Having spent quite a lot of time in Singapore and having visited several times I never considered it a place I would want to live. It is a breath-taking tropical paradise with coiffured trees and planted borders along the roads. The climate barely changes throughout the year and, like The Truman Show, during the monsoon season you could set your watch by the time the thunder cracks and the rain comes down in sheets in the early afternoon. And it is the same every time you visit. In a word ‘boring’. The population seems to shuffle about, heads down. While it is quite covert, the extent to which the population is controlled is tangible. The remarkable success regarding the lack of racial tension in a small island with three major ethnic groups: Chinese, Malaysians and Indians is not the result of mutual respect and interracial harmony. Rather it is the result of harsh penalties for crossing the legal line; one of many legal lines in the country.
But this remarkable level of social control and judicial ferocity—your landing card informs you that the penalty for possessing illegal drugs is death—also helped them to keep the lid on the coronavirus during the early days of the recent pandemic. I was not surprised to hear how they were handling COVID-19 using severe lockdowns backed up by armed guards. But, remarkably, the Singapore government has decided that it may be time to stop counting and, thereby, reporting COVID cases. This is notwithstanding the fact that, having clamped down harshly like Taiwan, they were unable to prevent a second wave. While the proposal has not yet been implemented, it is an integral part of the roadmap provided by their COVID-19 taskforce which also contained proposals to lift travel restrictions, allow large gatherings and scrap lockdowns. In fact, this is all part of a decision not to aim for a zero-COVID strategy and to learn to live with the virus. While there is a traditional and perpetual fear of contagion in the Far East and South East Asia, there is an even greater fear of not making money and missing out on education.
Contrast that with the destruction of our economy and educational system and the clanging chimes of doom to which we are subjected daily. On 4 July 15 deaths were reportedly attributed to COVID-19; 358 people were admitted to hospital with COVID-19 on 29 June; and 22,248 people tested positive on 4 July. Working back through these figures, some of the positive tests will be false positives, most will not become ill and—it is claimed—that vaccines have broken the link between infections and deaths. Of the 358 people admitted to hospital ‘with’ COVID-19, these were not necessarily admitted because of COVID-19, and some will not have realised they were even, purportedly, infected. And 15 deaths due to COVID-19 is obliterated by the number of people dying of influenza. COVID-19 is not even in the top 20 causes of death in the UK. I never thought I would say this, but I think I would like to live in Singapore.
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