The Tribune

WHEN we wrote about the return of tourism on Friday, we said the Americans were coming – well, they’ll be here sooner than you might have thought.

In the week before Independence, 13,000 cruise visitors are expected to come to The Bahamas. For Bahamian businesses, resorts, bars, shops – that’s 13,000 opportunities.

Already, the mega resorts of Atlantis and Baha Mar are making the most of it. Baha Mar is reporting occupancy rates at the weekend of 75 percent. If that’s good, Atlantis has bettered it, with 90 percent.

There’s been talk of a bounce back – this is it.

What has brought this rapid return? Well, part of it is that people have been unable to travel for so long because of COVID restrictions that people have been aching to get away. They have been wanting sun, sand and sea – and here they come.

The other part of it is the surge in vaccinations, particularly in the key markets from which our visitors largely come.

The United States has now vaccinated just under half its population – 46.4 percent are fully vaccinated at the time of writing, and that number is going up and up.

That number is more impressive when you consider that children are still mostly unvaccinated as testing continues to ensure the vaccines are safe for young people.

The ships coming to visit include both those that are home porting here, and others that have resumed sailing from Florida.

Looking further, Virgin Cruise Lines plans to visit Nassau towards the end of the third quarter of this year, while Disney is due to return in August, and Norwegian Cruise Line in September.

The Nassau Cruise Port chief has also revealed cruise passengers will not have to be kept in a “bubble” while in Nassau when they disembark next week.

The biggest key to this has been vaccination. As we reported last week, almost all fatalities in the US from COVID-19 are of people who have not been vaccinated. The vaccine isn’t a guarantee that you won’t catch COVID, but it makes the spread harder, and it reduces the effects. That lets people get back to normal – including going on holiday and coming here to The Bahamas.

This is a boon for our economy, it is lifeblood to Downtown Nassau, which has suffered so long in the absence of tourists, and it lets hotel, restaurant and bar workers get back to work.

We’re not all the way back to where we were – which was a record year, so that may take quite a while – but this return of tourists is exactly what we need.

More murders

And now we go from one epidemic to another. We may see hope after the long effects of COVID on our health and our economy – but another, older epidemic has not gone away.

Gladstone Francis Jr was outside a home with his daughter on Thursday night when a vehicle pulled up and opened fire. Mr Francis Jr died, while his daughter was in serious condition in hospital.

Just 24 hours later, the niece of Mr Francis Jr, Shavonna Adderley, was outside the same house as she came to give her condolences when a car pulled up and gunmen got out and opened fire. Shavonna and another man were injured, with Shavonna later dying in hospital.

Crime is the epidemic that never seems to go away.

At the start of this year, Police Commissioner Paul Rolle insisted that a fall in murder figures last year had been down to the efforts of his officers, not because of COVID lockdowns. And yet, as lockdowns have eased up, so murder figures have started to rise. Earlier this month, National Security Minister Marvin Dames said murders had jumped by 52 percent compared to the same period last year, but suggested it was a global trend.

Certainly, there has been investment in tackling crime, but some, such as the ShotSpotter technology, helps officers react after the event rather than deal with the issues beforehand.

One thing for sure, as we emerge from the cloud of COVID, we do not want to return to living under the cloud of crime. We don’t want it for ourselves, for our family and friends, and we don’t want it for our reputation as a nation.

We definitely don’t want a return to warnings being issued by the US over our crime levels and putting people off coming to visit just as we get back on our feet again.

So, Commissioner, if COVID really wasn’t the cause of the decrease, it’s time to get those crime figures down again.