The Year We Were Forced To Stay Home

The twin year's bites

Madness! Just madness! We hit the 600 mark within days. Everyone's face was being covered and social distancing was being practised . It was now 6 feet apart up from 3 feet.

It was nearly impossible to practise this protocol. There was just not enough space in this small town. Everyone tried their best to comply but it was a very stressful and worrisome time.
Students sitting their Csec exams were asked to be at school a few weeks before they sat the tests. It was weird seeing students covered in face mask in their uniforms. But rather be weird than dead.

Schools were ask to set up hand washing stations and thermometer check points to accommodate the students .Every precaution was being taken to ensure everyone's safety.

The results for the PEP( Primary Exit profile ) were obtained by the child's score in the grade 4 Literacy and Numeracy test and one part of the PEP that was done in November.
I thought it was unfair to use these old score because so many students have progressed during the last two years while some did not. The government should have proceeded with the exams because social distancing would have not been a problem. I believe they were dreading the cost to pay more invigilators. Cheap politicians. There should be no price too expensive to ensure people's health and safety.

By the middle of July it was pure confusion . Four months of death,sufferation and pain.

While some countries were recovering some were at the highest rate of infection ,you could ever imagine. The USA was in deep turmoil. Numbers rose at an all time high everyday. It was the worst 'plaque' anyone had ever experienced. President Trump was out of options. The state of Florida was being bitten ,followed by other states who were virus free.
There was no ending to this monster. It came to destruct .

Then came a second wave of the Covid 19 in some countries that were recovering in vast amounts.What! This virus was hell bent on destroying us and our livilihoods.

'It' was going nowhere. 'It ' made its mark and decided to fight till the end.

It forced us to start asking some harsh questions.
Would this end ever come? When would it be? Was God hearing our prayers? Did we do something wrong? After all, we are humans and some of us were evil to the core. Were we being punished for being disobedient to the word of God? Was it the end of the world?
We did not know these answers . As far as we could see this Contagious beast with it's posionous bites was here to stay until it had bitten us all.
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We had to live with it or die from it. We had no choice. The economys closure was weakening the foundation our country was built on.

The Prime Minister did his best to control the virus by the rigid curfews, closures of business that were not essential and discouraging large gatherings such as that at the nightclubs.

It was time to face the foe ,Covid 19. We were not going to sit in a corner while it rear it's ugly head. We were going to fight with our weapons ,which included hand washing stations, social distancing,sanitizing, and wearing of our mask. Our lives must go on.

Little by little places began to open. The airport, the bars, churches, other businesses that were non essentials, They were opened under strict rules and regulations . We had 700 + Corona carriers , 600+ recovery and only 10 deaths. God was merciful to Jamaica because the US's number was staggering and still climbing.
They had exhausted all possibilities. It was just mind-blowing when you saw the daily death rate. Some person's had no idea that their relatives had passed and was buried in unmark graves . It was a painful year to live in. The suffering, confusion and heartbreaks were just too much. Yet we had to go on.

We opened our borders in the month of June to accommodate those citizens who were trapped abroad. By the end of July, we had three hundred persons arriving with the virus. It caused a lot of confusion and outcry from us the citizens. We were down to 50 recoveries from 700 and now an additional 300 arrived and rose the death toll from 10 to 14. Jamaica was now experiencing the dreaded second wave.

What the hell did our Prime Minister do ? It seems he had jumped the gun too soon.
'Close back the borders' was the outcry all around, but he insisted that the economy's recovery would be delayed and would plunge the country in years of deep poverty.

We could understand his point of view , we couldn't hide from this beast forever. It was time to go to war! This battle was not for the swift but for those who would endure till the end.(quoted from the Good book)

Others had survived pandemics in the centuries before. The Spanish flue in 1918 that killed a fifth of the 500 million people that were infected, the Bubonic plaque that wiped out almost 10 % of the world's population,The Black death in the 13th century that destroyed half of Europe, The Cocoliztli in 1545 -1548 that killed over 15 million people in Mexico and central America and the list goes on.

They had survivors and we would too. We had no idea when it would end but we would fight until the end.