The reopening of Singapore continues – in fits and starts as well as in a socially uneven fashion. Two developments during the week and a familiar blip marked the road back to a new normal. That last shameful lapse will have to be resolved once and for all.
Let’s look at the people resisting vaccination. It is a mixed collection of outright anti-vaxxers, some sceptics and a number of fearful, obdurate and pro-traditional medicine senior citizens. The first two groups – anti-vaxxers and sceptics – are entitled to their views, just like there are still people who think the earth is flat. They are a pinhole-sized minority and inherently harmless curiosities. But they may become harmful when they start to inflict their misinformation and baloney on others. We will just have to keep drowning their fiction and fake stuff with facts.
The “last-stand” seniors – 77,000 of them – are a more important problem. We have seen Health Minister Ong Ye Kung starring with Mediacorp da jie Zoe Tay in their video urging seniors to get their jabs. Workers’ Party elder Low Thia Khiang has used his legendary command of Teochew to reach out to seniors. And another WP veteran and ex-MP for Hougang Png Eng Huat has just done his part. He shared his effort to get his father vaccinated:
“My father is 92 years old and he doesn’t like to see the doctor. He doesn’t like to take Western medicine and does not like injections. My father insisted that since he doesn’t go out of the house much, there is no need to get vaccinated.
“But we, his children and grandchildren, continue to go out to work. We may inadvertently spread the virus to him and put him in danger. If he gets infected with the virus and has to be hospitalised, it will be very dangerous for him, (and) it will be difficult for his children and grandchildren to keep him company while he is hospitalised.” Hospital visits have been suspended since Sept 24 for four weeks.
These reluctant seniors and their family members obviously know that community sympathy must inevitably run out and turn into active antipathy against them. This whole idea of everyone else having to follow sane rules and suffer inconveniences except for them is fast becoming untenable.
Unfortunately, at this stage, there are signs that these older Singaporeans will be sad collateral damage in this battle against the Delta variant. I quote The Straits Times: “Unvaccinated people are 14 times more likely to need ICU care or die, compared with those who are vaccinated. Within this group, it is the unvaccinated seniors who are at the highest risk of needing ICU or dying.”
Another chilling finding: “Unvaccinated Americans have died at 11 times the rate of those fully vaccinated since the Delta variant became the dominant strain, indicate surveillance data gathered by the US Centres for Disease Control.”
Viewed in that context, the hoo-ha over the move to disallow the unvaccinated to enter shopping malls and to dine in coffeeshops and hawker centres seems bizarre: “Give me liberty, or give me death!”
I do not want to sound unsympathetic but: Really?
Meanwhile, while this is going on, the government is starting to open up the borders. From Oct 19, people will be able to travel freely from Singapore to Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Britain and the US, without quarantine and with fewer swab tests, as long as they are vaccinated. By Nov 15, one more country – South Korea – will be added to the list.
Whoa, it’s another world altogether, an entirely different universe from that of anti-vaccine naggers, doubters and plain idiots. These are fully vaccinated go-getters who just want to get back to a nice life.
Their ultimate hero must be William Shatner. The 90-year-old, who played Captain James T Kirk in the Star Trek films and TV series, flew into space midweek for a 10-minute ride aboard the Blue Origin rocket developed by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. He said in tears: “What you have given me is the most profound experience. I’m so filled with emotion about what just happened. I hope I never recover from this. I hope I can retain what I feel now. I don’t want to lose it.”
Back on earth, something terrible was happening in Jurong.
The foreign workers in Westlite Jalan Tukang dormitory were getting emotional over their substandard living conditions, bad food and poor medical care.
Media photos showed what appeared to be bugs, hair and scrap paper in the workers’ catered food. Some workers had been quoted in a story as saying they slept on the ground outside their rooms to avoid infecting those they shared a room with, and had to wait a long time before receiving medical attention.
The Ministry of Manpower admitted that it deployed “insufficient resources” for an “unexpected” increase in Covid-19 cases at the dormitory, resulting in delays to the transfer of these cases to care or recovery facilities.
Chief of MOM’s Assurance, Care and Engagement (ACE) Group Tung Yui Fai said:
“Our preliminary investigations show that the initial delays in (conveying) workers from the dormitory to the appropriate care or recovery facility were because we had deployed insufficient resources to convey an unexpected increase in number of workers being tested positive. This was due to a mandatory routine mass testing exercise by an employer on their workforce residing at the dormitory.”
“As our processes are new, we will do our best to recover from any lapse. We also appeal to the employers and workers to help us make sure that these processes are done properly and well.”
We hope so.
Let not any more neglect or inefficiency mar all the efforts that have gone into repairing the massive damage caused to Singapore’s image by the April 2020 foreign workers Covid-19 disaster.
Tan Bah Bah, consulting editor of TheIndependent.Sg, is a former senior leader writer with The Straits Times. He was also managing editor of a local magazine publishing company.