ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic’s unprecedented scope and profound political, social, and economic effects have laid bare the plague of inequality within and between nations and amplified the vulnerabilities of the middle-income Caribbean nation of Jamaica. The pandemic has highlighted and magnified long-standing problems emanating from Jamaica’s tenuous position in the global system, a dependent, fragile economy and enduring structural inequalities at the national level. While the early response to COVID-19 was to flatten the curve using WHO-endorsed protocols, this approach was insensitive to local inequalities. Drawing on analysis of primary and secondary data, including contemporaneous social media posts, newspapers and literature on the economic and sociopolitical history and present of Jamaica, the social contract and everyday practices and discourses of citizenship, we argue that long histories of exclusion and marginalisation at national and international levels, combined with distrust of government, have impacted the state’s ability to respond to the pandemic and effectively implement public health protocols and a national vaccination programme.
