TR EMERITUS

This commentary is a summary of my thoughts and reflections after having listened to lhl and the MTF ministars yesterday. C19 vaccination. We now know that C19 vaccinations do not accord us the protection from infection or transmission and their efficacies wane much after a few months. With that knowledge, it has becomes the government's logic for encouraging Singaporeans to get their 3rd booster jab. I ask since we now know that their efficacies decline markedly after a few months, is the government then going to ask people who still trust them to go for their 4th and 5th jabs etc in the months ahead? Do we really believe that we can vaccinate our way out to live life like pre-covid days? Have the MTF and their so called expert committee seriously evaluate holistically the virus injuries vs vaccine injuries equation in their overall strategy moving forward etc? With our high vaccination rates especially with the mRNA technology and related issues etc, Singapore along with Israel have become a major laboratory or guinea pigs that many other countries are watching. Ivermectin. I ask if Ivermectin is a dirty word to the pap government, perhaps for reasons best known to themselves. News about some countries' experiences with Ivermectin to cure C19 infection have reported encouraging successes. I ask if they are unaware or those reports are fake or exaggerated or what? Here at home, I ask if serious efforts have been made by our relevant authorities to study and understand deeper whether Ivermectin has any useful roles at combating C19? Ivermectin has been reported to be an inexpensive and effective drug at treating C19 patients. In our journey towards living with C19, we really shouldn't leave any stone unturned that could potentially benefit our people. Next, from 13 October, unvaccinated people will be barred from eating at coffee-shops, hawker centres and entering shopping malls etc. It is inevitable that such a decision will inconvenienced many, many people including unvaccinated people who work in those places. It is another glaring example of an ill- conceived decision by the pap government. Cutting through the chase, shouldn't it be the unvaccinated who should be more afraid of contracting C19 rather than vaccinated persons? Allowing only vaccinated people to dine in at hawker centres and coffee shops not only defy logic, it is likely to give vaccinated people a false sense of security because, I stress, even vaccinated persons can catch C19 and become silent spreaders without even realising it and that is very scary. This possibility and the risks are real and they have not been properly and satisfactorily addressed by the MTF after all these past months. The government shouldn't pretend, underplay it or simply adopt a bury thy head in the ground mentality and the people must have the gumption, the spine and the courage to press their government to properly address it in our own and our loved ones' safety interest and with urgency. I, however, agree that saving our health care system from collapsing under the weigh of C19 infection is very important, hence, the Stay Home Quarantine measure for people who are ART tested positive is an important part of the overall protocol, however, laws must be promptly tighten and if necessary, with temporary provisions passed to ensure compliance otherwise, at best, we will only fool ourselves and at worse, we quietly sow C19 infection en masse through weak government policies again at the grassroot and heartland levels. I have not forgotten that the C19 Delta variant which we are currently dealing with is a highly transmissible variant and I hope that the MTF hasn't forgotten that too. Think. Simon Lim  Read More →

The ministerial task force started to relax the restrictions after the vaccination rate for the adult population passed the 80% thresholds. They described the new strategy as "living with covid". I agreed with the strategy. During the initial few days, the infections increased sharply to several hundreds a day. After studying the data, I said that this was due to our mass testing approach, using the contact tracing data (i.e. safe entry and trace together). They will catching many cases, which were mild. I compared our rate of testing per million of population and found that we were testing 10 times of the global average. See report. I suggested that we should stop the contact tracing using the safe entry data (which is unreliable). Several disease experts also argued that the mass testing should be stopped, as it brings out many mild cases and cause alarm. According to my reasoning, the mild cases will go away and will not lead to a sharp increase in severe cases and deaths. In the subsequent days, the severe cases and deaths spike up sharply. The new data caused me to reexamine my approach. Does the data show that the mass testing was necessary to identify the virus and isolate the infected people to slow down the spread? If the mass testing was stopped, would there be a sharp increase in severe cases and deaths, compared to what is happening now? I thought over this matter for a few days. I looked at the experience in India and Indonesia. Their infections and deaths have come down by over 90% compared to a peak a few months earlier. Their vaccination rate remained below 50%, compared to over 80% for Singapore. What is the possible reason for the spike in cases in Singapore and the sharp drop in India and Indonesia? I have a hypothesis that needs to be verified. My hypothesis is that the virus has already reached a large port of the population in India and Indonesia leading to a large number of deaths among the vulnerable population. Those who survived have developed natural immunity. It appears to me that a small part of the population will be vulnerable to the virus, but the majority of the people will have immunity against it, either through the vaccine or their natural immunity. It also seem to me that the testing and isolation of the mild cases will not achieve much in stopping the spread of the virus. It is probably quite widespread already. It should be quite safe to stop the mass testing of the asymptomatic cases and only deal with the cases where the virus has developed into a more severe stage and the infected person becomes unwell. We can focus our attention on treating the sick people. We should not divert the resources towards testing the asymptomatic cases and isolated them. Our trajectory seemed to follow Israel. They achieved a high rate of vaccination and relaxed their restrictions. This was followed by a large increase in new infections and deaths. Isreal has now gone over the wave. Their infections and deaths have come down. I expect Singapore to follow the pattern of Israel in a few more weeks time. In the meantime, I hope that the ministerial task force will reduce the mass testing of asymptomatic cases. It will stop the panic among the people at large.   Tan Kin Lian      Read More →

Singapore is what you could call a “hyper achieving” nation. Nothing excites our government more than the opportunity to talk about all our wonderful achievements, which we managed to do without any resources and despite lacking just about everything that you need to get by. We have the best airport (rankings of the world’s best airports actually make national news in Singapore), the world’s best airline, the world’s best port and as a former 155mm gunner, we actually bragged about having the first 52 calibre gun howitzer in the world (which we cannot fire in Singapore). It seems that the world is actually impressed by our list of hyperachievement’s. We’ve moved from being a “sane spot” in an insane neighbourhood. In the pre-covid days, even the Europeans were impressed with us. As a White (sorry, the world isn’t colour blind) Dutchman once said to me when talking about where to live in the world – “Singapore – where else is there to live?” However, whilst we have been very successful and creating something to impress the world’s wealthiest people, there is one area where our hyper achieving little island has achieved remarkably little – if at all. One of the areas where this has been glaring has been in the area of our treatment of anyone who has had the misfortune of born in a less developed Asian nation (particularly in any of the South Asian ones), dark skinned and working in a “rough” job. The glitz that our ministers push to the world’s wealthiest, was actually built-under pretty s** awful conditions. Unfortunately, its not considered proper to talk about these things. The government gets very offended and labels you a threat to our perpetual economic miracle (whose economic miracle is a topic for another debate). The general population has been trained into telling you things like “it’s good compared to what they’re used to,” whenever you raise in the question of making life a little bit more tolerable for the dark-skinned labourers. Raise the topic of the welfare of migrant labour welfare and people will start accusing you of wanting to house the estate cleaners in the Ritz Carlton. This is obviously not true. Activist like Jolovan Wham and Alex Au of Yawning Bread are not advocating for labourers to be housed in luxury. What they are promoting is for workers to have same things that the rest of us take for granted – namely housing and transport that is not life threatening. Take transport as an example. The standard way of transporting workers is in the back of an open top lorry. It’s not a case of having one or two guys in the lorry – it’s usually a whole group of at least ten cramped onto the back of an open top van. It goes without saying that things like “seat belts,” which are mandatory for the rest of us don’t exist on such forms of transport. Here is an example of what transporting workers looks like: It goes without saying that when accidents happen, the results are quite horrific. Below, is a shot taken from Lianhe Zaobao, Singapore’s main Chinese daily of what happens in such situations. Unfortunately, this isn’t the only isolated incident and our proverbial activist have been calling on the government to do something: Photo: Lianhe Zaobao I guess you could forgive our hyper-achieving government’s inability to act on transportation in as much as transportation is a relatively new issue and if one wants to be cynical, traffic accidents don’t make headlines. That cannot be said of the issue of housing workers. Prior to last year’s explosion of Covid-19 cases, there were cases of workers dying of diseases that one would have imagined our hyper-achieving government had eradicated from Singapore’s shores decades ago, though unsanitary conditions in worker dormitories. These cases were treated like White Supremacy attacks – lone nut cases – though in this case, the victim was considered the lone nut for having the audacity to die of a disease that was not his (they have all been men) fault. Last year’s explosion in the dormitories proved that this was not true. It became very clear to the rest of the world that the dormitories that the workers were being housed in, were designed to help the virus spread like wild fire. In fairness, our hyper-achieving government acted quickly. Tax payers were obliged to pay up to help the very profitable dormitory owners upgrade their facilities to be less disease friendly. There was a national angst about needing to look after the workers who were doing all the s***ty jobs that we were not willing to do. You would have imagined that our hyper-achieving government would have at least solved the problem in the dormitories. Well, it seems that we haven’t solved the issue as can be seen from this report from Bloomberg in August 2021: [LINK] So, we had a period of national angst about foreign workers. The tax payers subisidised profitable businesses to bring their facilities up to liveable standards and a year later the problem exists in the same place. Now, this may not be as ground breaking as the American 20-year, US$2 trillion exercise in Afghanistan but it’s not definitely not something you expect from a government that claims to be hyper-achieving and brought you the best of everything. Disclaimer – In view of Singapore’s introduction of the Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Bill (“FICA”), I declare that I have received no foreign funding – as a matter of fact I receive no funding at all and would in no way resist anyone who was willing to give me a few pennies regardless of status (ie I don’t care if you’re an “evil” Hungarian Jewish Financier or a “good” White wearing politician from Singapore as long as you put the money in my pocket)   Tang Li *Although I’ve been based mainly in Singapore for nearly two decades, I’ve had the privilege of being able meet people who have crossed borders and cultures. I’ve befriended ministers and ambassadors and worked on projects involving a former head of state. Yet, at the same time, I’ve had the privilege of befriending migrant labourers and former convicts. All of them have a story to tell. All of them add to the fabric of life. I hope to express the stories that inspire us to create life as it should be.      Read More →