In the his­to­ry of T&T Car­ni­val, on­ly war and dis­ease have ever stopped the fes­ti­val.

There were no pre-Lenten rev­el­ries dur­ing the years of World War II from 1942-1945. In 1972, the Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions, which were due to be held on Feb­ru­ary 14 and 15, were post­poned for three months be­cause of a po­lio out­break. The epi­dem­ic had claimed ten lives and 163 cas­es were re­port­ed in the space of just six weeks.

Those num­bers might seem to be of lit­tle sig­nif­i­cance now com­pared to the dai­ly sta­tis­tics from the Min­istry of Health on the com­mu­ni­ty spread of COVID-19. How­ev­er, the sit­u­a­tion back then was con­sid­ered se­ri­ous enough for Health Min­is­ter Fran­cis Pre­vatt to an­nounce on Jan­u­ary 31, 1972, that Car­ni­val was be­ing post­poned “to al­low a na­tion­wide po­lio im­mu­niza­tion pro­gramme to take its full ef­fect.”

Post­pon­ing Car­ni­val for just those few months cost the coun­try about $2.35 mil­lion in tourist rev­enue.

Car­ni­val 1972 even­tu­al­ly came off in May, just as the coun­try was tran­si­tion­ing in­to the wet sea­son. The sight of ful­ly cos­tumed mas­quer­aders parad­ing in the rain in­spired Lord Kitch­en­er’s Road March of the fol­low­ing year, Rain-O-Ra­ma.

This time around, while dis­ease is once again the rea­son for call­ing off Car­ni­val, the stakes are much high­er. As of yes­ter­day, there were 2,039 ac­tive cas­es and 72 deaths and glob­al­ly, the search con­tin­ues for a vac­cine and ef­fec­tive ther­a­pies for this nov­el coro­n­avirus.

There­fore, it re­al­ly was no sur­prise when Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced yes­ter­day that there will be no T&T Car­ni­val in 2021. Crowds are the lifeblood of the fes­ti­val, which makes it an ide­al breed­ing ground for the ac­cel­er­at­ed spread of COVID-19.

Still, this will be a stag­ger­ing loss for the coun­try. Huge num­bers of cit­i­zens em­ployed in cre­ative in­dus­tries are now fac­ing a grim and un­cer­tain fu­ture, as the one event which gen­er­at­ed a huge amount of their in­come is not like­ly to make a re­turn be­fore 2022, or even worse if a vac­cine is not dis­cov­ered.

As an in­dus­try, T&T Car­ni­val brings in US$100 mil­lion in an­nu­al rev­enue. For at least six months in the year, there is sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty di­rect­ly con­nect­ed to the fes­ti­val in a range of sec­tors such as en­ter­tain­ment, hos­pi­tal­i­ty and re­tail.

Al­though this coun­try has not yet har­nessed Car­ni­val’s full po­ten­tial, the fes­ti­val has, par­tic­u­lar­ly since the 1990s, de­vel­oped in­to a vi­able and sus­tain­able in­dus­try that sup­ports tal­ent, ex­per­tise, skills and knowl­edge unique to this part of the world

How­ev­er, now that the pan­dem­ic has put the event on hold, there is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) and the in­ter­est groups to use the down­time to re­view, re­tool and come up with more cre­ative ways to strength­en the in­dus­try. Their man­date to man­age Car­ni­val as an eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al en­ter­prise is more im­por­tant now.

Look­ing ahead to the 2022 edi­tion, there is more time to pre­pare to stage an event that will tru­ly be the great­est show on earth.