Gloria Estefan says there’s a ‘serious lack of leadership’ in the U.S. covid response

Global Latin pop legend and entrepreneur Gloria Estefan is facing some hard business decisions in her home state of Florida, as it continues to battle the covid crisis. She also said the United States had suffered from a “serious lack of leadership” in its handling of the pandemic so far. She was speaking after the release of her new album, “Brazil305”, which celebrates her life-long love of Brazilian music and features new songs and re-recorded samba versions of some of her classic hits.

Gloria Estefan’s first album in seven years had been set for release in 2017 but was delayed after her mother passed away, and then most recently by the global crisis and the worldwide response to the death of George Floyd. She is happy that her album is finally out there to at least entertain people a little bit, maybe make them forget, or dance around their kitchen or wherever they may happen to be. Along with her music-producer husband Emilio, Estefan is one of Miami’s most famous residents and owns restaurants and hotel resorts in Florida.

Florida has become one of the worst-hit by covid in the United States. Overall, over 9,539 deaths have been reported in Florida with 576,094 confirmed cases. Gloria Estefan is now having to consider moving in a new direction because of the impact of the pandemic on her businesses. The pandemic is going to change things. She has to make some hard decisions, because she does not know how long she can sustain, which is tough.

Gloria Estefan had retained her staff for as long as possible, and had also helped find 300 of her former workers’ ongoing employment in a pharmacy business in the state.

During the crisis, Gloria Estefan also used her restaurants to provide 500 meals a day to healthcare workers and first responders across Miami. She also released a public service announcement during the lockdown response to the pandemic, with a music-video parody of her global hit “Get On Your Feet” becoming “Put On Your Mask”. Asked about the leadership from United States President Donald Trump’s administration and his handling of the pandemic so far, she said the country needed inspiration from the top and a “mask mandate”.

United States had suffered from a serious lack of leadership. At the beginning, the prudent thing would have been to listen to the task force that was really expressing that the best way Americans could protect everyone was to have a mask mandate. White House senior advisor Jared Kushner, had defended Trump’s response to the covid pandemic. Trump had opted not to politicize mask mandate and he had done everything possible to try to figure how to help people get whatever care they needed.

This is a global pandemic, it had ravaged many countries throughout the world and Kushner thought Trump had dealt with it in a very responsible way. Gloria Estefan said the wearing of masks had become politicized when it really should not be in this election year. Originally born in Cuba, she said politics was either “pro-Fidel” or “against-Fidel”, referring to the revolutionary and former Prime Minister and President Fidel Castro.

Gloria Estefan took a lot of hope growing up in the United States seeing “balanced” and “level headed” debates and discussions.

But Gloria Estefan is no longer witnessing it. Those days were unfortunately gone and that was a sad thing for her to see. All politicians on both sides of the aisle should step up and try to create some hope and balance and listen to each other. She was very happy with the announcement of Senator Kamala Harris as the Democratic Vice Presidential Nominee.

A woman of color, the daughter of two immigrants from Jamaica and from India, filled Gloria Estefan with a lot of hope. Looking ahead to the United States election, she said one major issue could potentially be voter suppression due to the impact of covid, with people possibly fearful to stand in line to vote. She would cast a vote and hoped that everyone would register and vote, whatever their decision.