TR EMERITUS

The covid virus has caused a staggering number of infections and deaths in India during the past month. The health system has broken down. The virus has got out of control. The same strain of the virus has also caused much harm in Thailand and Malaysia. The situation in Singapore appears to be under control. Should we give credit to the government for their management of the virus? Is the spread of the virus better contained in Singapore due to safe entry recording, contact tracing, safe distancing and circuit breaker? The disease experts themselves do not know the answer. Most of the experts, including those working in the World Health Organization, advised on the measures that are already followed by Singapore. I am not a disease expert, but I read the views of the experts and other observers that are posted online. More importantly, I apply my logic, analysis and common sense. I wish to share my observations. a) The safe entry recording and contact tracing adopted in Singapore requires tremendous resources. In my view, it does not produce useful results. It is largely a waste of resources. So far, there were no report on how the safe entry recording data has been applied usefully. b) We can do contact tracing by asking the infected people who they were in contact with. There is no need to collect the safe entry data. c) The safe distancing and circuit breaker measures appear to slow down the spread of the virus, but this is not the critical issue. Malaysia has implemented its safe distancing measure (named as the Movement Control Order) but it did not stop the severe infections and deaths. I believe that the key difference is - Singapore was able to detect and respond quickly at an early stage to the infection. Most of the other countries were not able to detect and treat the virus promptly. An early response and treatment of the virus prevent it from developing from a mild stage to a severe stage. When the virus reach a severe stage (described by the expert as a strong virus load), the infected person becomes symptomatic and the virus can spread actively. These are described as the "super spreaders". I am still against the safe entry recording, contact tracing (using the safe entry data) and the circuit breaker measures that are aimed at slowing down the spread of the virus. These measures have created a lot of harm to the economy, to the failure of business and the loss of livelihood of several hundred thousand people. It has also the spending of over $100 billion of the reserves spent by the government to provide financial assistance to the impacted people. However, I support the measures that detect the early stage of the infection and treat these people to prevent the virus from reaching a serious level. I suggest that our current strategy by changed as follows: a) Allow people who feel unwell and have some of the symptoms of covid to be tested for free. If they have to be quarantined or treated, they should get an allowance to offset the loss of income. Testing and treatment of covid should be free for the infected people. b) Stop the safe entry measures at retail outlets and workplaces. They are useless and not followed anyway. c) Provide self service temperature taking kiosks at many public places. This allows the people to take their temperature daily and be alerted if they have a fever. Singapore has a low infection and death rate because we were able to detect the virus at an early stage and treat it before it becomes severe. We spent a lot of effort and resources in several measures to reach this outcome. However, a large part of the measures were ineffective. A small part was effective. We can adapt our strategy to focus on the effective part - i.e. detection and treatment of the infected people. We should discontinue the restrictive measures that lock down a large part of the economy to stop the spread of mild cases.   Tan Kin Lian        Read More →

Arvind Kejriwal As a citizen, I will be utterly disappointed with the pap 4G ministers if they fail to demand that the Delhi's Chief Minister, Arvind Kejriwal, (CM) the Hindustan Times and the New Delhi Television Limited (NDTV) apologise to Singapore and Singaporeans, retract their Singapore variants and highly dangerous to children claims and promise not to indulge in baseless reporting about Singapore again failing which it will commence legal actions. Singapore is not a trouble maker country and our dealings with all countries are based on mutual respect and mutual benefits but we must never give anyone the wrong impressions that we are weak, an easy meat, our government is weak and impotent and will kowtow when the heat is on or when push comes to shove. In other words, a pushover. I suspect that the recent CM's claims was to float a 3rd wave Singapore variant test balloon to test the mettle or the lack of it of the Singapore government, whether they will stand firm, stand tall and brave and defend Singapore's credibility and interest or whether they will never mind this and never mind that about accusations of a Singapore variant to a largely unthinking sucker and meek population, displaying cowardice and impotence, back down and wriggle away and their sucker population will once again conveniently continue with their sucking and forget about it... Older Singaporeans may still remember that the late Lee Kuan Yew never tolerated such tauntings or nonsense. He had successfully sued a number of foreign magazines and if I remember correctly, among them were the Economist, the Far Eastern Economic Review, Newsweek and/or Asiaweek etc for half-truths and untruthful reporting about Singapore and/or the Singapore Government etc. He was awarded substantial compensations as a result. The late MM had set a precedent, standard, expectations and had shown the way. Either the 4G ministers live up to that standards or this episode will open Singaporeans' eyes, especially our sucker Singaporeans' eyes even wider to a bunch of weak people governing Singapore today. To my sucker friends and you know who you are, what do you all suckers think eh? Think.   Simon Lim      Read More →

Ever since the Pfizer vaccine was approved for emergency use, our government has plunged headlong to vaccinate the population. The thinking was that if the majority is vaccinated, herd immunity would be achieved and we would be out of the woods. However, cases of infection since the beginning of the second wave, has shown that the effectiveness of the vaccine is around 0%. For those who are not sure how the efficacy of the vaccine, which is its effectiveness in a controlled setting, is calculated, here is a quick explanation which is necessary to follow this article. Volunteers, in Pfizer’s case around 40,000, are divided into two similar groups. One group is injected with the vaccine and the other group with placebo with neither group knowing which they were injected with, to prevent bias behavior. They are then left to carry on with their lives. If subsequently 100 in the placebo group are symptomatically infected with COVID-19 while none in the vaccine group is infected, then the efficacy of the vaccine is 100%. Conversely, if 50 people in both groups are infected, then there is no difference whether one is vaccinated or not, in other words, the efficacy is 0%. As I have shown in the TTSH cluster based on data reported in the ST, the effectiveness is 0% because there were 20 vaccinated and 20 unvaccinated infections, based on the first 40 cases. (This post was blocked by FB subsequently.) In the first 18 cases of the airport cluster, 11 were vaccinated while 7 were not, demonstrating that the effectiveness is worse than 0%. It is almost unbelievable, but what it means is that one is better off being not vaccinated than vaccinated! [LINK] It has been just a few days, but the number of cases in the airport cluster has rocketed to 86 cases as at 19 May. The number of vaccinated infection is 40 while that of the unvaccinated is 46 based on data from MOH (see attached tables above), indicating that there is little difference whether one is vaccinated or not. All the three examples assume that half the people who came into contact with the clusters are vaccinated and half are not. It may well be that less than half are vaccinated as only about 30% of the population has been vaccinated so far, which makes the result even more damming for the vaccine, but let’s be conservative. If nothing else changes other than more people getting vaccinated, the effectiveness of the vaccine is still going to be the same, ie, around 0%. What then is the point of continuing to vaccinate the rest of the population? Many people believe that when the bulk of the population is vaccinated, the number of infections will fall as we will be nearing herd immunity. The number of infections may fall, and if it does fall, it has nothing to do with the vaccine because its effectiveness is ZERO as shown by recent events. What makes them think that the effectiveness of the vaccine will improve going forward? Indeed, it is downright preposterous for Professor Dale Fisher to say he believes “we would have a circuit breaker in place if there was no vaccine”. How has the vaccine helped other than to give some a false sense of security? The vaccine has been a disappointment. At which point will the Covid Task Force review its effectiveness, or is it going to blindly vaccinate the rest of the population, including children?   Foong Swee Fong ——————- (Attached table is compiled by Jake Goh and an unnamed person based on data from MOH)      Read More →