On Au­gust 30, 1962, the day be­fore Trinidad and To­ba­go would join the ranks of in­de­pen­dent coun­tries, our soon-to-be Prime Min­is­ter Er­ic Eu­stace Williams ex­plained why he picked “DIS­CI­PLINE” as our na­tion’s first watch­word.

“The dis­ci­pline is both in­di­vid­ual and na­tion­al,” Dr. Williams told a youth ral­ly at the Queen’s Park Oval. “The in­di­vid­ual can­not be al­lowed to seek his per­son­al in­ter­ests and grat­i­fy his per­son­al am­bi­tion at the ex­pense of our Na­tion.”

In a mo­ment such as this, we should show our chil­dren that we have not for­got­ten his words.

For the last few weeks, Trin­bag­o­ni­ans have been asked to, among oth­er things, wash their hands of­ten, keep away from peo­ple ex­posed to the virus and stay at home. Lim­ing, our trea­sured na­tion­al pas­time, must be put on hold.

The vast ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple have been obey­ing the gov­ern­ment’s or­ders, yet too many are flout­ing them—at great risk to our health­care he­roes, our se­nior cit­i­zens and oth­ers who are more sus­cep­ti­ble to the virus. Some bars shut­ter their doors but through side doors let in their reg­u­lar clien­tele who com­min­gle as they par­ty through the night. On ear­ly Good Fri­day morn­ing, po­lice ar­rest­ed 20 peo­ple--at a Coblentz Gar­dens, St. Ann’s guest­house--who were fete­ing as if they could not be more care­free amid the con­ta­gion.

These peo­ple are putting many oth­ers—rel­a­tives, friends and oth­er pa­trons—at risk. Such be­hav­iour should not be tol­er­at­ed. When Dr. Williams said, “The in­di­vid­ual can­not be al­lowed to… grat­i­fy his per­son­al am­bi­tion at the ex­pense of our Na­tion,” he meant you.

A re­cent vi­ral video shows a row of match­es catch­ing fire one af­ter the oth­er un­til a sin­gle match steps out of the line to stop the spread of the blaze. That is what a dis­ci­plined com­mu­nal ef­fort can ac­com­plish. For every­one to be safe, all must do their part.

The al­ter­na­tive to so­cial dis­tanc­ing is death. The most trag­ic ex­am­ple of how the ac­tions of one per­son can re­sult in a mas­sive price for a com­mu­ni­ty oc­curred re­cent­ly in Kirk­land, Wash­ing­ton where a so-called Pa­tient Ze­ro caused the deaths of at least 19 peo­ple, most of them res­i­dents of a nurs­ing home.

Think about it: many na­tions ask their cit­i­zens to make the ul­ti­mate sac­ri­fice: to sign up and risk their lives in war. This is not the clas­sic case of ask­ing what you can do for your coun­try. In the case of the coro­na virus, your coun­try is mere­ly ask­ing you to do the bare min­i­mum: stay at home, en­joy time with your fam­i­ly and live to fight an­oth­er day.

You can say for more than a cen­tu­ry Guardian re­porters have seen—and re­port­ed--it all. They have served up our coun­try’ first draft of his­to­ry since our first pub­li­ca­tion on Sep­tem­ber 2, 1917. A few months af­ter our launch, the Span­ish flu pan­dem­ic struck, in­fect­ing 500 mil­lion peo­ple—then one-third of Earth’s pop­u­la­tion—and killing more than 50 mil­lion peo­ple world­wide. A Trinidad Guardian re­port on Jan­u­ary 1, 1919 re­port­ed how in­fluen­za had been wide­spread lo­cal­ly in the lat­ter part of 1918 but the coun­try es­caped the high death rates seen in Venezuela and neigh­bor­ing coun­tries.

Since then, the Guardian has chron­i­cled the his­to­ry of our na­tion, in­clud­ing at­tempt­ed coups, so­cial un­rest and oth­er events that threat­ened to tear apart the fab­ric of our na­tion. We have seen what a dead­ly pan­dem­ic can do to a coun­try, and we do not want to let that valu­able les­son go to waste.

We be­lieve that if Trin­bag­o­ni­ans do not do their part, and if the right eco­nom­ic mea­sures are not tak­en in the fu­ture, our coun­try could face some of its dark­est hours.

This news­pa­per has com­mend­ed the gov­ern­ment on tak­ing swift steps to pro­tect cit­i­zens from the virus and to pro­vide some eco­nom­ic as­sis­tance to our most needy cit­i­zens. We have seen across the globe how those mea­sures are the most ef­fec­tive weapons to save lives.

In the near term, ask­ing peo­ple to stay in their homes serves the pur­pose of sav­ing the most lives—and pre­serv­ing key as­pects of the econ­o­my.

We Must Make A Choice

In the near fu­ture, our lead­ers would have to grap­ple with the ques­tion: When to restart the econ­o­my and what trade­offs will emerge when a de­ci­sion is tak­en to do so.

In the Unit­ed States, where 16 mil­lion peo­ple have joined the bread­lines in the last three weeks, the ques­tion has al­ready ig­nit­ed a bit­ter de­bate about the na­tion’s moral pri­or­i­ties.. On Sun­day, a head­line in the New York Times Sun­day Mag­a­zine read: “Restart­ing Amer­i­ca Means Peo­ple Will Die. So When Do We Do It?” The dis­cus­sion ref­er­enced No­bel lau­re­ate Amartya Sen, an econ­o­mist and philoso­pher, who point­ed out that “the pres­ence of dis­ease kills peo­ple, and the ab­sence of liveli­hood al­so kills peo­ple.”

We do not think it is too ear­ly for our gov­ern­ment to start think­ing about con­ven­ing a na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion on what lessons we have learned from fight­ing the virus and what kind of changes we need to make to our so­ci­ety—in the short and long term. This di­a­logue should in­clude our elect­ed lead­ers in gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of our ro­bust pri­vate sec­tor, la­bor lead­ers and the best minds in civ­il so­ci­ety.

Now more than ever, we must per­se­vere with dis­ci­pline as we fight for our lives, for the lives of our loved ones and for our coun­try.

As we do so, take the time to think about what we should learn from this ex­pe­ri­ence. How does our coun­try need to change to ad­dress our myr­i­ad prob­lems? And what role should we play as we con­tin­ue to shape our na­tion­al cul­ture.

Maybe, like some of us, you would find hope and so­lace in our na­tion­al po­et, Black Stal­in, who penned these heart­felt words dur­ing a dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od in our his­to­ry:

We could make it if we try

Just a lit­tle hard­er

If we just give one more try

Life could be much sweet­er.