Impoverished after 60 days of House Arrest Roatanians see a First Diagnosis of COVID-19
He is one of the 16 passengers who are now under quarantine while other 14 passengers, some possibly infected, are missing fearing criminal persecution. The cases of COVID-19 are now spreading amongst the island population that is tired, confused an impoverished by 70 days of house arrest and economic shut down.
The arrival of COVID-19 to Roatan is a result of inflexible, one-size-fits-all health management strategies by Honduras National Risk Management System [Sistema Nacional de Gestión de Riesgos – SINAGER] and Roatan municipal governments inaction and incompetence. “SINAGER from the mainland, they are running Honduras,” said Dr. Raymond Cherington heads the committee helping of bringing some 600 Roatanians stranded on the mainland that have been trying to come back.
While Utila Municipality has repatriated 19 of their own, Municipal Roatan government were unable to repatriate desperate islanders stuck on the mainland. “Once they go to quarantine, they have a hope for a way home,” said Junior Williams, from Utila’s Search and Rescue. “My advice to Roatan authorities is to move swiftly. It’s better than to have them sneak back in.”
Even foreign cruise ship companies managed to navigate SINAGERS bureaucracy and in four different ship arrivals, repatriated 72 island workers dropping them off at the Roatan’s cruise ship docks between May 15 and May 26.
While many wish otherwise, on Roatan where municipal authorities are continually unable to manage garbage dumps, desalination plant, it is hardly surprising that managing a health emergency has proven exceedingly difficult. During the COVID-19 crisis voices of “supporting government officials” and “government is doing a great job” created a false sense of fallowing the only right path. The voices of dissent were silenced, punished or ridiculed.
This downward spiral will likely continue.
The exaggeratedly fear of death based on bad science, and bad health policy decisions by Honduran government has brought Roatan economic misery, depression and soaring crime.
As forced house arrests of healthy citizens near three months, crime is escalating; after the robbery of two women leaving a restaurant at the entrance near Palmetto. “I (…) stopped at the police shack to ask it there were any updates regarding the recent robbery that occurred this afternoon (…) The municipality policeman I talked to had no idea what I was talking about. The second policeman was too busy texting on his phone to engage in any discussion” said Gary Chamer, a Roatan businessman, at his attempt to inquire about an armed robbery that took place just a few hundred meters from the police shack.
The island wide surveillance system has been placed with watchtowers and security cameras near major road intersections. Sadly, it is becoming painfully obvious that the police are there not to stop any crime on the citizen, but make sure citizens obey what they are told, regardless of the logic, or consequences.
There is increasing number of intellectuals and scientists seeing the pre-planned agenda which is forced upon the population with virus only serves as pretext and distraction.
“We have a reason to believe, on the basis of official data on the incidence of the epidemic as related to the number of deaths, that there are powers interested in creating panic among the world’s population with the sole aim of permanently imposing unacceptable forms of restriction on freedoms, of controlling people and of tracking their movements. (…) A disturbing prelude to the realization of a world government beyond all control.” Wrote Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò in a May 7appeal, signed by several Catholic cardinals, bishops and thousands of professionals.
In a global operation of escalating government control of individuals, top down business takeover and eliminating freedoms Roatan is a side story to a side story. The flooding of fear reporting and suppression of dissenting voices has frighten people who are now desperate enough to accept any solution giving them a feeling that they recaptured some sense of normality. Unfortunately those sacrificing freedom for security will be left with neither.
