I don’t have a particular focus this weekend, but just want to share a few short notes with you.
The first is president Joe Biden said that the US government will buy 500m Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines to donate to the world. This is great news, because most Caribbean people were asking for the Pfizer vaccine in particular- They see it as the best out of the bunch and certainly rate it higher than the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine.
Thank God president Biden is doing this and not just dumping the US’s excess Oxford/AZ vaccines on the rest of the world, which was his first inclination and still on the agenda as far as we are aware.
A second note is that we are in the summer season and that means that people are in the seas. With the seas come sea creatures. We have been noticing an ever increasing proliferation of sharks swimming closer and closer to shore over the last 12 months. Most of them are nurse sharks, harmless creatures, but they are still sharks.
This indicates to us that something is driving these creatures towards the shore and into more contact with human beings. While the science doesn’t point directly to climate change and global warming, one would have to ask if whether or not the animals are telling us something. I was once told by an old man some years back that whenever you see sea gulls closer in land and in inner city neighbourhoods it means that a storm is coming and the birds are looking for land to perch and stay out of the way of the storm. There may be something in what the ole boy told me some years back. Pay attention to the animals.
The last note is, while speaking of climate change and weather phenomenon, the Hurricane season started earlier than normal this year. Instead of on June 1, the national hurricane centre in Florida started noticing storm patterns at the end of May.
There was tropical storm Ana that showed up in the Caribbean at mid-May and then there is another pattern growing in the Gulf region between Mexico, Central America and the Cayman Islands. The pattern has not developed into a storm yet, but the NHC said that by weekend they should be able to determine if it is something the Caribbean should be concerned about.
Have a great weekend.