TR EMERITUS

In the 29th September 2021 latest report of the Covid-19 situation, Straits Times reported, “The total number of cases in Singapore now stands at 91,775.” The daily infection numbers are going from bad to worse. It seems there is no end in sight to the daily bad news. Truth be told, it is even scarier when you look at the real numbers! The total number of Covid-19 cases is definitively not 91,775. Quite a while ago Minister Lawrence Wong himself conceded that at least half the migrant workers in the migrant worker dormitories was infected. Not counting the smaller dormitories, there were 323,000 migrant workers living in such quarters. All of them were locked in for a very long period of time. Staying at such close proximity to each other, it would be a miracle if any of the migrant workers escaped infection. You don’t have to eat the whole cow to know how it will taste: only a slice of it will do. It is calling sampling. Similarly, we don’t have to wait for a crisis to know PAP ministers are incompetent: they are incentivised to be incompetent. The hardest people to wake up are people pretending to be asleep. Do the ministers know what are the right things to do? Of course they do. Who doesn’t know that eating nutritionally, exercising a lot, sleeping early and waking up early are good for health. Unless you are an orphan who didn’t go to primary school, you could be excused for being clueless on the key to success: these are motherhood statements which PAP likes to sprout every now and then to make themselves look sensible. In the kind of polity Lee Kuan Yew crafted for Singapore — supposedly based on meritocracy but in fact anything but — we will always experience dysfunctional leadership because the incumbent values conformity over morality, although it constantly claimed otherwise. It is foolish to imagine the people at the top of the food chain don’t know what are the right things to do. Doesn’t everybody, has enough personal experiences telling him/her delightful indulgences come with a price that must be paid sooner or later? These indulgences may be delightful at the moment but may be disastrous at the end of the day. Doesn’t the drinker know, at the rate he was consuming alcohol, he will get drunk and wake up the next day with a massive headache and ghastly upset stomach? Surely the dipsomaniac knows his liver will be shot and his life shortened! Doesn’t every kid know if he eats enough candy he will get sick? His mother would’ve have told him enough times it would be internalised before he even attended primary school. Every Don Juan is fully aware of the complication from torrid affairs including diseases and emotional blackmail but yet they persist. Every idler and spendthrift must have been warned enough times, and their own personal experience telling them so as well, in their glorious fling, their future will be one of debt and poverty. Yet, when Singaporeans considered the competency of our humongously salaried leaders, these elementary truths are ignored. Our leaders are regarded as brilliant people endowed with talents so special they are like gods and hence will brook no criticism or any suggestion they may be wrong in policy formulation. And if proven wrong, they will never admit so, or be remorseful: the facade of divinity must be maintained. Our leaders are men and women who deprecate local labour in favour of ‘foreign talents’ and recommend squandering, on a national scale, the years of education of our youth because their own selfish interests are at stake. Whenever anyone dares to highlight the consequences of their policies, they will reply flippantly the critics are racists who are not giving due credits to how many jobs are created by foreign talent imports. Such shallow ‘wisecracks’ are passed as devastating epigrams and the wisest of wisdom, which over time, the lemmings swallowed hook, line and sinker and keep returning them to power. The real tragedy is we are suffering the long-run consequences of the policies not of the current generation of leaders but the policies of not so remote recent past of Lee Kuan Yew himself. A dysfunctional leader is like a bad building foundation that will manifest itself years later. Today, is the tomorrow the dysfunctional leader promised would be the heaven on earth he can lead us to. Unfortunately, Singapore today is looking more and more like Dante’s Divine Comedy with a twist. Everyone is promised if they bear with our immensely talented leaders, they can check out of hell and check into heaven: the reality is they can check out but they can never leave hell. Bad government policies may be evident in a few months or become evident in a few years. They may even fester longer and only become evident decades later. No matter, in every case of dysfunctional leadership, the long-run consequences contained in their policy are as certain as the sun rising in the morning and every PAP members of parliament voting yes to any PAP policy tabled even when they slept through the wayang ‘policy debates’. Our current dire straits arise out of a poor understanding of the need to look not merely at the immediate but the long term effects of any act or policy. It is our failure to trace the consequences of policies for everyone and not just for a selected unrepresentative minority of elites that has led us to our current dismal state of affairs. The incumbent flatters themselves they have all the answers when it is writ large impossible for a man to understand something when he has an incentive not to do so. Because we took our cue from Rip Van Winkle PAP members of parliament we slept on the job when casting our votes. It is time to pay the piper!   APolitical      Read More →

Both Australia and Singapore shared the same strategy in dealing with the covid pandemic. Both countries worked towards a "covid-zero" policy. They implemented strict measures to isolate infected people and quarantine them until they are no longer infectious. They restricted the activities of other people to prevent the transmission of the virus from unknown carriers. Both countries were able to keep the infection down to low numbers for most of the past 18 months. However, the virus will not go away. With the delta variant, it becomes more transmissible. More people were infected within the community. Both countries found that it was too tiring to carry out the restrictions for such a long period. They decided to move to a new strategy to "live with covid". They felt that a high rate of vaccination would help to prevent serious illness from the virus, although it was already known that it would not prevent the spread. The new strategy to relax the restrictions resulted in a large wave of infections, hospitalization and higher deaths. The numbers were higher than the officials had expected. Both countries experienced a death rate of 2 per million based on the past 7 days. However, the infection rates were different - Singapore 1,477, Australia 454. There are new infections for the past 7 days per million of population Singapore reported 3.2 times the infection rate compared to Australia and the same death rate. What is the reason for the difference? It is likely due to the method adopted for safe entry and contact tracing. Singapore has been implementing the safe entry recording of people visiting food courts, malls and other crowded places. This has caused a large number of people who received alerts of potential exposure. They are then asked to self test for the virus or they are tested at designated facilities. It is likely that the number of people being tested in Singapore daily is several times higher than in Australia, pro rata. The large number of tests create panic and chaos. It produced three times the number of infections, most of which are mild anyway. The handling of a larger number of cases overwhelmed the hospital system. However, it did not bring down the death rate, which remained the same for both countries. The home recovery protocol was designed to handle the large number of cases, to relieve the hospitals. This protocol was also overwhelmed, as they were insufficient number of staff to manage the large number of cases. By comparing the experience of both countries, it is clear to me that Singapore is carrying out a lot of useless activities, to deal with mild cases, which does not produce a better outcome compared to Australia. It would be better to focus on the more serious cases, and to give attention to them. This is my opinion. I may be wrong. But my common sense tells me otherwise.   Tan Kin Lian      Read More →

(ST, Sep 28) "Telemedicine providers stretched thin as more people go into home recovery for Covid-19" It states that "Last week, the Ministry of Health (MOH) said patients who have not yet heard from the authorities can approach telemedicine providers for assistance at no charge if they feel unwell." One doctor commented: "We saw many patients who were unsure of what to do after being diagnosed. Our doctors had to spend a longer time with each patient to address all the concerns, while other patients are in the queue." Comment: It is, arguably, weak foresight that while the Health Minister 'foresaw' that the number of cases would hit 3,200 as early as 10 Sep, but had failed to take any pre-emptive measures to slow the spread or increase the capacity. In this connection, it was only when the cases hit nearly 2,000 that the 4G 'leadership' started to react by reducing the number per table from 5 to 2 and roping in the SAF and the People's Association to help with the logistics. Even so, there have been various reports to say that those who are recovering at home were frustrated as they were unable to get through the hotline and were receiving repeated instructions. In such times of crisis, the people who have been infected by Covid-19 surely deserve better than having to feel anxious by senselessly waiting for directions. Now, the latest measure, which arguably looks like an afterthought, is to rope in the private sector by outsourcing the 'telemedicine' to the private sector. My friend Ying (not her real name) remarked that it is one thing to outsource non-essential operations such as painting buildings, but another thing to outsource medical operations in a health crisis. In any case, given the feedback from the doctors, it appears that the situation still remains quite dire. As has been suggested, it may be more efficient to have infected patients who are stable in dedicated nursing home facilities where they can receive medical attention, rather than to have to run around, kind of like a headless chicken. Is this fair to the people who have given their vote to the 4G in GE2020? What does this tell you about the ability of the 4G 'leadership' to lead and inspire confidence?   Leong Sze Hian      Read More →