Please don't encourage Minnis....he possesses a most delicate and fragile state of mind right now; bordering on the imbalanced.

@Economist - The answer to your first question: "Yes!"

Even sarcastic flattery will get you nowhere.

Anyone know which one of Minnis's muck-a-muck cronies has been given a business license and his permission to go into the large scale local production of masks?

Makes absolutely no sense that in the middle of a life-and-death crisis for our people he would announce a ban on the import of non-medical masks to help develop local industry. Unless of course the Minnis-led government has once again done something to royally piss off our good neighbours to the north and caused them to ban the export of all such masks to the Bahamas. I very much suspect the latter. We need a leader who knows how to win the right friends and influence the right people rather than cozy up to bad state actors.

P.S.: Unfortunately the Never Trumpers among us who have for years now been swallowing all of the indoctrinating propaganda of the ruthless Xi Jinping led communist regime will seize this post to blow their trumpets. They had better pray though that they never come to be ruled by that most oppressive and inhumane communist regime. Since 1992 we have been playing with devil without appreciating the devil's very sly motives and the long term consequences for our country and its people.

Consider:

1) Improving our relationship with the US federal government and other non-communist countries to get the supplies we so desperately need.

2) Taking steps towards re-recognizing Taiwan a/k/a ROC as the one and only China and re-establish close diplomatic ties with that country. [The US will soon be doing likewise.]

3) Treating the government of Red China like the ruthless inhumane communist regime that it is. [The US will soon once again be doing likewise.]

4) Establishing and maintaining much closer and friendlier ties with the government of the great State of Florida in Tallahassee (Governor Ron DeSantis) with a view towards partnering in the creation of stategic reserves/stockpiles of personal protective gear and other equipment in South Florida that both Florida and the Bahamas could have ready access to in times of a crisis like this. [This could be expanded to include essential hurricane relief supplies as well.]

Bottomline: The current Red China Virus crisis has shown that the Bahamas as a very small nation simply can't go it alone and we need the right good neighbourly state friends like Florida and the US to help us make it through the most difficult of times.

It's not in the interest of the Bahamas and the Bahamian people to be unnecessarily at odds or have unwarranted strained relations with either the US federal government or government of the State of Florida. Accordingly it behoves our government and all of us to avoid dealing with known bad state actors with foreign policies harmful to the long term interests of both ourselves and our good neighbours immediately to the north.

Cayman governments have been putting Bahamas governments to shame for decades now. Unlike the Bahamas, the vast majority of voters and politicians in Cayman put their country and its people ahead of their own unbridled personal greed and ambition.

Good news in the worst of times is always greatly welcomed.

It's one thing to make nursing home recommendations but it's an entirely different thing to make sure the nursing homes have the personal protective gear available to carry out the recommendations. And as we all know, the Minnis-led government has a well established history of being long on meaningful talk but short on meaningful action. Note how Sands says nothing about what government is doing to ensure the nursing homes have a sufficient supply of the personal protective medical gowns, masks and gloves needed to properly implement the remmendations. Not a good sign.

Obviously the recommendations made here should have been fully implemented more than two months ago based on the news about the great vulnerability of nursing home residents that was coming out of Washington State way back then.

Number of confirmed cases remains low only because of the low number of testing kits available and the current policy on who gets tested. Actual number of infected in the community is no doubt much much higher.