717 persons over two years...it's sad but at 300 a year average was it really worth cratering the economy, destroying children's educations and obliterating many businesses...how many deaths were actually avoided....? How many of these 700+ poor souls were suffering from other ailments and would have succumb anyway....? Not all but definitely a significant portion.. And how many have died because of canceled diagnostics or postponed surgeries...?

its not 300 average. That skews what happened. 500+ people died when homeporting started in July 2021. Tourism's doing great and we will do everything we can to ensure that peak seasons are peakier. Including mandating infected people get back to work

What skews what happened is attributing massive proportions of deaths to single cause and misrepresenting COVID as being a threat to all strata of society when the threat was particularly acute to those that are dying of 2 - 5 other things...

These numbers have more to do with how deaths are codified that anything else and distorts the risk prevalence in society.

Surely you recognise that cases load increases in July 20 are similar to those in July 21 which coincide with national Independence Day parties and migrations, seasonal increases in cases in Florida and Bahamians travel for back to school shopping is more likely the driving factor then the highly tested homeporting cruisers.

And surely you must recognise that the different between the two years is likely more attributable to the availability of testing.

Given we don't track excess mortality in this country any conversation about COVID impact is ultimately mute given we don't understand the burden overall or whether that burden might be attributable to other factors such as aggressive Health policy restricting travel or locking people in homes. For all we know Deaths have been moved from the cancer, heart disease buckets into the covid one by the stroke of the pen and Health officials efforts to push compliance through fear (for the public good of course)...

the patterns are extremely clear. Every single time we opened the border to exponential tourists, cases spiked out of control. If it happened once you might dismiss it. Its happened 5 times in 2 years with dramatic results

The worst episode was post start of homeporting. Within 2 weeks of the NAD showing photos of the airport jam packed with arriving tourists, PMH was announcing that they were at capacaity. It was predictable.

Just 1-2 weeks prior, Renward Wells and Dr Sands had both said *it looks like we're through the 3rd wave*. Deaths had dropped to near 0. Things had turned around so well with COVID numbers, that it appears Dr Minnis started plans for an August election. Then homeporting and 500 people die???

In November hotels starting jumping up and down about 90% capacity. The airport beamed about exceeding a 6000 estimate of travellers over 1 weekend.

The next week I remember clearly a count of 18 cases and being a little surprised because cases had been going down. That rise hasnt stopped yet.

Noone wuth two eyes can dispute that our spikes are directly related to what happens at the border.

People talk about Bahamians partying, thats not the cause, Bahsmians started partying in November 2020 when the curfews ended and havent stopped. What we've seen is the intersection of border activity with Bahamians who never stopped partying, cases spiking or at zero. **The catalyst is border activity**

**After you let the flood water in, it could go anywhere. That its everywhere isnt the problem. The problem is you let it in and did nothing to control the flow you knew was coming.**

We went from 289 cases before July 2021 to 700 cases by October 2021. There's no way you can "average" tbat to 300 per year. Thats a distinct time based occurrence

If COVID kills a cancer patient 2 weeks before they may have died naturally, COVID killed the patient

but dont worry, it looks like the powers that be have conceded to the dollar following the lead of the CDC yet again

We both agree on border activity is a catalyst and I detest the concept of home-porting but for different reasons however you have very little to support the notion that those particular tourists are the catalyst and not the 1000s that travel in the out islands or that the Bahamians travelling to the USA could not still pickup the virus and bring it back...Do you remember that a PCR test was valid for 5 days as far as The Bahamas was concerned so you could get a test here go to the USA for for 3 days and then get back in without testing.. Essentially the same loop hole that existed the previous July...

Furthermore take eleuthera or Abaco which was not on the homeport cruise itinerary - the bulk of their spike came from Miami/Fort Lauderdale travel in July and August (whether that was due to visitors or Bahamian travellers is uncertain). Cruise travellers are also tested at higher frequency then other visitors which is where your theory doesn't hold water...I'm afraid...there are just simply too many other vectors...

Again by looking at the small window of time really you cannot possibly extrapolate that burden of COVID deaths...why was this fall such a higher burden? I would posture that that lies on the laurels of bad policy for 1.5 years...

1. For 18 months most of the elderly in our nation have not had access to basic health care - so many have had fallen behind on prescriptions, diagnostics and routine check ups. Ultimately bringing them closer to death..

2. A vaccination program was relaunched aggressively in June through August for 1st and 2nd shots - it interesting to note that case counts closely mirror vaccination rates which may suggest that the program in itself may have been series of super spreader events.

The combination of these two events with new variants and border porosity likely explains the increase in death in the 21 fall period (not home-porting as much as I'd like to blame the cruise ships) which also probably over-presents the annual burden of COVID...which is why working with a mortality average is probably more informative (but still likely overstates the reality given the 'of' versus 'with' codification issue).. At 22 months into the pandemic..and 700 deaths we're averaging about 30 a month or 360 per year give or take and I would wager this still a strong exaggeration of COVIDs true burden...

**i think there's more than adequate evidence that Bahamians arent the cause.**

**The reason I say the tourists are the catalysts is because Bahamians have been travelling up and down and partying nonstop since November 2020**. When cases were up they travelling and partying, when cases dropped to zero they were still travelling and partying. **The ONLY times that we've had exponential spread is immediately following a notable, exponential bump in tourism. 10's of thousands of new tourists, hundreds of new cases. Literally the ONLY times**

I think we re saying thing - but you originally only chalked it up to home porting - which i believe is a fallacy. Tourists in general along with travelling Bahamians have brought it in various variants. July peaks have more to do Bahamian travel + vaccination crowding and winter/Christmas peaks more to do with winter birds flying south.

There are reports of outbreaks on several cruise ports, some on the Family Islands. But despite the news of almost 400 new cases, hospitalizations are down ( at least by one) and there has been no mention of additional deaths. It may be safe to say that the Omicron wave will soon peak. The concern is with persons who travel and return with the Delta strain and apparently get more sick and have to be hospitalized. Then the question still I unanswered is ‘should persons re-vaccinate after recovering from Omicron?’

The good news this variant is much more mild. As evidenced by hospital cases actually decreasing.

Stay healthy, lose weight, and make it a great 2022...!

The danger isnt hospitalizations and deaths. You're bringing a *knife to a gun fight*. The danger is worker outage. Spread workers out, find better testing options, This RAT is plain iffy, but anyway.... France I think it is is allowing persons to use at home kits to reduce testing lines

REPOST

"***The world is in its 4th wave. The Bahamas is in its 5th wave***

***1st wave: prior to July 2020 we had about 80 deaths?***

**2nd: July 2020 - border opens for the first time post 1st case***

***3rd: March 2021-June 2021 - spring break***

***4th: July 2021-October 2021 - homeporting begins***

***5th: Dec 2021 - winter tourist rush***

*What most people fail to acknowledge despite there being *multiple* Tribune articles reporting the information, there was a distinct delineation between the 3rd and 4th waves in early June 2021. Both Dr Sands and Renward Wells made note of it. I believe that drop off in cases in Jun 2021, signaling the end of the 3rd wave, was the impetus for planning an August election. It was good news to pin a campaign on. Unfortunately they fooled themselves about the impact of an exponential rise in tourist arrivals, and when homeporting kicked off in July 2021, we were off to the races again. The exact same thing happened in November, like we cant learn. This over exuberance on the good news in tourism without acknowledging that it comes with new variants and an exponential increase in cases*

*Because the time between the dropoff in cases in the 3rd wave and the spike in the subsequent wave was so brief, most people clump them into a single wave. But that would break from what the data says. The data says a variant takes about 4mnths to cycle our population. If there were only 4 waves, the 3rd wave would have lasted 8 months. Who's watching the data? The duration of this 5th cycle may be shorter due to the speed at which the virus is being transmitted*

(*Because our tourism cycles are predictable, our spikes to a certain extent are also very predictable)*

** They tried to pin the 3rd wave on Bahamians partying on Easter Monday**. The only problem with that was, the spike had started 3 weeks earlier, right in line with Spring Break arrivals. But, not wanting to associate COVID with tourism, Renward started talking about Bahamians partying on Easter holiday and almost unbelievably, you had talk show host just bkindly repeating that Bahamians need to learn to behave. All of our spikes are directly linked to exponential tourist travel

And this is not about closing the border, its about acknowledging the source of the problem so you csn properly tackle it. As long as they act like tourism is the blue eyed child that cant do no wrong, this will happen over and over again

I do agree border activity plays a pivotable part but cruise outbreaks not so much that been have small and contained. It's definitely more broader travel winter vacationers and returning residents that play the part in the spikes via airlifts, and testing loopholes. Caseloads are irrelevant it’s a product of testing - the mortality rate was worse in fall 21 because of the vaccination program compounded the problem in July/august (remember when we didn't test vaccinated people and told them it’s was pandemic of the unvaccinated) and made worse by 1.5 years restrictive travel and scaremongering that kept our elderly away from health care.

mortality rate was higher because of the delta variant. very aggressive strain. people reported to hospital when they couldnt breathe. too late. Yes, we (as in Minnis and Renward) didn't help things