Covid-19 crisis Do not panic - look at the bright side
The high deaths from covid during the past few weeks, since the move towards "living with covid" exceeded my expectations. 

I had expected two deaths a day, but it seems to be at least two times higher.

There is an underlying factor which I am not able to understand now, and which I am searching for an answer. 

However, when I compare our recent wave of covid deaths with the statistics in several other Asian countries during the past months, I arrived at the conclusion that the experience in Singapore is similar to the other countries, except that it comes a few months later.

 The death rates in several of these countries declined after a few months. I expect that this will also be the case in Singapore.

I am not worried about the high infection rates in Singapore, because we measure the cases differently. Due to our mass testing, we are counting mild cases that are ignored in most other countries. Our infection rate (i.e. new cases reported) are 10 times of the global average, per million of population.

While the death rate is climbing in Singaore, the actual rate is still way below the global average. 

The Worldometer website showed the global death rate to be 623 per million of population. It is now 24 for Singapore. The death rate is 2,196 for USA, 2,013 for UK and 827 for Malaysia.

While the death rate in Singapore will continue to climb for a few more weeks, it is likely to stabilize below 100.

There is a bright side to this turn of events in Singapore. 

We are now more like most other countries. 

There is no need for us to continue to fear the import of the virus from incoming travelers. We have enough virus of our own in the community. The virus from foreigners will not be a threat any more. 

We can open our borders. 

Another positive aspect is that the high infection rates in the community will lead to an increase in natural immunity. This appears to be the experience in India and Indonesia. They experienced high infection rates and deaths earlier this year. Their infection and death rates have dropped by 90% from their peak.

It is still very sad that over a hundred people have died from covid during the past few weeks. This happened in spite of the good medical care that was provided to them. 

On the other hand, several times more of this number have recovered from the severe illness.

This is a fact of life. 

If we look at this development from a wider perspective, it is not that bad.

Tan Kin Lian

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