Even in the developing global Covid-19 pandemic of 2020, the nation state of Singapore punches above its weight when the main action takes place in China, South Korea, Japan, then Iran and mainland Europe. Singapore—or some facsimile of it—is summoned, bound and fashioned by the intersection of medicine and politics.
Depending on the narrative, Singapore is a nigh impossible to imitate exemplar of epidemic containment, a non-dysfunctional authoritarian-technocratic polity poised to seduce the democratic West and its allies in its hour of crisis, an embarrassing failure because panic buying did break out in its otherwise well-behaved, obedient, and acquiescent population, or an embarrassing failure because it was for several weeks, the country with the highest incidents of coronavirus infections outside China. Then there is the Global Health Security Index, whose inaugural October 2019 edition considered Singapore's pandemic preparedness far behind the developed West and even its neighbours in Southeast Asia.
Did Singapore really do everything right? How could it have done everything right if it wasn't expected to do everything right? Can Singapore's pandemic response be considered a success despite its populace succumbing to multiple bouts of panic buying?
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| Plague in London, 1625 Title artwork from Thomas Dekker's pamphlet "A Rod for Run-awayes" |
Is panic buying as a sign of social breakdown, a national shame?
"But it was impossible to make any impression upon the middling people and the working labouring poor. Their fears were predominant over all their passions, and they threw away their money in a most distracted manner upon those whimsies."
Daniel Defoe, A Journal of a Plague Year (1722)Ignoring Chan Chun Sing's nationalist-moralistic rant for the moment, a dispassionate analysis of the coronavirus panic buying phenomenon can and does exist. Rational people can and do panic and then panic buy in response to imminent epidemics, war, and natural disasters because these events are so far outside their ordinary experience to process psychologically and to solve individually. They panic buy and hoard up to feel they are back in control instead of feeling not in control of the situation. Others see many people panic buying and think they ought to do something too, because frantic action is preferable to passive acquiescence to an impending doom.
(This is why there was panic buying even in Taiwan, which implemented immigration checkpoint temperature testing, strict border controls, mandatory quarantines weeks earlier than the rest of the world and has held on to the world's lowest Covid-19 infection rate crown despite its proximity to China.)
With this explanation, it is possible to reduce panic buying behaviour to the 3 classic elements of mass hysterias (and also predict that bank runs, another classic mass hysteria, are likely to take place in the near future of this pandemic), fear, uncertainty, and doubt: Fear of how many people the coronavirus could infect and kill, uncertainty about the nature of the coronavirus, and doubt in the ability of the state to handle the epidemic.
The first two are in the realm of epidemic medicine and for medical experts to solve, but the third is a an issue of crisis management and communication, solely in the hands of politicians. They are the ones who make the decision that the situation is serious enough to bring in the experts and implement their plans, and also to manage the fear, uncertainly, and doubt of the populace.
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| Summon the epidemic experts! |
"I think that all of us who are not experts initially underestimated the coronavirus. We understand that measures that seemed drastic two or three weeks ago, need to be taken now"It's not about who has the best pandemic plans. Almost everyone has some kind of foolproof plan to enact since the H1N1 and swine flu outbreaks. It's about when politicians decide they need to activate these plans, and it is their inaction during this epidemic that has created panic.
What did Singapore do wrong from the Wuhan outbreak to Dorscon Orange?
If the president of the European Commission can admit to failure to take timely action despite knowing the correct measures to take, Singapore's leaders hopefully can concede that while its choice of epidemic control strategy and implementation has been correct so far, it too suffered a similar failure of timely action.
A simultaneous reconstruction and deconstruction of the early Covid-19 timeline is sufficient to prove two worrying tendencies in the Singapore government to dither and delay what needed to be done, and put out messaging that is hardly reassuring to its populace, entirely tone deaf to the developing sense of crisis.
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| Nero Fiddling while Rome burns. That's what people remember, not Nero putting out the fire the right way afterwards. |
This is a few days after whistleblowers utilise social media break the news about the outbreak. In epidemic terms, the news can no longer be quarantined by the CCP.
You'll never read a news article saying the virus was positively identified in any samples taken from the market because no samples were taken for inspection during the great clean-up. If this were a murder mystery, the CCP in Wuhan just destroyed a crime scene and all evidence in it.
Taiwan sent its experts on a fact-finding mission and they do the right thing in the face of Chinese lies a few days later.
Caught suppressing evidence, the CCP now lies. The pattern of self-serving obfuscation that emerges from China feeds the fear that the virus is far more lethal and contagious than admitted and that China has already failed to contain the outbreak
But as many as 5 million of its 11 million citizens had already left the city!
Either Chinese tourists don't fly to Singapore at Changi Airport, or this is a clown show
Fake news circulated on social media. Instead of assuaging fears and hopes by the fearful about Wuhan tourists importing the epidemic to Singapore, a circular is released on a government website.
For 3 days after the Wuhan lockdown, China has allowed a massive exodus of Chinese holidayers out of the country despite the developing epidemic! And individual travel is not suspended either!
Finally screening at the airport. Compare the dithering and delay to Taiwan. Also note this takes place after the suspension of group travel anyway by China.
Are we getting the pattern here?
The measures are only for those the authorities deem "high risk", and not a blanket quarantine. This is days after Chinese researchers suggest asymptomatic spread.
By this point, it is obvious that the Chinese lockdown is pure theatre; the virus has already escaped Wuhan to other provinces in China, and quite possibly abroad. This surely adds on to the global reservoir of fear.
No, it's not a Chinese gay pride but a Singaporean Rose Parade held during the final days of the Chinese New year. And yes, sensible people were staying away from this potentially crowded event. Despite authorities insisting at first there was no cause for concern, then taking "enhanced security measures" the day before.
Took them long enough? It's time to impose the restrictions only after the last big event that attracts the big Chinese tourist numbers and dollars? Or is it time to impose the restrictions only after China belatedly locks down Wuhan, Hubei and every province?
This is eventually fact checked by experts and confirmed to be statistical massaging by mainstream outlets
Could it be some perverse form of medical tourism? Singapore is a medical tourism hub or has aspirations to be one!
A loophole around 31 January travel restrictions?
This is followed immediately by panic buying on toilet paper, rice, and surgical masks
I know it's way after the timeline but this is mindboggling from an alleged control freak authoritarian government that takes no risks.
We at Illusio argue that the evident delay and dithering by the Singapore government and the contradictions between various departments working at cross-purposes are publicly visible failures of judgement exacerbated the growing fear, uncertainty, and doubt in its capabilities so that when epidemic measures were finally announced in the Dorscon Orange level alert by the Singapore government, the hysteria that had built up led to panic buying.
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