New COVID-19 Restrictions are Really Old Ones

Dean Barrow

The restrictions that are set to come into force on Sunday morning are in fact limitations that were already in effect in the previous states of emergency and will be further ventilated on Ask the Experts on Saturday night.  According to Prime Minister Barrow, they are the result of the behavioral patterns of the citizenry.  Where a total lockdown is concerned, the PM cited the World Health Organization’s position on that matter which is to say that the W.H.O. frowns on the shutting down of a country’s economy.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“This is the message I wish to communicate with the general public, again while caution is the watchword, while all that has happened clearly is for us a learning experience.  While clearly we could have no better motivation for reforming our patterns of behavior which to a large extent those patterns are responsible principally for what is now taking place.  In that kind of overall context, as we go forward, the new measures we are talking about which are old measures being brought back in a, not expanded, but perhaps in a new format to try and tailor-make the response to what is happening now. The W.H.O. said precisely that, that in fact lockdowns, total lockdowns are not recommended by the W.H.O. because of the economic and social devastation that such lockdowns cause.  So I am fortified in my own thinking that we pretty much, at all costs want to avoid anything like a total lockdown.”