As the last two weeks have passed and the num­ber of pos­i­tive COVID-19 cas­es in­creased sig­nif­i­cant­ly and sad­ly with it the deaths of na­tion­als, peo­ple ap­pear to be sur­prised by what is hap­pen­ing. Of­ten, the dai­ly ques­tion af­ter the num­bers are re­leased, is how did this hap­pen? Well, this hap­pened be­cause this is T&T.

Of course, it is easy to blame the Prime Min­is­ter for en­cour­ag­ing peo­ple to go to To­ba­go in their thou­sands, but still tell them to be­have them­selves, as a par­ent would tell a child. But to blame Dr Kei­th Row­ley is to refuse to ac­cept that, as a peo­ple, we have not shown the char­ac­ter to do the hard things and the dis­ci­plined things.

We have to ad­mit that per­haps this con­stant need to phys­i­cal­ly dis­tance, avoid lim­ing, ad­here to the pro­to­cols and not en­cour­age and fa­cil­i­tate the il­le­gal en­try of non-na­tion­als were per­haps be­yond us. Be­yond a peo­ple who like to take it to the edge, hop­ing we don’t fall off the cliff.

So we thought that COVID-19 may cause some dis­com­fort, some peo­ple who were old and had co-mor­bidi­ties may not have made it. How­ev­er, we ap­par­ent­ly al­so weighed this with the fact that we had an en­tire par­al­lel health­care sys­tem that would pro­vide care, in­clud­ing new hos­pi­tals, built by the past gov­ern­ment for which this Prime Min­is­ter told us up to last Sat­ur­day we were lucky to have but wasn’t gra­cious enough to ac­knowl­edge that it was an­oth­er ad­min­is­tra­tion’s work.

You see, it is this in­abil­i­ty to stay the course, to do the hard work that is nec­es­sary to get to the fin­ish line that is ex­act­ly the Tri­ni trait and one that if we on­ly had the nev­er say die spir­it of some of our neigh­bours, would have served us right to­day.

T&T is a coun­try that for all of its small size and re­gard­less of the con­stant nar­ra­tive that all is lost, has con­sid­er­able re­sources and but wast­ed a lot of it.

Per capi­ta, this coun­try is one of the wealth­i­est in the Amer­i­c­as. It has sold bil­lions of bar­rels of oil and tril­lions of cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas. Its in­fra­struc­ture is eas­i­ly su­pe­ri­or to any­thing in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean. It has in­vest­ed heav­i­ly in health­care, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and ed­u­ca­tion but has been re­luc­tant to do the dif­fi­cult things that will reap the kind of re­wards the peo­ple of this coun­try de­serve.

Just as we tri­fled with COVID-19 un­til it has brought us face to face with a health­care sys­tem burst­ing at its seams with record deaths and in­fec­tions, we ig­nore or fail to deal with our eco­nom­ic malaise at our own per­il.

A day of reck­on­ing will come and I am afraid it is not too far off from now.

For the last five years, there has been the con­stant warn­ing that the cur­rent ex­change rate par­i­ty was not sus­tain­able and that the Gov­ern­ment’s no­tion of a soft land­ing would not work.

We had that con­ver­sa­tion as a na­tion be­fore in the 1980s and it did not work, as we burnt through our for­eign ex­change in a mat­ter of a cou­ple of years and found our­selves at the doorstep of the IMF. The chal­lenge of the econ­o­my then, as is to­day, is that the en­er­gy sec­tor was the en­gine of the econ­o­my and with­out it there was lit­tle that could stand on its own. To­day, our econ­o­my is dif­fer­ent, there is some di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion with­in the en­er­gy sec­tor, so oil is not the on­ly prod­uct. There is now gas, petro­chem­i­cals and some lim­it­ed ser­vices. Man­u­fac­tur­ing is stronger, but even that is not a net earn­er of for­eign ex­change and de­pends on the forex from the en­er­gy sec­tor to sur­vive.

The Gov­ern­ment, in 2016 to 2018, did not make the move then. Had it done so there would have per­haps been ben­e­fit from it. In­stead, it de­fend­ed the TT dol­lar, us­ing lim­it­ed US dol­lars and over­see­ing the re­duc­tion in our of­fi­cial re­serves by bil­lions of dol­lars.

Do­ing the hard work of re­mov­ing the bot­tle­necks in the ease of do­ing busi­ness, en­cour­ag­ing and work­ing with com­pa­nies to in­vest their cap­i­tal here for a fair re­turn is too much hard work, and re­spect­ing the pop­u­la­tion to bring them on board and lead them to a bet­ter place re­quired hu­mil­i­ty, lead­er­ship and coun­try first. It was too much for the ad­min­is­tra­tion and its sup­port­ers.

So we did noth­ing and when the un­so­licit­ed, free ad­vice is of­fered by oth­ers, we have the spec­tre of the most ju­nior of ju­nior min­is­ters seek­ing to be­smirch the rep­u­ta­tion and grav­i­tas of some­one like Dr Ter­rence Far­rell. Af­ter all, it’s easy to talk.

We have for a long time known that the health sys­tem is un­be­com­ing and un­less we have rad­i­cal health re­form, it will fail.

Dr Karl Theodore has done ex­ten­sive work on some so­lu­tions from an ad­min­is­tra­tive and eco­nom­ic lev­el and we know that a big part of the chal­lenge of the health­care sys­tem are the sys­tems that do not put pa­tients at the cen­tre of health­care.

In­stead, we lived in the fool’s par­adise that any gov­ern­ment could pro­vide the mon­ey for pub­lic health­care un­less its per­son­al and cor­po­ra­tion tax­es are so high they dis­cour­age in­vest­ment. We pre­fer to dread go­ing to the pub­lic hos­pi­tals rather than do the hard things to fix it.

And now we are faced with what is go­ing to be a game-chang­er. We are faced with the in­evitable end to fos­sil fu­el in a mere 29 years. Yes, there are those who would ar­gue that oil and, in par­tic­u­lar, nat­ur­al gas will be around for a long time. They may be right. But what if they are wrong?

For three days this week, Co­lum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty in the Unit­ed States held a glob­al en­er­gy con­fer­ence in which they had lead­ers dis­cuss the is­sue of en­er­gy tran­si­tion.

Dur­ing the dis­cus­sions, US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s ad­vis­er on cli­mate change Gi­na Mc­Carthy ar­gued that the coun­try that wins the race to re­new­ables will be the eco­nom­ic pow­er­house.

She said, “The fu­ture is go­ing to be who grabs clean en­er­gy and wins it. And we al­ready know that be­cause of dis­in­vest­ments over the pri­or five years and the lack of even sig­nif­i­cant or suf­fi­cient in­vest­ment, the US lags in­ter­na­tion­al­ly in terms of if we are go­ing to be the win­ner. The ar­gu­ment is the sen­si­tiv­i­ty about who wins and who los­es, who’s left be­hind or not left be­hind. And how we do this, in a way that’s go­ing to be fast enough to meet the mo­ment that we find our­selves in. But al­so care­ful enough for us to recog­nise that in a tran­si­tion, there will be por­tions of the econ­o­my that will be di­vest­ed, and there will be work­ers fac­ing the need for tran­si­tion.”

Nige­ria vice pres­i­dent Pro­fes­sor Ye­mi Os­in­ba­jo called for a just en­er­gy tran­si­tion for de­vel­op­ing coun­tries and en­er­gy pro­duc­ers like T&T. He raised the spec­tre of sev­er­al Eu­ro­pean coun­tries and de­vel­op­ment fi­nance in­sti­tu­tions ban­ning fur­ther in­vest­ments in fos­sil fu­els.

“Glob­al­ly, we are see­ing wealth­i­er na­tions and de­vel­op­ment fi­nance in­sti­tu­tions ban­ning all pub­lic in­vest­ments in fos­sil fu­els, in­clud­ing nat­ur­al gas. Ex­am­ples in­clude the Eu­ro­pean Union, the Unit­ed King­dom and Den­mark to name a few, as well as spe­cif­ic in­sti­tu­tions such as the Swede Fund from Swe­den, CDC from the UK, the Eu­ro­pean In­vest­ment Bank and the In­vest­ment Fund for de­vel­op­ing coun­tries from Den­mark,” he said.

In oth­er words, it has start­ed.

In­creas­ing­ly, there will be pres­sure not to spend on fos­sil fu­el projects and when the in­vest­ments dry up, so too will the pro­duc­tion. T&T is warned we must do the hard things to quick­ly trans­form the econ­o­my. If in­deed, oil and gas con­tin­ues in­to per­pe­tu­ity then that is ok. It will be ex­tra mon­ey that we can save and in­vest. But if the winds of change are so strong that they blow the sec­tor down, we would have found new ways to not just sur­vive but hope­ful­ly to pros­per.

Do we have it in us to do the hard work and see the dan­ger of the sta­tus quo, or do we have to touch the wound like Thomas to know it is re­al?

Cur­tis Williams is sad­dened for the fam­i­lies and friends of all those who have lost their loved ones due to this pan­dem­ic. Like most peo­ple, he too now knows vic­tims.