TR EMERITUS

Today, we received two shocking news — One is the record high of 287 new infections pushing the new total to over 1900 confirmed cases in Singapore. The other is Land Transport Authority announcing today that it is in the midst of “rolling out” plans to have social distancing in public transport and at stations, bus stops and stations. Why is the latter a shocker? Today is 9 April, almost three months since we had our first case of COVID-19 virus! Why did it take our government that long to realise preventive action is necessary despite being warned by many netizens of the endless crowds (unmasked at that) in trains and buses and malls etc, etc! The longer this pandemic plays out the more it is exposing the weaknesses of government leaders and the major flaws in policies and societies, including in Singapore. As someone rightly pointed out there is hollow praise in premature accolades and in the constant self praise by some governments. Luxuriating in praise from the World Health Organisation at the 100 m dash is fool’s gold when this pandemic is a marathon with no finishing line in sight yet. Gold should should be awarded to the deserving at the finish line. To be fair, all governments have been working very hard to tackle the pandemic including our government. Some have been outstanding in how they have handled and managed the crisis and reassured their people such as in Taiwan, South Korea and New Zealand. We have much to learn from them in regards to crisis and people management. Our govt did great initially and the contact tracing is certainly good and we have an excellent and responsive healthcare system. But our Govt leaders have shown an inability to think out of the box and to anticipate and foresee the crisis scenarios in a holistic picture. The key to good crisis management is not in just reacting and doing damage control but in anticipating issues and preventing them from becoming a big problem. The fact is costly mistakes have been made and our govt was slow in taking proactive preventive measures starting with not shutting the doors fast to visitors from Wuhan (don’t be xenophobic, cannot close borders they said) to not anticipating that the infection rate would surge by letting people go out as per normal and allowing crowds in malls, on trains and buses without any masks. Worse, telling people that masks do not help and actually advocating through propaganda and advertisements and in school education telling everyone NOT to wear mask unless sick was a life-endangering mistake that should not have been made. The over-fixation on logistics and stockpiling surgical and N95 masks for frontliners led to this terrible mistake. Yes, healthcare workers need the masks and yes there is a mask shortage but common sense tells us it will become a vicious cycle stressing the healthcare system if even more people fall ill due to lack of proper protection. Director General George Gao of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said in March: ”The big mistake in the U.S. and Europe, in my opinion, is that people aren’t wearing masks. This virus is transmitted by droplets and close contact. Droplets play a very important role — you’ve got to wear a mask, because when you speak, there are always droplets coming out of your mouth. Many people have asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic infections. If they are wearing face masks, it can prevent droplets that carry the virus from escaping and infecting others.” The leaders in most countries have urged the use of masks as one of the key ways to protect against the virus and they also set out to protect BOTH the people and healthcare workers by rationing sales of masks and telling people to be prudent in the usage and to stay home. Some like Taiwan and Hongkong got creative and churned out alternative Do-It-Yourself masks and cloth masks over a month ago at least. Here, our government only stopped “discouraging people to wear a mask” last week in early April and even then does not insist by law that everyone should wear a mask when they go out. Such confusing U-turns in policies and the now lame attempt to tell us to mask has led to some people to say “Govt never said must wear. It is optional”! Over the past three months, the virulent nature of COVID-19 was laid bare for all to see as we gawked at the shockingly fast spread globally and yet there was always a sense of hesitance and slowness in our govt’s response. Concerned about the economy and perhaps wanting not to spark panic (or because the ministers really believed this virus was not a giant threat) the govt downplayed it too much in their tone, words and actions. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong even told us to live life as normally as possible in a Facebook post last month! Many people have been lulled into a false sense of security too early and the urgency emerging now is coming a tad late. Just a few days ago, huge crowds still formed at Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, some malls and at IKEA as if all was well. The explosion of cases and fast increasing number of infections here did not surprise many of us as we had been screaming on social media posts (some even wrote letters to the MSM) about the shocking complacency of many locals and expats here and about the glaring hot spots that were like tinder awaiting the right spark. Unmasked humans thronging overcrowded public transport, crowded restaurants, crowded shops, crowded food courts, crowded wet markets, crowded Mustafa were all recipes for a disaster waiting to happen. Frequent hand washing and sanitising? Few were spotted using sanitisers in public while many were spotted leaving toilets without washing their hands still! NGOs had also warned early about the potential petri dishes at crowded dormitories and construction sites. Yet, the warnings of over-crowded filthy dorms housing foreign workers were ignored, seemingly swept under the carpet so to speak, “third-rate” humans not worthy of better attention while returning locals and expats were quarantined in 5 star hotels. Life is unfair but it cannot be this unjust. The ignored warnings have manifested into several hundred infected foreign workers and a quarantine of over 20,000 and counting. Too much not done, too little proactive action taken, too late to put the clock back. And today, Minister Masagos Zulkifli lamented that too many people were not taking this COVID-19 seriously. Perhaps the minister ,who also serves on the task force, can spark an honest reflection on what was done wrong and how to get more people to take it seriously. For one, call it a LOCKDOWN and not that ridiculous and lame “Circuit Breaker”. Simisai circuit breaker when the house is on fire already??? Every country with a lockdown calls it that except for Singapore. Uniquely Singapore? Spare us. Secondly, all signs point to a DORSCON RED already so why isn’t the govt raising the Red alert? Raise to Red, Call it Lockdown and I guarantee that will get more people to take this seriously. In some ways I am glad this pandemic is shining inescapable light and shame on many wrongful acts committed by humans, the follies of some governments and showing up the utter selfishness of many which includes the leaders of the People’s Action Party pushing to hold the General Election sooner than necessary. How could they even think about that now when the infection rate is spiralling upwards each day? All their attention and our state’s limited resources should and must be focused on taming this spread and calming the people first. No ifs No buts about this. Lives must come before votes. This pandemic is separating the chaff from the wheat as we see the common man step forward as our true heroes: Too many to name here but they include the whistle blower doctor who died in China, many healthcare workers who died in the line of duty; the four brave local docs here who wrote a letter urging us, against govt narrative, to wear masks; the countless nurses, doctors and all healthcare workers worldwide who work tirelessly to save lives; the average Joes and Janes who create videos to show how to make DIY masks and other Personal Protection Equipment gear; the community helping each other such as by donating masks and food to the needy and elderly; the many funny meme-makers who crack jokes daily to cheer the world etc, etc, etc. In contrast, where are our crazy rich tycoons, they who who have fed off this land? They have been surprisingly silent. What else will we see and what else will humanity learn as the pandemic unfolds further?   Jentrified Citizen * The writer blogs at Jentrified Citizen. ** More articles by the same writer on TRE.      Read More →

I’ve never been what you’d call a “gym-type.” The last time I went into the gym, it was back in the day when I was still married to Gina, which was some 20-years back. Exercise was limited to the compulsory physical fitness sessions I had to attend for failing to pass IPPT, the physical fitness proficiency test that is compulsory for all Singaporean men of military service age (Last time I passed was when I was still in full time national service). Getting fit was not my priority and I ballooned sometime in 2006. At one stage, my little Chinese frame had to carry around 99 plus kilos of weight. So, given my rather distant physical relationship with the concept of physical fitness, I find myself at the age of 45 (not really old but definitely not young), being described by someone significantly younger with adjectives like “hunky looking” and “strongest one.” I was a little shocked to receive such descriptions and it took my sister to remind me that adjectives like “hunky” are not associated with men over 40 and I should just accept the compliment. I bring up the story of my sudden bout of physical fitness because I’ve been busy helping my main client move boxes of documents to his home in preparation for Singapore’s Covid-19 “circuit” breaker, which has forced offices to close and people to work from home. This was an exercise involving lots of logistics and the only other person doing heavy lifting in the company is the same age as me. We, the “Old Farts,” became valued for our physicality. While its flattering to be known for your physicality after a certain age, it is a worrying inditement of the generations after you and hopefully this is sometime that “Covid 19” corrects. The crux of the problem are actually good things. The increased availability in education and scientific progress reduced the need for human muscle to do a good number of jobs. Survival has moved from being the ability to escape being a predator’s lunch to earning a wage. Why should human life be put at stake on any given task when you can get a machine to do it. There is, however, a downside. In the last 50-years, there has been a “stigmatization” against jobs that required a certain amount of physicality. This has been especially true in Singapore, which is a society obsessed with progress and status (which is a good thing in as much as our obsession with material progress has made us materially successful). I’m old enough to remember when parents and teachers used the threat of “sweeping the streets” to get us to study hard, get into a good university, which automatically lead to a well-paying job in an office. We became so successful at getting our kids to study hard, get into university and a good office job that we found that nobody wanted to do jobs that required them to be anywhere outside an airconditioned office for more than an hour at a time. Singapore’s fabulously clean streets are inevitably cleaned by people from elsewhere. If you see a Singaporean in any of the “non” office jobs, they are usually very old, or crippled. The situation was such that if you were a fit and healthy Singaporean with more than a primary school leavers certificate and happened to be working somewhere other than an office, people automatically assumed there was something wrong. I think of the “horny” aunties who assumed I was a former convict based on the fact that I was serving them in the Bistrot. Nobody saw value outside the office. As far as Singapore’s average Joe was concerned, the Bangladeshi, Indian and Filipinos cleaning our streets and looking after our kids where bloody lucky and shouldn’t demand much money. Sad to say officialdom encouraged this attitude. When it came to discussing a pay raise for our ministers (average salary of $100,000 a month – the emphasis being on a month), the discussion was always about “talent attraction” or “talent retention.” When it came to talking about a pay raise for cleaners (average salary $1,000 a month) it was always about the need to “raise productivity.” If there’s anything that “covid-19” does, I hope it shifts attitudes and people start to appreciate the value that people like cleaners, nurses and all sorts of humble jobs offer society. Covid-19 is bringing us back to basics. In the past few days, I’ve met with “professionals,” coming to grips with the fact that what they do is not an essential service. Suddenly the janitor is more valuable to society than the private wealth manager earning multiple times more. Hopefully, Covid-19 will get people like movie stars and sports stars understand that the multi-millions they earn are what Angelina Jolie calls “silly money,” and channel some what they earn to those lower down the food chain. I am optimistic that we will beat this virus. I just hope that when we do, we remember the people who were kept us safe during vulnerable times. I’ve never said we should go out of our way to make people rich but I do think that its time that society stop begrudging people like cleaners the ability to earn a livable wage. I would also ad that as much as I am flattered to be described as “strongest one” and “hunky looking” as I enter my later years, I hope the kids of today remember that being physically capable is not sometime you do for fun or as part of a fashion trend but an important part of having a life.   Tang Li *The author blogs at http://beautifullyincoherent.blogspot.com/ .  Read More →

We are coming to a critical point in Wuhan Coronavirus crisis. We may not have come to this stage if PAP had been more proactive in managing this whole crisis. For the worse case scenario, if 30% of the quarantined foreign workers are infected, we will end up with 10K infections from the dormitories alone. Unless, universal testing is carried out for all foreign workers residing in these dormitories and separate those healthy ones away from those infected workers. Time is running out and PAP government has to act fast.   Goh Meng Seng      Read More →