Covid-19 crisis Join the international band wagon
Americans are scared of the coronavirus. It has already killed 105 per million of the population. It is so scary that the entire country has been logged down. I understand their concern. If we have 105 per million deaths in Singapore, I would also be scared.

Singaporeans are also terribly scared of the coronavirus. We are scared because Americans are scared, Europeans are scared and nearly everybody else is scared.

The coronavirus has killed 2 per million people in Singapore, but to the Singaporeans and the ministers in the task force, it does not make any difference. They cannot tell the difference between 105 and 2 deaths per million.

According to these people, every life is important. All deaths should be avoided.

These people think that the coronavirus is the only way to die.
They do not realize that there are another 3,498 people per million people who found other ways to die. These other deaths are not important, because our ministerial task force did not elevate them to the limelight.

I use a death rate of 3.5 per thousand for Singapore. This is provided by official statistics. There is another statistics that reported a death rate is 5 per thousand. It make no difference to my reasoning about our nonsensical approach.

So, Singapore also go into a lockdown, except that our ministers call it the circuit breaker and some people mistakenly call it the short circuit. Yeah, their thinking is short circuited.

Whenever I explained these statistics, I will get some over-reacted scare mongers scold me with all kinds of illogical arguments and personal statements.

One of them asked how I would feel if a foreign worker passed the virus to my maid who pass it to my family. I don't know how to reply to this kind of statement, so I just ignored it.

With the latest increase in new cases (which reflects the large increase in  testing of the workers in the dormitory), many people expect more severe restrictions to follow. They expect a total lockdown.

I don't know what is a total lockdown, compared to what we already have now. Some body said - cannot go out and buy food. Better to stock up on food now. Another round of panic?

I also expect more severe restrictions, not because they are necessary, but because I expect the ministerial task force to over-react also. They also can't tell the difference between 105 deaths and 2 deaths per million, reflecting the poor quality of their leadership.

I don't know if the ministers realize that the increase is new cases is largely due to increased testing of the workers in the dormitory, rather than an actual increase in the transmission of the disease. If they did, why not state it in their daily news to the people?

Perhaps they think that it is safer to join the international band wagon, even though common sense dictate that our level of risk is very much lower. 

Tan Kin Lian


 

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