Heightened Alert: Comments on the COVID-19 resurgence in Singapore

On the 27th of April, less than a month ago, my country Singapore dethroned New Zealand to be ranked as the best place to be during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Bloomberg’s Covid Resilience Ranking, which crunches the numbers every month for a snapshot of the best and worst places to be in the coronavirus era. As a Singaporean, this was certainly delightful to hear. Cases are kept low if not contained, the economy is recovering to a sense of normalcy, and the progress on vaccination is going well. It was all music to our ears until the dark clouds started to emerge. New clusters have become superspreader events for the virus. First, at Tan Tock Seng Hospital, then Pasir Panjang, then ICA, and now the largest of them all, Changi Airport. The number of community cases are higher than anything we have seen since July last year, and are certainly a cause of consternation of all Singaporeans. Today, we enter “Phase 2 (Heightened Alert)”, where social gatherings are capped at two people, and dining-in at F&B outlets is banned. Even those living under a rock would have felt the hit.

Last year, in my article post on National Day where I assessed Singapore’s handling of the pandemic, I did point to the possibility of a resurgent wave of cases that all countries, no matter how well they think they have defeated the contagion, must remain on the qui vive. In the past year, many countries and regions, including those that have reputed to have performed the best, have witnessed such occurrences. China, South Korea, Hong Kong and Australia are cases in point. In this broader view, Singapore’s surge in cases is not unique. But certain factors make the current situation in Singapore particularly perturbing. First, Singapore, unlike most of these other countries, is much smaller and has a relatively more lax and open policy on border restrictions. Next, there have been mutant variants of the pathogen detected in the local clusters, namely the B.1.617+ variant that originated from India, and is responsible for the cataclysm in the world’s most pronounced COVID-19 disaster.

This rings ominous parallels to the situation a year ago. In the early months of the pandemic, Singapore was praised by the world for its “gold standard” in responding to the pandemic. But we quickly lost our shine when we became overwhelmed by thousands upon thousands of cases in our migrant worker dormitories, as well as a worrying surge in unlinked community cases, forcing us into a lockdown in April and May. It is important to stress that as troubling as these current problems are, and pose a mountain of challenges for all Singaporeans, some more than others, they are not insurmountable and we are far better equipped now, armed with the tools of vaccination, contact tracing as well as prior experience. The problem that I seek to highlight is the polarisation of public sentiment on this subject (which unlike other issues of local or global concern, impacts everyone directly), where there appears to be a dichotomy of separate non-realities. Examples where this plays out include YouTube comment sections and Reddit threads such as one titled “Lawrence Wong really needs to come out and explain himself right now!”. While the polarisation is a far cry from American levels, and may not be entirely a bad thing as it indicates the maturing of the democratic process (marked by last year’s GE), it is problematic as it inhibits any solution to the problem. In this article, I will examine and critique the views from both the “pro-government” and “dissidenting” views on the matter, as well as provide my own comments.

The “Pro-Government” View

The stance of the government on pandemic management is generally clear, albeit infrequently contradictory. The government’s posture on this issue is best elucidated by Finance Minister Lawrence Wong, who co-chairs the Multi-Ministry Taskforce on COVID-19 (MTF). In his ministerial statement to Parliament, he gave a general portrayal of the situation of being largely beyond the control of the government, or Singapore itself for that matter. After all, Singapore as a small country reliant on global flows of capital and labour, definitely finds itself impacted by the torrents caused whether by winds of change in other parts of the world or biological mutations of the pathogen. As much, we are bound to face many setbacks, in Wong’s words, “many curved balls and many more twists and turns”, and have to be adaptive when reacting to undesirable changes like the one we are seeing. This is undoubtedly true to some degree, given Singapore’s strategic position in the grand scheme of things, but it is unbefitting for a government to provide this characterisation from the very prologue of a ministerial statement. Firstly, it is not what the government should stand for, not least for the Singaporean government which has long prided itself for top-notch efficacy - surely not a powerless bystander. More problematically, the government is calling upon ordinary citizens to “do their part” in the fight against the pandemic and that would determine which way our community cases go, but such clarion calls contradict the initial characterisation of a turbulent situation that even the government struggles to grasp.

The most controversial aspect of policy thus far has been Singapore’s border controls. The arrival and departure halls of Changi Airport are a far cry from the swarms of thronging travellers in the pre-COVID era, but are definitely anything but silent. Aviation may have been scaled back substantially, but Singapore still receives a fair share of arrivals, and our borders are relatively more open compared to most other countries. This comes to the chagrin of many Singaporeans, but Lawrence Wong explains the necessity of such an approach. He says that given the circumstances of Singapore as a small city-state, it cannot take the approach towards border controls taken by larger, continental-sized countries such as China and Australia, that of almost entirely shutting the borders to any inflows of people. His point is clearly valid, because Singapore does not have the blessings of natural resources like Australia, manufacturing like China or labour like India. We are also a global aviation, maritime, logistics and financial hub - not a recent creation, but since the very inception of modern Singapore. Thus, Lawrence Wong is very much right to say that trade and travel are of “existential” significance to Singapore. Our border policy would therefore be closer to the likes of the United Arab Emirates or even the United Kingdom, that is to say that we must accept that there will be some level of travellers coming into Singapore, and the risk of imported cases have to be managed, rather than eliminated.

But who are the people coming in? According to Lawrence Wong, migrant workers form the bulk of the inflow of labour into Singapore during this pandemic period, as they are the most economically critical. He writes, “We need migrant workers to build our homes. We need migrant workers in a wide range of essential services like cleaning. We need migrant workers to care for our seniors.” Indeed, as it stands today in the Singaporean economy and labour market, there is a surplus of jobs, largely blue-collar, physically strenuous, low-paying and low-skilled, that most Singaporeans are unwilling to do. This gap, by the principle of comparative advantage, needs to be filled by workers from other countries, hence explaining the need for migrant workers into Singapore. In fact, many construction projects are experiencing delays and shortfalls as a result of tightened travel restrictions at the start of this month.

But it paints a distorted image of the composition of the people in Changi Airport’s arrival hall. Migrant workers are far from the only demographic arriving on Singapore’s shores. There are also short-term visitors, family relatives and PMETs, among others, and many of the current clusters do trace their origins to these groups too. Currently, the government is not disclosing or publicising the statistics regarding which are the numbers of people entering Singapore every day, which categories they belong to and which countries they are coming from. In case anyone is thinking that such data is extraneous, it gives citizens a clearer picture of what is going on. It would also buttress the government’s arguments rather than having people rely on mere anecdotes, as well as dispel fake news such as the widely circulated video of South Asian travellers at Changi Airport, which was in fact at least a month old. Looking into the longer view, this debacle should have, along with last year’s crisis in the dormitories, reminded Singaporeans how acutely the country relies on migrant workers economically and it is becoming a source of vulnerability. Now, this will not change overnight, but I hope that we will review this, so that in the next decade or so, we reduce our dependence on migrant workers, whether through economic restructuring or novel technologies such as automation.

Since this recent surge in cases, the government has tightened our border controls, starting with a ban on travellers from India, then extended to the whole of South Asia. This is due to the current catastrophe that is devouring India, where thousands are dying every single day. If this is not bad enough, the B.1.617+ mutant variant has been detected there. It spreads faster and potentially could have a longer incubation period and far more ghastly side effects. At the same time, starting from yesterday, Changi Airport is segregating travellers arriving from “high-risk” regions. The problem with the government’s approach is that it reflects a reactive, rather than proactive, attitude towards handling the crisis. It is common sense that it would be too late to ban travel only after the surge in India is reported, because by then many, including carriers of the variant, would already have made it to Singapore. It may have been better if the borders were shut earlier, but the government would probably make the case that they lacked the foresight to make such a judgement early on. The government may never be perfect, but it is precisely because they are our government which is why we would expect them to possess a decent degree of foresight. After all, they are definitely equipped with far more information than ordinary citizens like ourselves. What is our high commission in Delhi for, if it cannot relay back to MFA then to MOH and the MTF the early signs of the crisis in India? And why are we segregating the travellers only now? Isn’t it pretty obvious that due to government incompetence, poor infrastructure, reporting and testing regimes, numbers coming out from countries such as India and the Philippines can never be trusted as much as say, China? Lawrence Wong made the case that even shutting borders is no solution, as the variant has also been detected in enclosed countries like China and Australia. But as of today, Singapore has more cases of B.1.617+ than any country except India, the United States and the United Kingdom. Risk elimination may not be possible, but risk management is.

The “Dissenting” View

This spectrum of the argument is far less coherent. To call it the “dissenting” view may be a bit of misnomer, since the discontent regarding the entire situation from border policy to restrictions on quotidian life have made this the view of many more Singaporeans, even those who traditionally support the generally popular PAP government. A perusal through any internet comment section, whether on Facebook, YouTube or Reddit would reveal these negative sentiments. While difficult to put together, I can identify three main threads of argument here.

First, there are some Singaporeans who hold this imagined non-reality in their heads: the idea that Singapore would best resolve these problems by shutting off its borders to the rest of the world, so that we can focus on domestic recovery and the restoration of normality. After all, we had previously already brought down community cases to zero for consecutive days, so if we keep away any imported cases, any pockets of community cases would be eliminated. Life can return to sanity again - we would not need to wear masks, no need to maintain social distancing, and public places can operate closer to full capacities. These people allude to the model of Australia, with border controls so strict that it has been called a “Hermit Kingdom”, usually used to refer to North Korea. But this utopian ideal holds no bearing in reality. Lawrence Wong had already elucidated Singapore’s dependence on trade and travel, which makes such an idea unfeasible here, as we have circumstances worlds apart from Australia. While it is true that the pandemic has revealed that our entanglement with the global system can be a source of vulnerability, we cannot completely untangle the whole country from it to achieve self-sufficiency. Rather, we should only pursue this in certain areas, such as migrant workers or the production of essential goods.

Second, there is the widespread sentiment that our government has been irresponsible in the handling of the situation. This is because they are very much aware of the risk of imported cases that could leak into the community in the form of local transmission, yet allow it to happen. The fact that we have been on the recovery trajectory and a semblance of normalcy has been restored for a while since Phase 3 started shows how far the country has come since the uncertainties of last year’s circuit breaker. Now, with the surge in cases, we are forced into a semi-lockdown that is going to stymie economic recovery as well as take a toll on the livelihoods and well-being of ordinary citizens, and even more so for the disadvantaged. Is this irresponsible? Definitely, because there are so many parallels to a year ago, where we were praised by the world for a steadfast response, played down the severity of the crisis, reacted all too late and we had to enter lockdown. The government may be forgiven last year since COVID-19 was a crisis unlike any other seen before and it bogged down governments the world over, but this year, we have the experience as well as tools such as contact tracing, making it far more difficult to fathom how this could happen.

Finally, there is also a prevalent sentiment that the government is “privatising the gains” and “publicising the losses”. What does this mean? It means that when things are going well, as it did when we were in the recovery trajectory of Phase 3, the government would largely take credit for itself. In fact, if one reads most government statements, speeches and excerpts, there are barely any references made saying that the people have done a great job in helping to keep the pandemic in control. But when the situation turns sour, as it is now, the government shirks away blame from itself, and instead tells the hoi polloi like you and me to “do our part” and be responsible citizens. People are told to abide by the safe management measures, and businesses are told to be more nimble and adaptive to change, such as in response to the constant flux when it comes to regulations. Such a message is not harmful per se, but it is extremely unhelpful in situations like this. We should of course be responsible, conscientious and good-minded citizens who stay home as much as possible, reduce social interactions where possible, keep our masks on, etcetera, but in the grand scheme of things, an individual feels powerless and impotent in the face of a crisis. People are expecting the government to take the decisive steps and answer our questions, rather than shirking away responsibility. But what if the government does not? While I still have faith in the competence of our government, in particular the MTF chaired by Lawrence Wong, we cannot expect them to be saints. This crisis has indeed shown that they aren’t infallible. In a situation where the government doesn't live up to its traditional gold standard, we have to make sure that we do not expect the government to settle all problems for us. Take for example, Hong Kong. The city-state’s politics are an absolute mess, but the pandemic has been managed well. The answer for them lay in the public response. Lawrence Wong is right to say that the fight against COVID-19 is a marathon, not a sprint. No one knows how long it will last, so we cannot grow complacent over time.

Other Comments on this Issue

Today marks the beginning of Phase 2 (Heightened Alert), which is in effect a semi-lockdown dubbed Circuit Breaker 2.0 by many Singaporeans. Our lives are greatly disrupted by the tightened measures and restrictions. We can no longer eat out, and many events have been cancelled or postponed. While no one welcomes this, most of us do see its necessity given the current state of affairs. What is problematic here is that with respect to the regulations in place, there is a considerable level of inconsistency and double standards that we should take great umbrage at. Let me point to two examples. The first is international, intergovernmental conferences. This period of “Heightened Alert” lasts from May 16 to June 13, and physical events during this period have all been cancelled for now. With one notable exception: the Shangri-La Dialogue that is due to take place in the first week of June. The organiser, IISS, made it clear that it remains committed to holding a physical conference in spite of the new measures, and there is no sign that it will be converted into a digital teleconference anytime soon. Even more notably, in August, the world’s rich and famous, powerful and influential, will gather in Singapore for the World Economic Forum summit. Politicians and business leaders from around all different countries will come to a tropical Davos, supposedly a boon for our national self-branding. Again, the WEF is committed to holding a physical summit rather than a teleconference. What’s the difference? A in-person conference is more than a conference, they would argue, it is important as it is also a social event that builds rapport between people. Here comes the hypocrisy: the world’s elite can continue to rub shoulders and lead their “social lives” while ordinary people are denied the very same thing? It is common knowledge the pandemic has hit the poor more than the rich, but is there a need to rub it in our faces? I fear that our government may be perceived to have the wrong priorities in mind by refusing to cancel these for the sake of international reputation, and that it is no longer taking the traditional pragmatic approach, but becoming more ideological by pandering to globalism.

Another area where we find inconsistency, hypocrisy and double standards on COVID-19 regulations is in the SAF. In fact, it is almost as if the SAF is blind to the pandemic. Due to a ban on in-camp photography, we do not have images that can circulate like wildfire on Reddit (such as the one of Indonesian domestic workers congregating at Paya Lebar during Hari Raya), and thus is a subject much neglected in national discourse. But is still very much a cause for consternation. I am currently a NSF in an active combat unit, so a lot of what I say is anecdotal. In camp, there is little to no enforcement of social distancing, many people take down their masks when no one is looking and mingling with large groups of people and between different groups is commonplace. Even in the most relaxed conditions of Phase 3, exercise classes in the civilian world were capped at 50, and it has been reduced to 30 now. The army however, conducts PT sessions on a large-scale level, with somewhere around 50 to 200 participants, depending on the unit. Outfield training is far worse and would be unacceptable by the MOH/MTF standards by any measures. Hundreds of troops go out together, while a simple family meal out is not even allowed. Not only are we unable to properly take care of our hygiene, the camouflage cream on our faces negates the need for masks, we mingle closely over a prolonged period of time, and it is nigh-impossible to stick to functional groups. Even if the men stick to the functional group level, commanders are somehow part of every functional group, making it all too confusing. The SMMs may be mentioned in a brief, but are never enforced or adhered to. It is very ironic that one would expect the army to be more strict than the civilian world, but in regards to public health, they are really lax.

Conclusion

After reading this article, most of you would probably find it may be a bit excessively critical of the government. Something should be made clear in regards to the discourse and dialogue of important issues of the day. Critique of government policies does not mean that I loathe Singapore or that I am unpatriotic. It doesn’t even suggest I am anti-government. In fact, I would opine that providing critique makes one even more patriotic as it paves the way for improvements in policy and makes a government more aware of what people on the ground feel. The government for its part needs to be more receptive and open to such criticism. It cannot take the approach that it took days ago, that of launching a police investigation against activist Gilbert Goh, for simply holding up a placard outside the ICA building that reads, "Please ban all flights from India, we are not racist! Just being cautious!".

I also wish the Multi-Ministry Taskforce, now chaired by Lawrence Wong and Ong Ye Kung, all the very best in handling the current crisis and restoring the country to shape. Lawrence Wong has been widely touted to be our next Prime Minister after Heng Swee Keat stepped aside from being Lee Hsien Loong’s heir apparent. He would need to prove his calibre in this crisis, and truly gain the respect and gravitas for the top job. He is an intelligent man who also has a sense of humility and has a more team-focused approach to leadership, the kind of style I would like to see in a 21st-century prime minister. Thus, I hope Wong and Ong will handle the crisis effectively, be receptive rather than avoidant to feedback, and learn from mistakes, for they likely will have more obstacles ahead not just from COVID-19, but leading Singapore as a whole.