and even though the CDC declared the problem wasn’t nicotine vaping, the CI gov never chnaged its position.
SO retarded that you can still buy cigarettes though as they are far safer, NOT.
If anyone reading can let me know anywhere that is selling eliquid, please reply.
Thank you, don’t want to start smoking again, thanks CI GOV, but I guess it means more tax revenue for you.
Not sure why WHO recommendations apply universally.
Life forms in Northern hemisphere differ from life forms in Southern hemisphere. The same goes for Eastern and Western.
Light exposure, temperatures, humidity, altitude, pressure, magnetic field, seaside, mountain side, wind patterns all differ greatly in 4 hemispheres which in turn affect expression of all life forms. The climate dictates where and how species can survive. That includes bacterias, viruses, fungi, parasites, etc. There are no camels in Florida or alligators in Sahara desert. Certain pathogens live in Arizona, different in rainy Oregon.
So may be viruses behave differently in the Caribbean where UV exposure is plentiful than in the UK? How about the fact that People the Caribbean spend more time outdoors. People in the UK mostly live inside.
Most scientists conduct their studies in a closed artificial environment under artificial lights using equipment that emits artificial EMF which is completely different from natural environment in each of 4 hemispheres. Effect of variations in Light exposure, temperatures, humidity, altitude, pressure, magnetic field, etc. are completely excluded from those studies.
So they arrive to conclusions of their artificial studies conducted in artificial, sterile environments and want to apply it universally? What happens in such a lab could be happening only in that lab and never get replicated in different natural environments. Ever though about that?
Once again why WHO recommendations apply universally?
At this point no one should listen to the WHO! It is a corrupt organization of old almost retired doctors who fancy politics that travel the world having cocktails with world leaders! Google WHO and corruption.
The beach closures have gone on long enough. There are barely a handful of active covid cases on island, all of which should be isolated. There may be a handful of other cases in the community and you have several orders of magnitude more chance picking it up in one of the supermarkets than you do picking it up on seven mile beach. The probability of contracting covid on a stretch of beach the size of SMB with a population the size of ours with the number of community cases on the island is infinitesimally small. You’re more likely to die in a car wreck on the way to the beach than you are to catch covid on SMB and succumb to it.
The excuses being thrown about by the government and by RCIPS for the beach closure are unacceptable and range from lack of resources to inability to enforce rules when it’s difficult to prove that they’ve been broken. On the former, we have one of the largest police forces per head of population on the planet. On the latter, either the RCIPS observe people breaking the law by gathering in groups and sunbathing or they don’t. It’s binary. If they see people gathered in groups then ticket them. If they don’t see them because by the time they approach and “scramble into groups of two” then you didn’t observe anyone breaking the law in the first place and no rules are broken.
On the point of resources, I could police seven mile beach with two drones and half a dozen guys on pushbikes. Run the drones up and down the beach. Identify a group of more than two or someone sunbathing. Call on of the guys on a pushbike who sets off to the nearest beach access point on SMB. Approach from the rear. Issue a ticket. 99% of people observed the rules and the 1% that didn’t are really, really easy to spot and ticket.
we can police ourselves…this is just an excuse by govt enforcing more compliance from the population. To what purpose? I do not know but we have certainly been shown to be fools.
Shown to be fools? That happened when we re-elected Alden.