The statement the PNP was to issue on Dr De La Haye, but did not.

We note with deep regret the decision taken by Dr De La Haye to resign his caretaker position and will set out the facts herein.

On Friday, April 23, 2020, Dr De La Haye reported to the party a threat that was made on his life based on public comments he had made on a certain social media platform.

The PNP believes in freedom of expression and condemns any action taken by anyone to silence any one of our members on any public platform, especially when we know these members are speaking on matters concerning the interest of the public.

One should note that as a army man Dr De La Haye would have assessed any threat based on his training and must have considered it to be real, resulting in him taking the position he has taken.

The party secretariat is very concerned and has since written to the commissioner of police and the national security minister demanding a full and complete investigation of the threat on the life of Dr De La Haye.

The PNP strongly condemns any action taken by anyone to silence members of the PNP who seeks to speak on the behalf of the people, and we will NOT back away from our constitutional right to speak on matters of public interest.

We therefore urge the police to conduct a speedy investigation and make the report public.

We want to thank Dr De La Haye for his service to the party and the country and wish him well. We will announce a replacement for the caretaker position in due course

The end

Why did Jordan die while trying to have her baby

“Because her medical team failed her”

It is my considered view based on the information available as at Monday, April 27, 2020 that all the talk about which hospital failed Jordon is all noise (not condoning the decisions they made). Jordon was forced to deliver her baby vaginally when she was previously assessed, and it was the considered view of her physician that she did not have the capacity to make such a delivery and therefore required an urgent C-section.

The risk to the mother of having a vaginal birth was considered “extreme” and any such delivery would likely lead to her death, that is my interpretation of the assessment of her physician.

Once the anesthesiologist and others on her medial team decided they would not participate in the surgical procedure to deliver her baby (out of fear of contracting Covid -19) and save her life, Jordon was sentenced to death.

Based on reports I have, Jordon had to make a delivery (vaginal birth) that would have put her life and great risk, which subsequently resulted in her dying after giving birth.

The issue of the refusal of the health system( public and private) to accept her is rather unfortunate and reprehensible behaviour and while on the surface of it may have appeared to be the cause of her death, that is not the cause in my views, when you strip away the noise and make an objective analysis .

Her death was at the hands of a medical team, who rather than taking steps to protect themselves and the lives of their patient and baby opted to protect themselves only, leaving the young lady to meet an untimely demise.

I will await the final cause of death and the actions that will be taken to avoid such a future occurrence.

Seems like ignorance, lack of aware of procedures are likely to more of us that the virus itself.

A complete deconstruction of Dr Canute Thomson “epilogue” Part 1.

Dr Canute Thomspon wrote in the Jamaica Observer of Friday, April 24, 2020 a piece in which he sought to be balanced in his critique of the current administration. I have sought here in part one to address two of the things he said were poorly executed. I will address the others in another piece. The link to his original article is at the bottom

My responses are in italic

Canute’s claim

There are at least four major areas in which the Government’s performance is weak or very weak, and even bordering on frighteningly worrying. These are:

• The decision not to have closed call centers earlier: The Government decided not to implement a complete lockdown of call centers, one of the most densely populated work settings. At the time of writing, nearly 70 reported cases were found to be connected to that arena. By the time this piece gets published they may be on temporary lockdown, but the horses would have already left the stable.

Commonsense response.

On what basis were the call centers to be closed prior them are having a single case when according to the monitoring program

1. The particular call center in question was inspected and passed all its inspection
2. They appeared to (at the time of inspection) was observing all protocols to protect the staff.
3. There were no cases of Covid -19 detected nor did the contact tracing point to employee at these centers having come into contact with a positive case.
4. There are 70 call centers across the country, and of the 70 only 1 had a problem so prior to this, what would have been the justifiable cause which could withstand a court challenge by the operators.
5. Call centers provide critical services to power many industries, based on risk analysis at the time, apart from work space density, what other credible reason could have been posited to have them closed  that could  beat a court challenge. I know you are thinking well what about schools there were no cases and they were closed. Well its because kids are kids and no not posses the abilities resident in  in adults to recognize risk and take action to prevent them.

The workspace density alone at the time was not and could not have by itself provided a sound basis on which to close all 70 BPO.

I notice you said closed all and not a partial closure, which shows a clear lack on understanding of the importance of the BPO sector and the services they provide to the public. This lack of understanding would definitely have resulted in this significant error of judgment on your part and the prescription which you have sought to provide. I guess by now having heard all the BPO did and the fact that article was done weeks ago , according to your tweet this morning, you would have recognized the folly of your decision to shutter all BPO and not instead recommend a partial shutdown. This failure on your path is due in part to your failure to conduct proper research and instead your laser like focus on what you consider to be errors on the part of this government and which you salivate in highlighting.

Canute’s claim

(2) Inadequate personal protective equipment (PPEs): In his statement at the press conference at which the Government announced the confirmation of the first case, Health and Wellness Minister Christopher Tufton stated, inter alia: “On the readiness of the island’s health system, the ministry has assessed the readiness of our health facilities to meet the anticipated increase in demand on services [and] continues to address existing gaps, including with respect of additional supplies and equipment; though, at the present time, we have enough personal protective equipment in the island for our health facilities. We also have adequate stores of respiratory medicine for the next three months.”

While COVID-19 is novel, the coronavirus itself is not, and the standard infection control and prevention procedures apply to COVID-19. In 2015, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued guidelines for the management of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV). Those guidelines, which would be known to the experts in the Ministry of Health and Wellness, and which have been reiterated since the advent of COVID-19, define health care workers as “…persons, paid and unpaid, working in health care settings whose activities potentially place them at risk for exposures to a patient… Examples of such activities include those that require direct contact with patients and exposure to the patient-care environment, including: being in the patient, triage, or examination room, or other potentially contaminated areas; and handling blood, body fluids (except sweat), secretions, excretions, or soiled medical supplies, equipment or environmental surfaces”. In short, almost every employee at a hospital or other health facility falls into that definition. The PPEs those workers would need include gloves, gowns, respiratory protection including respirator N95 masks, eye protection, heavy duty gloves, shoe covers, etc. Less than two weeks after the minister’s March 10 statement that there were enough PPEs at health facilities to serve for three months, there were reports of a shortage. A few weeks later we were begging money to buy PPEs.

So, one must ask if the Minister knew what he is talking about.

Commonsense Response

Prior to Covid-19 and having been into healthcare care facilities here in Jamaica and around the world, have you observed all healthcare workers as you have described above in the following under normal conditions (here I include Porters and nurses in Triage)

1. N95 Masks
2. Heavy duty gloves
3. Gowns
4. Eye protection
5. Shoes cover

Now would you find all the above in high risk areas such as those in ICU, operating theater, recovery wards, highly infections wards etc. The answer is a resounding yes.

In your normal planning process for purchases and what is kept in storage , this would be based on making an assessment of how many high risk areas you have across all public health facilities , the number of people who would need to access these facilities and how many you would need per person as well as safety stocks.

In your planning and response for Covid at that point in time, you would then examine, and make a guess of how much more you would need for your initial response. If what you have on hand can go for x period of time you would state so, which is exactly what was done, with the Minister going on to say (captured in Canute’s statement) here  (SIC)

“On the readiness of the island’s health system, the ministry has assessed the readiness of our health facilities to meet the anticipated increase in demand on services [and] continues to address existing gaps, including with respect of additional supplies and equipment; though, at the present time, we have enough personal protective equipment in the island for our health facilities. We also have adequate stores of respiratory medicine for the next three months.”

So, we had enough on hand to meet what we think is going to happen at the onset, but we recognize there are some gaps and we plan to order more, I have highlighted that in bold above taken directly from Canute’s article

Where is this statement can you say there was a failure to recognize and procure PPE.

I did not want to go there but to make a point I will have to.

How many countries on the planet had enough PPE on hand at the start of this crises and never need to order any additional amounts and the case load increased and as they recalculated what was required.

Was there a widely accepted fact that the world was short on PPE and companies had to stop making their usual product and began making, PPE, why would that have been the case.

This cannot be considered a management failure instead it’s a recognition that the scale of the problem is bigger than you would have estimated and has to now take steps to align resources to the new reality

I will leave it here for now as I see to complete lay bare Canute’s false claims  in trying to make a case for leadership failure.

Bless

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/opinion/exploring-lessons-from-covid-19-part-2_192217?profile=1096

Contact tracing conversation , any possible solutions here

Someone “ Jay you hear about the discrimination that affecting the contact tracing matter”

Me “ Yes heard it on the  media conference last night”

Someone “So,  don’t you think the government, knowing how our people are should have expected  this and put something in place to avoid this”.

Me “ I certainly think so, so let me ask you what you think should have been done , now that you know the issue”

Someone “They should contact the people by phone and tell them we will send unmarked vehicles into their communities so the residents would not get suspicious”

Me “Why would you make such a suggestion”

Someone “Well once you go into the communities with big MOH van and police people ago say is a covid case and start discriminate “

Me “So sending an unmarked MOH and unmarked police car in would fix that.  I suspect the MOH people would not have ID either, so no one would know they are from the MOH. Sound to me like a perfect plan for criminal to exploit”

Someone “That’s true, never looked at it that way“

Me “Well that’s how things go, we don’t always have the answer despite what we think, so what else you have since that one can’t work”

Someone “Well they could contact them by phone, and ask them to come into to a health center and some other designation location for interview”

Me “So how would they get there “?

Someone “How you mean, take taxi or bus “?

Me “So what if they have the virus, would they not expose others?”

Someone “Well you have a point then, maybe the MOH bus could pick them up”

Me “What, the same bus that would attract attentions”

Someone “Jay every solution I come up with you shoot it down saying it cannot work, so what you think”

Me “ I never initiated this conversation, you started it because you thought you had all the answers, I am simply playing devils advocate and demonstrating how difficult it is to make decisions , as no matter what you do there is someone or a group who will tell you it cannot work and you should have come up with a better plan. I will give you an example.  Just last week the Minister told Alorica workers to show up at the offices for testing.

Most people lashed the MOH saying it was a bad idea because that would put workers on public transportation potentially exposing more people to the virus  and instead said the MOH should have sent its bus for them.

The workers said they would not be taking no MOH bus as that would stigmatize them in ether communities, do you now see the problem we have in this country.“

Someone “You have a valid point, so what is your solution“

Me “At this point I am drawing blank, but I have something they could consider.  The MOH should get from JUTA a number of private buses, these would have the JUTA sign on the buses. They should tell people to call in if they have been in close contact with anyone who may have tested positive. In addition is they don’t know they have been in such contact  the MOH should call them and arrange with the JUTA buses across the country to take these folks to a healthcare facility just outside of where they reside so the samples can be taken and the people then taken back to their place of abode. This method allows for the following to happen

1. Privacy for the families/family involved
2. Security, the folks know which buses are coming in, they are marked, and they also can verify plate number.
3. The people can tested and no one inside the community would be aware
4. Less risk of stigmatization since no one would know.

For it to work however the MOH people and healthcare centers would need to keep of their damn phones and especially WhatsApp. The publc don’t need to know a JUTA bus was sent into Jobs lane and 5 covid patients were removed, as that is exactly what is going to happen if the MOH staff and connected people are not sworn to secrecy.

This is NOT an attempt to hide pertinent information from the public and I can hear the opposition demanding transparency and asking for the MOH to come clean and tell the public if it has ran out of vehicles and is using the JUTA services to transport Covid patients, folks now is Not the time for this, we have a problem of genuine fear and we must be responsible in how we treat with it.  I have no problems if the Ministers tells this to his opposition spokesman, but this must remain out of the purview of the general public.

Someone “Jay, how you come up with this”

Me “ I don’t even know, but I do they to think out of the proverbial box, I am a solution driven person, we must note though it will only be a matter of time before the public becomes aware and the MOH would have to revise its strategy in this regard. This is not an admission that the system has failed but a recognition that confidentiality has been compromised and they must the methodology to avoid the stigmatization the former system was meant to address in the first place.”

Bless.

Contact Tracing in Jamaica vs the rest of the Caribbean and its results

I will use pictures to tell my story and then ask, how can we change the narrative so we can change the picture very quickly.

This is very serious and needs to be addressed quickly

Questions for the Prime Minister and how I would have responded

Hello Mr PM this is MJD from JRJ and I have the following question “ Why did you not seek to get on board people with logistics skills to advise your team, so what transpired in St Catherine last Saturday could have been avoided. Would you go on record to admit that this was a lack of foresight or poor management or a combination of both “

Jay ”  Human are not cargo and they are not being transported in this scenario you described . We do not posses the foresight like you do to predict the outcome of irrational behavior of people due to fear of the unknown”

MJD ” Mr PM with all due respect you have not answered my question”

Jay ” Do you buy stocks, Let’s say you do what will happen in the stock market this Friday, if we knew a hurricane is coming next week”

MJD looks puzzled and confused wondering WTH is going on, when a simple question was asked.

Jay “ I see the puzzled look on your face, well the stock market largely reflects now more than ever the sentiments of the people and a lot of emotional reaction. The final outcome of the market is largely dependent on the actions taken by those investors”

These folks will act after taking a series of factors into consideration a big one of which is fear of the unknown. This will cause normally rational people to behave irrationally given a lot of factors that are hard to accurately predict.

So the market could go up or it could go down, we just have to wait and see what happens and then adjust as required. We would therefore then be able to make a more informed decision after the fact ie after we see what happened. We would have a plan if it goes either way

One plan would be, do nothing, if what we did appeared to have worked or secondly, adjust the plan having recognized that it did not work

This move is cannot be considered as lack of foresight and/or poor judgement but a recognition as humans and leaders that we cannot accurately predict human behaviour . If you can, I would love to welcome you on board so we can benefit from your great wisdom and foresight“

Cause and effect rule, can it move from quality to human behaviour. A look at social distancing in Jamaica

The government of Jamaica last night made some significant adjustments to the protocols governing the movement of Jamaicans as it sought to maintain a delicate balance between economics and life.

The Prime Minister noted that based on comments in the space and what he witnessed in St Catherine , in particular Portmore and Spanish Town, there was a need to adjust the shopping and banking days as well as times.

One reporter Dionne Jackson Miller lashed out at the PM during the question and answer sections demanding to know why he did not accept responsibility for the chaos that ensued on Wednesday and then on Saturday, when herself and all of Jamaica knew what was going to happen. I personally thought the PM response was quite apt and professional.

I am however going to focus on that, instead I am going to offer up something for everyone to consider and the overall ramifications of at least one new measure that was announced by the PM.

The PM announced two news measures

1. Mandatory use on mask in public
2. New social distancing protocol of 6 ft.

I must firstly say I accept these two news changes as they are definitely required.

Unlike some people who are experts after the fact, I am going to focus on rule 2 and the wider implications for the public, that is, I am going to look at what this means despite the fact that more time has now been allotted to shopping and banking.

Lets first examine a banking example pre covid, I will use a diagram since we all know picture say a thousand words

Banking Hall Pre-Covid

Banking Hall under the 3ft social distancing rule

Banking Hall under the 6ft social distancing rule

Social distancing leads to longer lines outside of the banks

Longer lines does not equate to chaos

Social distances results in longer lines but its indiscipline that leads to crowds and chaos

The lines will get longer under these new rules, can the “after the facts experts” say what effect this will have on crowds outside banking halls and supermarkets given the information I have presented above.

I rest my case your honour !

Complete review of BPO work arrangements must be considered.

The current Alorica situation has brought about the need to make fundamental changes to the configuration of BPO office space going forward.

The general setup of the office space in a BPO environment sees a large number of workers sitting very close to each other, which makes it very easy for any virus that are either airborne or in droplet form to spread from person to person quite easily. ( The same applies for many corporate offices but I will leave that out for now).

The point I am making is, BPO centers must be purpose built in order to accomplish new standards going forward.

All BPO office spaces going forward must be so designed to accomplish the social distancing of at least 6 ft of free space around each person, essentially each worker would have a space of 36 sqft .

A BPO which employs let’s say 500 workers, would technically need a minimum of 18,000 sq ft feet for work space not including walkways, space for office cabinets etc.

From the above it would become very clear that these office space would have to be multi-story buildings in order to accomplish this . The question then becomes what about conditioned air for the building.

In order to reduce the spread of any future air borne spread , it would necessitate that each floor would have to be fitted with its independent air handling system with the use of Hepa filters in the air handling units to minimize the possibility of spread amongst all workers should something goes wrong on one floor.

Some other changes I would like to see as we seek to change the industry is more space for lunch and break, but these should not be concentrated in a single building. Here I am suggesting different building on the campus which will hold multiple breakout rooms as well as rest room. The idea is to be able to accommodate workers at different lunch time but still reduce the number of workers in each space at the same time.

The BPO ( Back Office Processing) is of critical importance to the proper functioning of the economy and as such must be kept open, but there has to be changes to prevent future infection rate and in so doing protecting our workers .

More on this later

Bless

Leadership requires clarity of thought and purpose Part two. PNP does not get it !

The opposition PNP has blasted the government for taking too long to act in closing our ports to traffic out of the USA and the UK, both of which has been the leading source of the Covid-19 cases in Jamaica.

When the ports were eventually closed, there was a lobby to reopen them temporarily with the final cut off being March 24, 2020 as it was noted that there were persons already in transit and needed to get home.

It was later discovered that during the period March 18 – 24, over 5,000 persons came into the island who could not be located as they had either provided wrong or incomplete information of the customs declaration forms. The opposition rightly hauled the government over coal for failing to put measures in place to Identify its nationals and ensure they could have been traced and were following home quarantine measures.

One week ago a group of farm workers insisted they wanted to travel overseas to take up farm work opportunities and were willing to take on the risk and in so doing signed a waiver absolving the government of any cost should they contract the virus.

Horace Daley who does not appear to be the brightest bulb on the shelf blasted the government for being wicked, suggesting the men should not be allowed to leave and should be held here against there free will to travel. One should note that the ports are open to outgoing traffic and any attempt to prevent them would have been unconstitutional . Noted constitutional lawyer Dr Lloyd Barnett actually commented that the government could not stop these men as the have rights under the constitution, but Horace Daley in is usual bellicose style insisted the government had erred.

A few days later a cruise-ship with 45 Jamaican crew members were anchored off the coast of Jamaica and sought landing rights, which were denied as the ports to incoming human traffic was closed.

Once the again the Opposition which seems to always wants to swim against the tide demanded that the ports be opened to accommodate the men, despite the fact that a closure order was in effect and NO provision would have been in place to safely house these nationals.

The position taken by the opposition members as noted by the examples above, shows a party that clearly lacks direction and focus and if left up to themselves would lead to an explosion of Covid-19 cases on the island similar to what took place when they failed miserably to manage the Chik-V crises.

The PNP has failed in the past to effectively handle previous public health crises and their actions thus far serves to inform me they have yet to figure out how to deal with public health emergencies and as such their advise cannot be relied on.

PS

Bless

Leadership requires clarity of thought and purpose Part one

The position of the PNP during the covid crises, shows a party which appears to be bouncing from one position to another, without must purpose and in so doing, is only serving to confuse sections of the public.

It has been found by the WHO that social distancing coupled with testing are two ways to slow the spread, with social distancing being found to be the most effective methodology .

The narrative however from the PNP is constantly that ” the Government is not doing enough testing” while not being very clear that social distancing is the only effective way to stop the spread of the virus since its mode of transmission is human to human.

There is a section of the society who will not listen to the government simply because they do not support the party in power and as such they either are not hearing or refuse to accept the message from the government. This was where the opposition PNP was expected to play a pivotal role , but they have refused to take up that position for reasons only known to them.

The supporters of the PNP especially in the inner city communities are more likely to heed the warnings from their political representative, but the PNP has refused to demonstrate the leadership required in this time of crises and continues to put many who are semi-educated, poor and with limited means at significant risk as it seeks to gain political mileage out of this crises.

It would appear that the PNP focus on testing is due to a widely held view within the party, that we cannot be doing this well in terms of the number of confirmed cases and as such the testing needs to be ramped up, as the more testing you do the more positive results you are likely to find and the GOJ does not want this as it would disrupt the grand PR they have been doing thus far.

I am all for more testing, but at the same time as I stated before its not the testing that ultimately slows the spread, but social distancing , which is not being practiced in the inner city communities and across other sections of the society.

The PNP at this time requires leadership and direction as its all over the place, and is confusing the public with its disjointed messages