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Governor Albert Bryan said Monday it's okay for Virgin Islanders to "slux down" on Thanksgiving, a nod to a word the governor made up that has become so ubiquitous it is now prominent in the Urban Dictionary.
Mr. Bryan's made-up word — voiced while responding to a question from the Consortium's Ernice Gilbert on July 26 during one of his Covid-19 press briefings — did not become popular until it was re-published four days later by the Consortium along with stories regarding the governor's frustration at the time with vaccine doubters.
What followed were multiple memes and gifs, and two videos made by DJ Avalanche that catapulted "Sluxing Down" into the urban word bank of Virgin Islanders at home and abroad. Even Governor Bryan joined the fun after "Sluxing" went viral, posting a status 0n July 30 that said, "Say less!" which was attached to an image that read, "Stop the sluxing down, get vaccinated now."
The governor has now fully embraced his word, and during Monday's Covid-19 press briefing he said, "This is one time it's okay to slux," referring to Thanksgiving.
So what does it mean to slux down? Here's the Urban Dictionary description: "The activity of swallowing down or ingesting high carbohydrate content foods." It quotes in part Mr. Bryan's response to the Consortium: "People sluxing down macaroni and cheese, stuffing, and season rice everyday."
While the meme is now emblazoned as legitimate urban talk in the USVI, Mr. Bryan was coming from a place of frustration as the territory's vaccination rate was and still is among the lowest in the U.S.
Here's his full response when asked by the Consortium on July 26 what would be his response to individuals who are hesitant to take a Covid-19 vaccine:
"The number one killer in the Virgin Islands is hypertension, heart disease and diabetes, and people [eating] macaroni and cheese, stuffing, seasoned rice, every single day. Souse and all of these other stuff.
"They're putting on clothes washed in chemicals that will poison your body. They're spraying dyes and all kinds of things in their hair. They're going to nail shops where they're filing down and inhaling all kinds of toxins every single day, and painting themselves and their hair and their fingers with all kinds of things that contaminate your body.
"They're putting phones to their heads full of radiation and all kinds of other things that are messing with their system. And every day and night they're going to bars and places and drinking sodas and all kinds of alcohol and other kinds of toxins in their body that they never know where it come from.
"They're eating at fast food restaurants, they don't know how it's made, what it's made from, or what kinds of plastic are in it, and you're going to tell me about vaccines? Let's get real.
"If the government had wanted to poison you and kill you they could have done so a lot faster, because all they had to do is put it in an app.
"I mean all of the arguments that I've listened to, vaccines have a long history. In 2021 we don't need to be going through the Black Plague of the dark ages because people don't want to take the medicine. And so many places in the world people wish they could have this medicine in order to survive.
"Bottom line, if you get sick, you're going to be begging for the monoclonal antibodies which is the same technology that we use in the vaccine."
