TR EMERITUS

Other than masks and test kits being insufficient, MOH also appears to be greatly in need of working-condition calculators. Attached below is MOH's situation report for 24th April @ 12 pm. [LINK] Attached below is MOH's situation report for 25th April @ 12 pm. [LINK] Going by the above snapshots, on 24th April, the total number of cases for Sungei Tengah Lodge is 871 after an increase of 119. However, a day later on 25th April, after an increase of "90 additional cases", it is now 849? Instead of the correct 871+90=961, now Sungei Tengah Lodge has 112 lesser cases. Similarly for Tampines Dormitory, there were a total of 84 cases on 24th April, "one additional cases" is linked to the cluster on  25th April again, shouldn't the total be 85 instead of 84? Additionally, for Tuas View Dormitory. 24th April it has 854 total cases and on 25th April it has an additional 70 cases, but MOH reported the total as 862, resulting in 62 cases missing from the correct total of 924. This is not the first instance that such errors have been made and there have been numerous instances in past reports. Further checks reveal that there were no announcements that adjustments have been made for any of the reports in question. What could possibly be the reason for these glaring errors? Can we even trust the infection figures released by MOH?          Read More →

We are now quarter-way through the circuit breaker (CB) mode, two weeks down and about another six more to go. The situation is not quite encouraging as yet. Of course, this is already by hobbit standards, and hobbits are by nature optimistic, as opposed to elves and dwarves. For one, as of this afternoon, the number of Covid-19 cases in Singapore has exceeded 10,000. Secondly, if you look at the doubling time of the epidemic in Singapore, it is now about 5 days. This is shorter that what was quoted previous by WHO when the disease first appeared – 7.4 days. The other issue is that of unlinked cases. From the MOH website, you can see there are two types of unlinked cases: unlinked community cases and unlinked work permit cases NOT residing in dormitories. From 8 April till 21 April, the total unlinked cases from these two categories reported each day has varied between 24 and 31. But on 21 April, the number went up to 44 (23+21). We hope this high number of 44 is a once-off aberration. The largest sub-cluster of the MOAC, the S11 dormitory cluster now has 2143 cases as of 21 April. This dormitory has a capacity to house 13000 foreign workers. Assuming full occupancy, the prevalence of Covid-19 in this dormitory has reached a staggering 16.5%. And this number may get higher as we test more of the dormitory residents. To illustrate the mind-boggling effects of exponential growth, on 6 April (10 days after the S11 cluster was declared), it was reported in The Straits Times that the S11 cluster had 88 cases. 15 days later, it has grown to 2143 cases (21 April 20). The larger picture is also rather discouraging, as clusters are now found in 28 out of 43 dormitories. There are actually three phases in the local outbreak with respect to the foreign worker dormitories, which this hobbit will call the MOAC War. The first phase was really the preparatory phase which took place in early January till early or mid-February, right up till the Seletar Aerospace Heights Cluster was declared in mid-February. The 2nd phase would stretch from the end of Phase 1 (when we realised that a foreign worker cluster was not a possibility but a reality) to March 25, when the first foreign worker clusters were declared: the Mustafa and Toh Guan Weslite clusters. Since March 25, we have been in Phase 3 for exactly 4 weeks, the phase that entails the entire healthcare system battling MOAC. After 4 weeks, there are now some 7500 foreign permit workers infected, with the 3 largest foreign worker clusters being S11 (2143 cases), Sungei Tengah Lodge (629) and Tuas View Dormitory (519) (MOH report dated 21 April). These numbers are deeply disconcerting if not frightening. Another key factor is that the number of patients now being admitted into our restructured hospitals has reached about 3500. Notwithstanding that most of these patients are young patients, we only have about 9500 beds in the public acute hospital system, and 3500 is a very sizeable proportion of the total. What is heartening to note is that the number Covid-19 patients requiring ICU beds have consistently remained in the 20 to 30 range. But I can imagine that the doctors and nurses are now locked in a daily titanic life-and-death struggle against the virus in the restructured hospitals. There are also hundreds if not thousands of doctors and nurses now manning isolation facilities in private hospitals, community isolation facilities and community hospitals. A friend of mine has described his experience fighting the virus akin to the elves at Helm’s Deep keeping waves and waves of orcs at bay. No matter what you do and how hard you try, the virus just keeps coming, relentless and unforgiving. And you fear that sooner or later, you will run out of energy and arrows and be overwhelmed. All this is rather gloomy even for a hobbit like me that is usually given to a cheery disposition. Let’s move on to something hopefully more encouraging and reassuring. It was reported in The Straits Times on 22 April that during the press conference given the day before, the Manpower Minister said her ministry had instructed the dorm operators as early as early January to put in place mitigation measures, including asking the operators to “raise the standards of hygiene and sharing information with workers how to protect themselves against the virus”. Later on, further measures were introduced, including safe distancing, and closing non-essential facilities such as TV rooms. These measures would probably correspond to Phases 1 and 2 of the MOAC War that have been described above. The Minister then went on to say that more stringent measures, which were only recently introduced in the CB period, would “need to have been done in the context of a circuit breaker where most work has stopped” (quoted from The Straits Times dated 22 April 20, Page A6). These more stringent measures that have since been implemented in the CB period, include: not allowing the workers to cook in communal kitchens located within the dorms, not allowing them to go out on their rest days and interacting with their friends, not even allowing them to go to work, dispersing the workers to live elsewhere so as to make the dormitories less crowded (as they are doing now). The circuit breaker was announced in the first week of April, which would have been in Phase 3 of the MOAC War. It is interesting that the Minister has said that these measures could only be implemented during the circuit breaker period. Let us take a break to think about this in some detail. For a start, what is a circuit breaker, really? Although obvious, it must still be said that to break a circuit, the circuit must first exist before the breaker can be applied. The pre-existence of a circuit is therefore a precondition for the application of a breaker. In other words, there must be something to break in the first place. This is opposed to say, a lockdown. You can apply a lockdown or like the Malaysians, apply a Movement Control Order, even when there are no infections because the lockdown or MCO could be aimed at preventing any infection or transmission from taking place when they may be no infections at all in the first place. But, a circuit breaker can only be justified when there is something already going around (i.e. a circuit). As you can see from the numbers above, there was already some serious circuitous phenomenon or disease transmission in existence when the CB was applied 2 weeks ago. I may be wrong, but what the Minister is saying is that really, a lot of mitigation measures had been done before the CB was announced. As such, we need to look at these two illuminating points: Whatever more serious measures that could have been done, could only have been done in the CB period, when the disease was already transmitting so significantly that it required a CB to be applied. These serious measures therefore cannot be preventative or pre-emptive, (before a circuit has taken or is allowed to take place). But in hindsight, we also know that the mitigation measures implemented in Phases 1 and 2 could not and did not prevent a big circuit forming which necessitated a CB. Therefore, taking these two points together, this would also imply that MOAC was really inevitable. Yes, in conclusion, it now appears that MOAC is an inevitability. And by logical extension, the war against MOAC is also an inevitable war. This is a very crucial and enlightening point that bears repeating. This is because as we battle MOAC and CB is extended to eight weeks, it is also inevitable that there will be much suffering and economic loss, despite the Finance Minister announcing a slew of generous assistance measures. Many workers will suffer hefty pay cuts, and many may even lose their jobs. Some businesses will close as well. Many healthcare workers are working tirelessly, exposing themselves to the possibility of mortal harm. The whole country is probably suffering from high levels of emotional stress as well, from the social distancing, as well as coping with the repeated and increasingly severe limitations to personal freedoms that battling Covid-19 demands during this CB period. But we all need to suffer and put up with this because now we know this has always been an inevitable war. Because it has been implied that MOAC was inevitable, it also means no one should or could be held responsible or accountable for it. As such, I urge all of you, especially my fellow healthcare workers, to just accept this revelation of inevitability and press on with the fight.   * The author is a medical professional who blogs at Hobbit.        Read More →

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen lost no time in making a public apology to the Taiwanese people for the COVID-19 infection of 28 sailors onboard Panshi, their navy's fast combat ship. As commander-in-chief, the military's business is my business. Although the military has done much to bolster Taiwan's epidemic prevention efforts, it made many errors in its handling of Panshi case.....had caused a public health risk. The short paragraph above quoting her apology truly separates the men from the boys. It was an eye-opener to teach those still sucking and sleeping Singaporeans what true leadership and true accountability look like. On the other hand, our No Blame Culture which is espoused by the pap government is to basically shield themselves from their own embarrassments, incompetence and failures and it sure sound so right to those many simple minded and unthinking Singaporeans. On a per capita basis, Singapore under our so called "exceptional pap leadership" has scored another world's first in our Civid-19 infection rates and even until today, it is still climbing. To date, not even one pap ministar, particularly that useless son lhl, Health Minister Gan Kim Yong and Manpower Minister Josephine Teo have the barest of remorse or humility to apologise to Singaporeans for their very, very unsatisfactory handling of our many workers dormitories over many, many years that have caused a clear and present public health risk to the Singaporean public. Zero! For lhl, his by now "internationally famous" no need to wear mask if you are not sick advice to government is not against you wearing mask to you must wear mask when you step out of your house lalala... seem to have absolutely no adverse impact whatsoever on him as a prime minister among his people. He carries on with his life as if those words were never spoken by him and absolutely no apology or even hints of apology were forthcoming from him. In our local parlance, just kay kay boh tai ji la. For Josephine Teo, when her government knows how to collect workers levies for years and years, the least that any government worth its salt would have done would be to enquire and ensure that workers dormitorie are at least, decently habitable and not simply leave them totally to the running of dormitory operators, many of whom maybe friend friend. For Gan Kim Yong, he is likely to go down our history as one of Singapore's worse Health Minister. Under his charge at MOH, data breach happened that resulted in 1.5 million of patients' medical records being stolen, our public hospitals experienced severe bed shortages and hepatitis C outbreak happened at Singapore General Hospital that affected 25 people and killed 8 innocent patients etc. Under that useless lhl premiership, the quality of our government and its governance standards have dropped so much that if the late MM or the late Mr Goh Keng Swee were still around, I bet they not only will have nowhere to hide their faces, I believe that tough men like them will weep like babies too. The more I think through and compose my post, the more disappointed and angry I become. Many pap supporters are not incapable of thinking about and analysing the sorry state of our political situation and come to the obvious conclusions except that they are afraid that their ricebowl maybe affected, after all, people will fight more for their interests than their rights. I understand. To such people, I will say this. Our love and our patriotism for ours and your children's country must override our personal unfounded fears and insecurity. Under another better and more competent administration, all our ricebowls will grow bigger and fuller. Think.   Simon Lim      Read More →