Dear Editor,
It would be wonderful if we could all stop what we’re doing for three weeks, isolate and continue the shutdown of ‘non-essential businesses, minimizing Covid’s dreadful contagion; but we have to deal with the real world where there are nightmare scenarios, growing scarier by the day, which result from curfews, lockdowns and closure of businesses.
I have no expertise in epidemiology or medicine but my background as an insurer and banker has equipped me with some knowledge of Risk Behaviour and Risk Management. I do not have enough information on the capacity of our various systems to make a sound suggestion on when this could be feasible, but kindly allow me in your most meaningful newspaper, to illustrate a few of these scenarios, and to respectfully urge, the sooner the better, a more humane and pragmatic approach.
I hold this view because I believe first, that the poor are suffering, unbearably. Second, this suffering will result in dire nationwide socio-economic problems, and even more health problems. Lastly, we cannot continue to hide and lock down ourselves into social and economic ruin. We must learn to discipline and adapt ourselves to survive and thrive in this new risky environment. We cannot learn to swim without going into the water.
Who is suffering? Some think that reopening the economy would only enrich businesspeople at the expense of the elderly and medically vulnerable. Respectfully, I disagree. Businesspeople could easier afford to shut shop. Their banks have already rescheduled their loans. Globally, when the cash flows tighten, workers get laid off, small businesses close, and the poor suffer the most. It’s procyclical; the poor man can’t pay his bills and because of this, he cuts spending, and more people become impoverished. Eventually the entire economy goes into deep decline, and there are very dangerous sides to this type of economic decline, especially in a fragile political environment.
Some of us, well-meaning, have been advocating more shutdowns; most likely from the comfort of our lovely homes, bills paid; cupboards full. Maybe we could afford to lay back for months; binge watch the latest Netflix series; the wife could learn to make macaroons.
But seriously, we cannot speak for the tens of thousands of Guyanese workers who are financially and mentally devastated by closures and curfews. We cannot speak for the clerk at the ministry who worked his taxi in the evenings to feed his family, scraping to drop off some groceries nightly for his sick mom. Now, he can’t pay his car’s installment. Old Aunty who lives upstairs; she owns the house. It’s all she’s had since her husband died fifteen years ago. She rents two rooms downstairs as her livelihood; but he and the other tenant haven’t paid since March. She’s ailing.
The minibus guy can’t feed his family with a half-full bus; he’ll have to work more trips, but no, it’s curfew time; police! He’s constantly on the edge and speeding. The other day he was in a fight with a tout over a single passenger. He nearly did something that he would regret for the rest of his life.
What about the guy from Tiger Bay who watches cars outside the bar as an alternative to snatching a purse? His kids are hungry; he can’t face his ‘child-mother’. Soon, he will have to do something desperate.
Consider the waitress who uses her salary to pay the rent, and lives on tips to mind herself and her two kids. She hasn’t worked since March. The kids are hungry, malnourished. The baby’s crying; she needs formula. She’s seven months behind on the rent; the landlord is threatening eviction and she can’t pay her light bill. She’s running mad with despair. She whispered to her friend the other day that she fears that she would have to give in to the well-off married man who has been chatting her up. Maybe then she’ll get the kids a laptop and some WiFi so they could do school. The friend, who cooks at the same bar for some daily cash to buy a cheap hotel room nightly, replied that she had already gone down that shameful road. They feel humiliated, desperate, depressed and abandoned; shattered. They think of suicide; maybe Covid would mercifully take them; but what would happen to the kids? Their thoughts get darker by the day.
There are tens of thousands going crazy with despair: waitresses, porters, cleaners, taximen, barmen, hairdressers, vendors, anyone who ‘moonlights’; the list is long. Poor single mothers seem to be the most affected. Morally, we should not be abandoning these people. Economically, we cannot afford to.
Let’s talk economics. The richest countries in the world cannot afford to shut down indefinitely. Why do we, still one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, think that we could afford shutdowns? Do the tens of thousands who work in the ‘non-essential’ industries not matter? Businesses will go bankrupt. And, do we think that our banks could afford to indefinitely reschedule loans? I assure you that they cannot. Financial students could look up IFRS9 – Expected Credit Impairment.
How much longer do we think landlords could afford to waive rent to their needy tenants; or businesses could avoid layoffs? Could any Curfew Order reschedule rent, light bills, food bills, school bills and now the cost of computers and WiFi for school? Could the Order reschedule poverty, malnourishment, tremendous psychological harm and its sociological effects?
Let’s talk risk. The global death rate per million (/m) population is now 139; rising daily. Guyana is just below at 139/m. Given Guyana’s challenges, we can expect to surpass the global average, but our current rate is still well below our death by road accident rate of 172/m, the latter being a far bigger killer of young persons. Even if Covid deaths double by yearend, it still would be just higher than our HIV deaths (267/m; 2017). Please note that I only used the mortality rate for Covid, because that’s the only reliable statistic. The others: infection rates etc. have too many confounding variables: adverse selection for tests etc.
Poorer people daily take more risk (minibus, motorcycle, speedboat, interior work) to feed their families. For many of them today, Covid’s mortality rate (much lower for young people) is the least of their worries. I am not trying to trivialize the disease, but the Covid risk, in frequency, severity and effect is tragic, yet manageable.
Let’s talk sociology. People go on the seawalls and the creeks because they may not have the luxury of a fancy home to relax. To paraphrase Marvel’s Stan Lee, if people don’t have entertainment, they may go off the deep end. Facebook’s Zuckerberg became the youngest self-made billionaire because he hit on a basic human need, a basic human right: the need for social interaction. Do we think we could police this away, or are we pushing it dangerously underground? Curfews create super-spreader bottlenecks at bus parks, markets, and places that breach them. As with most societal ills, it is often better to decriminalize, educate and regulate, than to outlaw.
Psychological distress has been correlated with domestic violence and alcoholism. It is proven science that stress weakens the immune and cardiovascular systems; and new studies in India have shown that the sunshine vitamin, D, helps. Hungry people are angry risk-taking people; and they could be easily manipulated into crime and instability. With the present curfews, many jobless persons feel that they are already morally and psychologically dead. The US’ CDC has guidelines for sports and beaches, bars and restaurants. Surely, we could at least emulate those.
We should not surrender to fear. Such capitulation is not what great nations are made of. We should regulate ourselves and reintroduce ourselves bravely into this new and challenging world, maturing in our culture the good habits that we must now grasp; a new social policy. Short, effective, strategic lockdowns may be necessary from time to time, but we must learn to conduct our regular affairs in this new environment and to interact socially with each other. It involves us being imaginative, practical, careful, caring, and scientific.
We should help each other; identify and provide for the vulnerable; equip our health system with the best we could afford; regulate new protocols; reward our heroes; use online technology; rotate; work from home; educate, encourage and monitor. Let Covid teach us to care, be hygienic and smart. Don’t write off Guyanese discipline so easily; mask-wearing has caught on well, at least in GT.
I am not saying that we could change overnight, and we certainly can’t start partying. Assessments would have to be made of the capacity of our various institutions. Businesses to be reopened would also have to comply with new protocols; especially in the entertainment industry. But we cannot afford morally, sociologically or economically to isolate and shut down businesses. Every legitimate business is ‘essential’ in this still poor country. I invite those who think otherwise to give up all they have, throw in eight months’ debt and two hungry children; collect a government cheque, a couple hampers, and spend a year in the tattered shoes of any of the thousands of jobless poor citizens I have described above.
Yours faithfully,
Keith Evelyn
