As the Nov­el coro­n­avirus ac­cel­er­ates in trans­mis­sion across Trinidad and To­ba­go and the world, anx­i­eties and stress about COVID-19 are be­com­ing just as con­ta­gious in its pro­lif­er­a­tion and pos­si­bly even more dam­ag­ing health wise.

Mark Twain once wrote, “Age is an is­sue of mind over mat­ter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t mat­ter.” How do we not let a pan­dem­ic age us? How do we si­lence these men­ac­ing mes­sages we feed our­selves as we age? Bet­ter yet, how does one re­verse the signs of ag­ing?

To com­mem­o­rate the 43rd an­niver­sary of the death of ca­lyp­so icon Ce­cil “Mae­stro” on Au­gust 31, 1977 and, to re­mem­ber his con­tri­bu­tion as one of the two artistes ac­cred­it­ed with be­ing re­spon­si­ble for the birth of so­ca mu­sic in T&T, mem­bers of the South Cen­tral Is­land Pro­duc­tion (SCIP) have re­con­struct­ed his tomb at Princes Town in his ho­n­our and mem­o­ry. If Hume was alive to­day he would have been 81-years-old.

To­ba­go-based artiste Gail Pan­tin is us­ing the lock­down pe­ri­od to ex­pand her work and up­grade her skills. Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Pan­tin at her res­i­dence in Sig­nal Hill, To­ba­go, where she ab­sorbed the warm morn­ing sun­light creep­ing in­to her ve­ran­dah as she worked on sketch­es. Pan­tin has al­so used the cur­rent re­stric­tion pe­ri­od to cap­ture sun­sets and oth­er im­ages of To­ba­go life not on­ly with paint on can­vas but al­so with the cam­era. She of­fered some ad­vice to young artistes and per­sons who are now dis­cov­er­ing their skills as they have am­ple time on their hands.

"My name is Joel Paul Ramesh Balka­ran, and I grew up in Todd’s Road, cen­tral Trinidad. I have one old­er sis­ter who is in her fi­nal year of med­ical school at UWI. My mum is a pri­ma­ry school teacher, while my dad used to teach ter­tiary lev­el busi­ness ad­min­is­tra­tion but now runs a farm with the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture.

Reign­ing joint So­ca Monarch and Road March Cham­pi­ons and am­bas­sadors of Caribbean cul­ture, KES are tak­ing So­ca to the main­stream this week­end as they share their first new full-length al­bum in over five years to­day.

We have al­ways heard the phrase from our el­ders that “Our health is in our hands” and it holds true, now more than ever. But does it come down to “How strong is our im­mu­ni­ty?” When we talk of im­mu­ni­ty, we gen­er­al­ly talk of cer­tain foods or drinks that can “boost” our im­mu­ni­ty, reg­u­lar ex­er­cis­es or eat­ing a healthy di­et that in­cludes foods high in an­tiox­i­dants, vi­t­a­mins and min­er­als. HEALTH PLUS de­cid­ed to take a deep dive in­to this dis­cus­sion, ex­plor­ing the truths and myths about OUR IM­MU­NI­TY.

As­so­ci­at­ed Press (AP): As an in­fec­tious dis­ease epi­demi­ol­o­gist, I feel moral­ly ob­lig­at­ed to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion on what we are see­ing from a trans­mis­sion dy­nam­ic per­spec­tive and how it ap­plies to the so­cial dis­tanc­ing mea­sures. Like any good sci­en­tist, I have no­ticed two things that are ei­ther not well ar­tic­u­lat­ed or not present in the “lit­er­a­ture” of on­line me­dia. (I have al­so re­lied on oth­er in­fec­tious dis­ease epi­demi­ol­o­gists for peer re­view of this piece.)

Breast­feed­ing is un­de­ni­ably a beau­ti­ful bond­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. How­ev­er, a nat­ur­al process is not how most new moth­ers de­scribe it. In fact, 92 per­cent of new moth­ers re­port hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty nurs­ing, ac­cord­ing to re­search by Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Pae­di­atrics and the Cincin­nati Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal Med­ical Cen­ter. Just like any oth­er skill, breast­feed­ing needs to be learned by both par­tic­i­pants, and this skill takes time and a com­pas­sion­ate non-judg­men­tal ap­proach.

This COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has crum­bled the lives of mil­lions of per­sons as health sys­tems buck­le, bor­ders close, and aca­d­e­m­ic in­sti­tu­tions and busi­ness­es col­lapse. The con­ta­gion coro­n­avirus, as it spreads, so too has mis­in­for­ma­tion fu­elling dis­crim­i­na­tion and un­healthy dis­course. HEALTH PLUS is work­ing with health ex­perts to pro­mote facts over fear, bring­ing cred­i­ble guid­ance and knowl­edge to our pop­u­la­tion. Now more than ever we need all sani­tised hands on deck and team­work by every cit­i­zen of Trinidad and To­ba­go to flat­ten this curve and re­store the health of our pop­u­la­tion and ul­ti­mate­ly the health of our na­tion. We will get through this to­geth­er.

Lay­ing down on her bed one night, she be­gan to think about who she is as a per­son, and as a per­son in the steel­pan in­dus­try. This prompt­ed Nao-mi Fred­er­ick to start a so­cial me­dia page.

The T&T Fash­ion Com­pa­ny Ltd (Fash­ionTT) and DHL will be host­ing an on­line we­bi­nar ti­tled Re­al­iz­ing Your Glob­al E-Com­merce Po­ten­tial on Thurs­day, Au­gust 27, from 11 am to noon, via the Go­ToMeet­ing plat­form.