Just into the middle of our 1-month Circuit Breaker (CB) / Lockdown early this week, the nation was informed that it will be extended by another month till 01 Jun… 🙁
Cases in S’pore started to run above a thousand per day when we had an outbreak in the huge dormitories housing Foreign Workers (FW). The privately-run dorms can house between 5k to 25k of people each. They are professionally managed and stick to strict Ministry of Health guidelines. The country currently has more than 300,000 FWs and this pandemic had caught the government with its pants down. Most FWs were from neighbouring South Asia countries who were attracted by the prospect of higher pay and S’pore depended on them for many lower-end labour intensive jobs that its citizens will not do.
FWs are a hidden sector living amongst us which most citizens have chosen to ignore and to leave it to the government to manage, as long as we get our high standard of living and 1st world progress. Now that the virus has spread to this large and vulnerable group, we suddenly get a surge of enlightened armchair critics accusing the authorities of mistreatment and missteps.
True, they should have done certain steps to have avoided this in the first place, then admit the mistakes and move on to address the problem. But hindsight’s 20/20. The Covid19 invisible enemy is evolving every day and the world is still learning. What I can not stand are critics who were previously ignorant and blind to this topic are now suddenly saying that we are ill-treating the FWs putting up in terrible living conditions, without looking at the overall facts and jumping to conclusions. They are even offering have baked “solutions” too!
A few years ago, I had the chance to visit 3 of these FW dorms. It was for a business opportunity to manage a supermarket within the premises of a new dorm. The partner had the experience of managing one in an existing dorm and was looking to bid for another in a new dorm. She wanted more new partners like us to help spread the risk.
We visited a few of the dorms to do our research. It was also for me to evaluate the situation. I found the existing dorms to be well run, with tight security and clean surroundings. They were much better than previous haphazard ways of housing FW in construction sites or cramp quarters in a cheap shophouse. I do agree that this virus had exposed the weakness of the dorms, but these critics cannot give sweeping statements that they are living in non-human livable dorms after just seeing some photos and videos. That includes you too, Tommy G! That is just wrong.
Then to suggest unworkable proposals to “resolve” the living standards is also not right. There is a time for further discussions on this topic and now is not the time. Let the authorities address this outbreak first. We citizens complain a lot and expect them to spoon-feed us. But when something goes wrong, finger-pointing is fast and accusations swift. Yes, the top government officials have big salaries (to avoid corruption), but they are human and prone to mistakes too. Let’s stay objective and keep to facts. There is a time for everything and now is the time to stay united to continue to fight the unknown enemy.
With regards to Covid19, we are seeing many countries moving to action plans which are getting similar to what the rest of the world is doing. Best practises that show some success is being adopted all around. Some countries are still far behind the learning curve for various reasons – resources, ignorance or just sheer stupidity.
The lockdowns are now happening to more than a third of the world population in the month of Apr and most are extending it into the month of May too. in order to starve and stop this virus, the world economy has to stop. This had led on consequences of economic and financial collapse everywhere. It is unprecedented times that no one had experienced before in our lifetimes.
There are more than 70+ initiatives now to target the virus. Some are with regards to fast-tracking the vaccine research, others on speeding up the testings process. Some involve the detection of antibodies while others are testing existing drugs for a cure. Even AI/Machine Learning is being utilized to ramp up the learning curve.
The WHO organization has provided some guidelines and steps which I mentioned last week, on what authorities must do in order to get back to opening up their economy again. The main push now is to have aggressive testing amongst the population to identify the cases and to isolate them as soon as possible. South Korea is a recent success story for others to emulate.
My main concern on aggressive testing: is this enough and what’s next? Asymptomatic carriers are still around us. About 15% of recovered cases were shown to be still carrying the virus. The virus had mutated to strains A, B and C within months and remains highly contagious. Countries and cities are all interconnected via many channels. It just takes one carrier to unwind all the work that has been done to contain the virus. S’pore is already seeing the 3rd wave and so has China at its border with Russia. Vaccine discovery may still be months away at its fastest.
No one has an answer and the environment is evolving day by day as the cases and deaths continue to rise. Meanwhile, Mother Earth is recovering from the economic stoppage. I can feel that the environment greenery around me is getting better, the air seems fresher during my daily morning runs. Is the virus Nature’s answer to solving Climate Change and pollution? Humanity continues to ignore that Gaia is suffering and hence we need Covid19 to knock some senses into our thick skulls?
This pandemic looks like a hard reset for humans, to bring humanity back from its excesses and not to take simple things in life for granted, like the ability to socialize and have a meal with friends. It had made us appreciate family time during the lockdown. We are also putting on weight and drinking too munch vino LOL…
I will survive, my Corona Virus (credit to the songs from Gloria Gaynor and The Ramones)…
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