RYAN D’AR­CY

Man­ag­er, Re­search, Strat­e­gy and Mar­ket­ing

Tourism Trinidad

“Imag­ine tak­ing every pre­cau­tion set out in lo­cal and glob­al health guide­lines, while be­ing on the cusp of get­ting your chance to vac­ci­nate, know­ing in the back of your mind that you have a pre-ex­ist­ing con­di­tion, and then be­ing test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19.

This de­vel­op­ment not on­ly de­layed my planned vac­cine sched­ule, but I al­so had to do every­thing in my pow­er, with the phe­nom­e­nal help of my CMOHs, loved ones, friends, and neigh­bours, to ac­tu­al­ly get through the vi­ral in­fec­tion jour­ney first.

At that time, once test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID, there was a six-month wait pe­ri­od be­fore you could get your first jab. That soon changed to three months, bring­ing much re­lief to my mind, as not on­ly is vac­ci­na­tion ahead of new vari­ants a tremen­dous ben­e­fit, but there is now fur­ther sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence show­ing that get­ting vac­ci­nat­ed post-COVID, aside from adding an ex­tra lay­er of pro­tec­tion against the virus (and more so se­vere cas­es and death), re­duces your chances of re-in­fec­tion by two. This is sci­en­tif­ic da­ta that sup­ports the ini­tial guid­ance pro­vid­ed by lo­cal health au­thor­i­ties and the WHO.

A few years from now we’ll be look­ing back at this pe­ri­od in our lives and won­der why we couldn’t have achieved our goals to­wards some lev­el of nor­mal­cy soon­er.

So many are anx­ious to get our econ­o­my mov­ing again; to vis­it our shores to “taste our cul­ture” and ex­pe­ri­ence an­oth­er Car­ni­val; to in­dulge in our beach­es, rivers, forests, parks and food; to em­brace fam­i­ly and friends; to so­cialise in restau­rants, clubs, and bars; to ex­er­cise, weight-lift, and play sports; to sim­ply move freely at any time of day or night; and so much more.

We’ve been anx­ious as a na­tion to get our vac­cines sourced, de­liv­ered, and in arms. Dai­ly vac­ci­na­tion lev­els lo­cal­ly at one point were one of the best in the world, some­thing to be very proud of. It is now our per­son­al and civic du­ty to reach that eva­sive fin­ish-line to avoid be­com­ing a sta­tis­tic and to get our beloved na­tion back on track to play its part in the glob­al land­scape.

Hap­py In­de­pen­dence Day Trinidad and To­ba­go!”

ROWAN McEWEN

18years old

Autism Am­bas­sador

Ven­ture Scout, QRC Scout Group

I…

Hate…

Nee­dles.

I’m re­al­ly afraid of them. But there is one thing I hate more - the scourge of Covid-19.

As an autis­tic, I am hy­gien­i­cal­ly cau­tious. How­ev­er, I’ve re­alised that may not be enough to pre­vent me from con­tract­ing this dead­ly dis­ease. What’s more, be­cause of the Delta vari­ant, as a young per­son, I could be­come se­ri­ous­ly ill or even die. And that’s scary.

So, I de­cid­ed to do some re­search. Not just read­ing on Google, I read ar­ti­cles which were peer-re­viewed. This means that they were re­viewed by ex­perts in the field to de­ter­mine their va­lid­i­ty and qual­i­ty and that’s re­al­ly im­por­tant these days be­cause of all the mis­in­for­ma­tion out there. But most­ly, I was guid­ed by my mom, who is a doc­tor as well.

So what was my de­ci­sion? Was it nec­es­sary for me to be vac­ci­nat­ed? Did I want to be vac­ci­nat­ed? And if I did, why?

Well the first two ques­tions were easy. Vac­cines re­duce the risk of hos­pi­tal­iza­tion and death in up to 100% of cas­es. Sor­ry whilst there is a small chance that I may con­tract it, I most like­ly won’t die from it. Well, that an­swered the first two ques­tions! A re­sound­ing yes was the an­swer.

The third ques­tion, how­ev­er, is a bit more philo­soph­i­cal. On­line school isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. I know that peo­ple think that as an autis­tic I should be fine with this mode of learn­ing but I’m not. First­ly, I’m a vi­su­al learn­er and on­line learn­ing is high­ly au­di­to­ry, not one of my strong­points. My broth­er is more of a kines­thet­ic/ hands-on learn­er, so it’s tough for him too. But more im­por­tant­ly, the vir­tu­al world is sim­ply de­void of soul. We long to in­ter­act with our friends and I long for my phys­i­cal space of learn­ing, icon­ic as it is.

But there’s an­oth­er much more heart­felt rea­son I want­ed to be vac­ci­nat­ed. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 16 years ago, my beloved Aun­ty Giselle, gave a lobe of her liv­er to her god­son that has kept him alive for 16 years. She’s now in heav­en, but that gift is still giv­ing. How­ev­er, my cousin can­not re­ceive the vac­cine. How do we pro­tect them? Do they live their lives for­ev­er in­doors? What about their men­tal health?

What about ours?

So I de­cid­ed to get vac­ci­nat­ed be­cause herd im­mu­ni­ty, that is the more of us get­ting vac­ci­nat­ed the bet­ter, pro­tects them. If there’s any les­son that this pan­dem­ic has taught us is that we each need to be our broth­er’s keep­er. And for my broth­er and I, that’s who we choose to be.

As for my fear of nee­dles, I’m stoked to get my sec­ond!

Hap­py In­de­pen­dence Day T&T, Let’s EACH be Our Broth­er’s and Sis­ter’s Keep­er!”