COVID still haunts clean freak KD Knight
Published:Monday | March 14, 2022 | 12:07 AMChristopher Serju/Senior Gleaner Writer
“Paranoid.” That’s K.D. Knight’s self-assessment of the anxiety he has borne daily, even before his wife Pauline, a development expert, died from complications from COVID-19 seven months ago.
The veteran attorney-at-law is still maintaining rigid safety protocols for fear of the deadly virus that took from his arms his life partner of more than 50 years.
Shielding himself from infection has caused him to be isolated from his family for stretches of time – a price paid by Jamaica’s most vulnerable to a disease that has killed more than 2,840 people here.
Knight, a former minister of national security, was vaccinated at the time of his wife’s death last August, but Pauline and other members of his immediate family were not.
Speaking with The Gleaner at the University Chapel following the official funeral for Dr Paul Robertson on Saturday, the 80-year-old disclosed that from the onset of the pandemic, he had taken extreme measures to protect himself, steps that exceeded even the advice prescribed by local or global authorities.
“I did not breach any of the protocols in my house. I distanced, I sanitised. My hands changed colour because I sanitise about 50 times a day. Anything that is required to keep it at bay, I wipe off and I wear my mask. I don’t breach anything,” he said, showing his apparently lightened left hand.
STRINGENT MEASURES
However, Knight has taken observance of the COVID protocols to even more stringent measures in that he and family members do not interact directly, with most of their communication now being done by telephone.
“There is no eating with the family because sitting around the dining table as we usually do – five of us – that’s crowded, and there is no way we can observe six feet apart, and you cannot eat without removing your mask, and you’re not going to eat without talking, and you might even cough,” he said.
“You’re going to cover your mouth and all that, but the fact is, the way the thing is transmitted is mouth and nose. I listen to it, I read up on it, and I didn’t take on the conspiracy theorists. I ignored them.”
His wife, daughter Stacey, and her two children tested positive last summer, with Stacey and Pauline both hospitalised with COVID. Stacey recovered.
Two years on since the first case was detected in Jamaica, the once-raging pandemic has subsided, with 25 cases recorded last Saturday at a positivity rate of 3.3 per cent. That’s a sea change from the dour data early January when an average of seven out of 10 Jamaicans had the disease.
Those change in fortunes, however, haven’t caused Knight to change his habits.
Knight, who represented five People’s National Party functionaries in Trafiguar Beheer hearings at the Supreme Court last week, has maintained his own stringent system of self-preservation even before his wife’s death, having schooled himself about the virus.
The attorney-at-law is one of the 16,000 people here aged 80-89 who are fully vaccinated against COVID 19.
Knight is not vulnerable only because of age. He has hypertension and is a heavy smoker.
“It didn’t matter to me what was the origin of this virus, whether it was created in a laboratory or elsewhere. What mattered to me were the consequences. So I said social distance and I didn’t sleep in there (the matrimonial bedroom) for a few nights, and my wife no feel no way. She knew that I was paranoid. We discussed it, and I told her I was,” said Knight.