Sint Maarten prime minister’s ‘stop moving’ coronavirus order goes viral

St. Maarten’s PM Silveria Jacobs addressed the coronavirus pandemic a week ago and now the stern message has gone viral thanks to Jemele Hill.

Leaders from the Council of Ministers held a press briefing on April 1 to discuss the impact the novel coronavirus has had on Sint Maarten. When it was Jacobs’ turn to speak, she got straight to the point. She ordered people to just stay home.

Hill gave the edict new life when she shared it to social media Thursday.

American leaders: C’mon everybody, please stay inside. It’s important.

The Caribbean: pic.twitter.com/oopMyRT0lG

— Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) April 9, 2020

“We can stop [the spread of the virus],” she said. “Stop moving. Simply stop moving.”

READ MORE: Hospital worker said he beat coronavirus with Caribbean homemade remedy

In addition to practicing social distancing, Jacobs mentioned that people needed to make do with what they already had at home to eat.

“If you do not like the type of bread you like in your house, eat crackers. If you do not have bread, eat cereal. Eat oats. Sardines. You’re supposed to have a two week supply for hurricanes and at the beginning of this, I said prepare your disaster kit as if you would for a hurricane,” she said of the island which was hit by Hurricane Irma in 2017.

“That meant some people went out and bought toilet paper and water. The water’s not going to stop. The toilet paper is still in stores. What you need is food.”

March 29 meeting (Credit: Government of Sint Maarten)

Jacobs said that if the residents didn’t restrict their movements, she’d have no other choice but to mandate a lockdown. She’d been asking, begging and pleading for the past month as there is not an endless amount of kits available for COVID-19 testing. There are also only ICU beds.

“There are people taking chances. There are people still hanging out at bars. There are people still going through the back door and doing their hair and 3 or 4 people in there,” she said.

“When we decided to allow barbershops and salons to be open, it was with an appointment process. My hair was done. So, people were saying, ‘Oh she just wants her hair to be done.’”

READ MORE: 41 MTA transit employees have died of the coronavirus

Jacobs explained that she usually goes to someone’s home to have her hair braided and they had high hygiene practices.

“Can you guarantee that with every single person who is out there doing hair or have a barbershop? Every contact with a barber or a person in a salon is a possibility to contract and spread the virus,” she said, noting a salon owner who had a fever.

Jacobs added that she’d be compared to Desi Bouterse, the Suriname president who got 20 years in jail ordering the murders of his political opponents. She’d been called all kinds of names for trying to close the border on March 22.

“Someone told me, ‘You’re starting to sound like the Suriname general,’” she said. “But it looks as if, at times, that is what is needed: a tough, hard exterior for people to listen.”

Many on social media related to the tough love.

This hits a little harder with the Ether. pic.twitter.com/SnlmU3w05V

— Blair Adams (@digitalb) April 9, 2020

“When she said “if I have to” I felt every last word. Had a childhood flash back lol,” one user wrote.

Jacobs’ comments begin at the 23:00 mark.

 

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Woman Arrested for Licking $1,800 in Groceries

Life in a pandemic is something none of us have any experience in handling. It’s been rough; can’t even front. It’s no excuse, though, for the level of sheer wilding we’ve seen from certain parts of the population.

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Essential Workers Could Get Up To $25,000 In Hazard Pay Under Senate Proposal

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, or the novel coronavirus, many states have issued mandatory lockdowns, causing all residents to stay at home, closing down all non-essential businesses to contain the spread of the virus. Although many companies have closed their doors, essential workers, including grocery store workers, nurses, and deliverymen, are on the frontlines battling the worst of the pandemic while exposing themselves to infection. Now Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer and other Democrats are proposing to give doctors, nurses, and other essential workers up to $25,000 in hazard pay as part of phase four of the coronavirus relief bill.

Essential workers may be able to get a $25,000 raise soon if a new plan from Senate Democrats passes. The plan would lead to the creation of a COVID-19 “Heroes Fund” to “reward, retain, and recruit essential workers,” Senate Democrats said in a statement this week.

The fund would provide $25,000 for “pandemic premium pay increase for essential frontline workers” until the end of 2020. Workers would get an additional $13 per hour on top of their regular wages, capped at $25,000. The full raise would be available to people making less than $200,000 per year; those making more would be capped at $5,000.

The fund would also provide a one-time $15,000 hiring bonus to “attract and secure” a workforce to fight the coronavirus. It would apply to people who enlist as healthcare or home-care workers or first responders where “severe staffing shortages” are “impeding the ability to provide care during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“As the COVID pandemic has reached alarming new levels, our health care system is strained to the max, our economy is strained to the max. Doctors and nurses, medical personnel of all types are putting their lives on the line every single day to fight this disease and save others,” Schumer said on a conference call introducing the proposal according to The Hill. “For these Americans, working from home is not an option. Social distancing is not an option.”

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World Health Organization head targeted with racism, death threats

The World Health Organization has been on the front lines of the corona pandemic since word of a novel coronavirus starting coming out of China in January. The Ethiopian head of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is a microbiologist who has been leading the organization since 2017.

He is the first African to hold the position.

READ MORE:  Trump, Congress weigh more stimulus checks for Americans 

This week, Ghebreyesus revealed that he’s been getting death threats while at the helm of the organization, reported CNBC.com.

“I can tell you personal attacks that have been going on for more than two, three months. Abuses, or racist comments, giving me names, Black or Negro. I’m proud of being Black, proud of being Negro,” he said on a conference call from Geneva where WHO has its headquarters.

“I don’t care, to be honest … even death threats. I don’t give a damn.”

He did single out Taiwan as a source of some of the insulting rhetoric, to which the Taiwanese president, Tsai Ing-wen, said were “baseless.” She asked that Ghebreyesus apologize and then invited him to her country.

Ghebreyesus was also critical of suggestions made by scientists on French television that a vaccine should be first tried out in Africa. He said it reflected a “colonialist” mentality and insulted the entire Black community.

The WHO leader said he hoped that countries could come together and leave differing ideologies and political differences behind to combat the virus.

READ MORE: Coronavirus is hitting Black America at a staggering rate

“Please quarantine COVID politics. That’s what we want. We don’t care about personal attacks,” he said. “We care about the life passing every single minute unnecessarily because we couldn’t unite to fight this virus.”

The post World Health Organization head targeted with racism, death threats appeared first on TheGrio.

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Essential Workers Could Get Up To $25,000 In Hazard Pay Under Senate Proposal

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, or the novel coronavirus, many states have issued mandatory lockdowns, causing all residents to stay at home, closing down all non-essential businesses to contain the spread of the virus. Although many companies have closed their doors, essential workers, including grocery store workers, nurses, and deliverymen, are on the frontlines battling the worst of the pandemic while exposing themselves to infection. Now Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer and other Democrats are proposing to give doctors, nurses, and other essential workers up to $25,000 in hazard pay as part of phase four of the coronavirus relief bill.

Essential workers may be able to get a $25,000 raise soon if a new plan from Senate Democrats passes. The plan would lead to the creation of a COVID-19 “Heroes Fund” to “reward, retain, and recruit essential workers,” Senate Democrats said in a statement this week.

The fund would provide $25,000 for “pandemic premium pay increase for essential frontline workers” until the end of 2020. Workers would get an additional $13 per hour on top of their regular wages, capped at $25,000. The full raise would be available to people making less than $200,000 per year; those making more would be capped at $5,000.

The fund would also provide a one-time $15,000 hiring bonus to “attract and secure” a workforce to fight the coronavirus. It would apply to people who enlist as healthcare or home-care workers or first responders where “severe staffing shortages” are “impeding the ability to provide care during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“As the COVID pandemic has reached alarming new levels, our health care system is strained to the max, our economy is strained to the max. Doctors and nurses, medical personnel of all types are putting their lives on the line every single day to fight this disease and save others,” Schumer said on a conference call introducing the proposal according to The Hill. “For these Americans, working from home is not an option. Social distancing is not an option.”

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