Whether
it’s called circuit-breaker measures or lockdown, the effect is almost the same.
It is way too late as infections are already spreading rapidly and
uncontrollable in our communities as many new cases are reported as unlinked. Implementing
the latest measures now just shows one thing: past incremental measures are not
working and non-effective. In times of crisis like this pandemic, why swift and
drastic measures were not put in place early instead of reacting and waiting
for advisories from WHO and the US Infectious and Disease experts. Big steps like
closing schools, non-essential businesses, getting people to stay at home should
have been taken early. This is big mistake no.1.
Big
mistake no.2 is telling people not to wear face-mask if not unwell. Many experts
have already raised the alert very early that asymptomatic people could still
infect others. Why are we not listening to them? If these people had worn face
masks, our story would have been different today. Workers who worn face masks to
work were either mocked or reprimanded by their superiors. We are not doing
what both Hong Kong and Taiwan are doing: telling their residents to stay at
home and wear a face-mask when outdoor. Now after two months of anxiety, we
have to U-turn and say “we don’t discourage people from wearing face-mask…”. What
the heck! Just be honest. Tell people the truth if we did not have enough stockpile
of face-mask to be distributed to the population. At least tell people early to
stay at home or indoor if no face-mask. Giving out 4 surgical face-masks for
every household isn’t make sense at all. The reusable mask given to each
resident does not protect one from droplets or viruses. As the saying goes:
when there is no fish, make do with prawns lah!
Not
many could remember or are too young to recall the SARS epidemic in 2003. Former
Health Minister LIM Hng Kiang was unable to handle the crisis. Soon, Khaw Boon
Wan was promoted to Health Minister to manage the epidemic. There was no
multi-disciplinary ministerial task force set-up at that time. Although there
were 33 deaths, the crisis was quite well managed and infection was contained
within a short span of time. Now, Khaw has moved from National Development to
Transport. Many would agree that he did a better job to turn around our public mrt
system and resolve its frequent breakdowns and reliability issues. Fast forward
to current pandemic crisis. While it’s understandable we want to test our new
leaders’ capabilities and abilities to manage a crisis like this pandemic and
to let them try out new ideas. Isn’t this too big a gamble and too high a risk
to take? Not putting an “old hand’ in the task force to handle this crisis is
big mistake no.3.
Now, we are struggling with rising infection
cases everyday. Some said the third wave of infection is on its way. Many residents
still do not stay at home and continue to wander around. Sigh!
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