THE EDITOR: From reports in two dailies last weekend, the British seem to be on course to normalcy, ditching all its covid19 protocols. This is reassuring for the rest of the world, with some like the Netherlands on a similar course. No masks in public, no prohibition to restaurants and other public places, no working from home, and of course no limits to football patrons, inter alia. And this not by 'vaps,' as we would say here.

Surely Britain has its own share of anti-vaxxers as other places but it has managed to do this because of its, reportedly, 'successful vaccine booster rollout.'

This stance of the British is a marker for the rest of the world to follow and for us especially, but will we as a nation, now independent of the British, follow suit? The open-minded may argue that even with all the negatives of colonialism and empire that as a former colony we have a great tradition of inheritance from the British on which we have been able to build.

For example, even as we continue to use their standard English we have generated our own Caribbean Creole using some of its elements. That even as we have been moulded by Cambridge GCE we have managed to transit into the Caribbean CXC. That even as we are typically 'Trini' in our social behaviour we still retain much of their huge repertoire of etiquette.

And most singularly, we continue in the politics to utilise their Westminster system of government of 'first past the post,' though sadly we have abused it, using it to consolidate our own style of partisan, racial politics while Boris Johnson is now fighting for his own political life within the same system, his own party threatening to oust him if he turns out to be in violation of the Office of the Prime Minister.

But if even sceptics frown on this tradition of inheritance from the British, can we emulate their model if even we wanted to? The basis of their road to normalcy is reportedly their 'successful booster programme,' but in our country vaccine hesitancy is still rife due to much disinformation.

This is fuelled in no small measure by a social media which provides the fodder of scepticism, focused on the one hand on the perceived risks of the vaccine on the body without attempting to balance those risks with the protection the vaccine offers, and on the other on the right to choose taking the vaccine or not, oblivious or indifferent to the reality that in exercising your right not to vaccinate and so posing a threat of infection, you are in fact trespassing on the rights of those who are seeking protection through vaccination.

And the trade unionists no less jumping on the same bandwagon of the right of choice, perhaps for that principle in itself, but again with no thought about the idea of balance, but more so possibly to gain some visibility and measure of influence having suffered a significant diminishing of their status through loss of jobs brought about by the pandemic.

And the politicians, not to be left out, moulded in a simplistic notion of protection from the virus throug