Covid19 - Living with the virus is a million dollar decision

 I do not know when the decision was made by the Multi Ministry Task Force, with the support of the govt to treat the pandemic as endemic and to live with the virus like the flu. This decision could be made much earlier at a time when laxity in letting people from high risk countries to come in was like nobody's business. This was likely the time when the highly infectious Delta variant came in and seeded in the community.  Without a national regime to test the people, no one is sure how widespread is the virus in the community, and the consequence is what we are seeing now, more than a thousand infections daily and growing  ie the virus was spreading while no one was looking or conducting big scale community testing. No testing means low number of cases detected, giving a false sense of security a la Donald Trump's way of thinking or unthinking.

The decision to live with the virus could be made after knowing that going for zero infection was no longer possible and thus it became a no choice solution. The spread in the community already gone out of control and what else could be done except to live with it. The recent small number of imported cases is a happening that is too late and would not change anything as the Delta variant is already everywhere.

To make the decision to live with the virus is indeed a tough decision, or a no choice decision. And this decision means having to experience more cases and more deaths. Before this decision was made, there must be expert and scientific data to support it. It could be based on gut feel or some unsubstantiated opinion.  The MMTF must  know and to expect the numbers to go up. There is no point in panicking now. Panicking now is a sign of poor appreciation of this outcome, or unable to take the heat. Or it is an awkward admission that the decision was made from uninformed data and recommendation.

Once such a stand was taken, everyone must behave like a man. You took a tough decision, you have to face it squarely like a man, not wobbling in the knees and regretting this situation. No way to rewind the clock. It is best to come straight and tell the people that this is what it should be. Let's stay united to face the outcome, ie more widespread of infection and....more deaths.

If still fumbling with the outcome, fearing that it would be a Little India version of what had happened in India, it might be a little too late. However, it is still possible to have an island wide lock down and go for zero case solution. This would be a tougher solution as it means a no nonsense termination of all activities and movement of people within the island, and in and out of the island, to try to stop the spread, island wide testing to arrest the spread with no one exempted from the test. The economy would be severely hit for sure.

Still dilly dallying, or committed to live with the virus? Yes? No? Be strong, once the decision is made, live with it, live with all the pains and deaths and all the criticism and unhappiness from the affected people. And hope that it would turn out fine whichever way taken. If it doesn't turn out well, prepare the backside to be goreng. It is your decision, no one is forcing you to make this tough decision. You are paid millions exactly to make tough decisions and if you failed, face the music, and losing your million dollar pay. Take responsibility. You cannot wriggle out from this responsibility.

Pray that your decision is the right one and ends well.

On hindsight we were doing quite well until someone made this gungho decision to live with the virus like the crazy and clueless Americans. The Americans messed it up real bad. Why did we choose to follow the stupid and irresponsible Americans and ended up in this pathetic state of affair? At least the NZ and Australia have a little cow sense not to blindly follow their stupid masters and stick to the zero case solution, and willing to lock down parts of their country if needed be. They are trying very hard and have yet to lose control of the situation.

This virus would make and break countries, and also individual politicians that mishandled it.

PS. 1939 yesterday. When would it hit 5,000? Hitting 2,000 is a matter of tomorrow or the next few days. While rushing recklessly to open up, it might have the opposite effect if the infection exploded and even if the legs were open wide wide, no one would dare to come. Hope Singapore would not become a lepers' colony and be avoided by the rest of the world.

Singapore education - failure or success?

 Education and moulding of the people as a force to be recognised internationally is one of the many failed missions in the legacy of Lee Kuan Yew due of his poor choice of a good leader to succeed him. His choices were limited because of his eagerness to make his own eldest son become the Prime Minister, a square peg squeezed into a round hole.

LHL is more suitable to be an academic professional, teaching in higher institutions of learning in mathematics. He was and is never good in politics, diplomacy and people-skills.

He is by nature good in numbers and digits. He is not good in selecting quality leaders to help him govern because of his inability to tolerate and accommodate dissenting and maverick views.

Therefore, he surrounds himself with sycophantic loyalists instead of real quality leaders. Owing to this critical factir, his team has been unable to raise the standard of living of his people on the one hand but only good in increasing the cost of living on the other.

In the formulation and implementation of many of his myopic, nationally unintegrated and piece-meal policies, he has failed his father, his predecessors, his people and his country miserably.

Education is the epitome and the zenith of all his failures. The long-term leadership succession is the second. CECA is the third.

Help us, God!


Queen of Hearts.

Singapore Education - What price to pay for a piece of paper that cannot be eaten?

 ST 25 Sep had an article titled 'Lack of local talent a big challenge for Singapore business'. What is pertinent in the survey is this, the respondents said the lack of local talent was the biggest challenge, but this was not the case in Taiwan, India, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Indonesia and Malaysia. And what are these talents they are referring to? Sales professionals, people skilled in technology business development, digital marketing and e-commerce.

Who or which organisation should be responsible to churn up such talents for the industries? The talents must be trained or educated and feed the market. The demands from the industries are ready talents, not talents that the industries would be producing or trained.The industries did not see it taking up the responsibility train talents for their own needs. Practically every organisation expects to fill their positions from trained and experienced people from the open market or from the rest of the world.

With this kind of mindset, the burden of providing educated and in some way trained talents must come from the institutions of higher learning, the polytechnics and universities. The irony here is that Singapore often boasts about its world class and very expensive universities, high fees because they are the best, at least better than the countries mentioned above. The why is it that these countries, with universities that mostly ranked at the tail end of surveys, are able to provide the talents but not Singapore?

A survey like this, and all craps coming out from employment agencies, even from third world countries, are as good as a dressing down on Singaporean talents, Singapore's institutions of higher learning. Useless universities, but very expensive, unable to provide talents for the industries. Are these real? Such smearing of local universities and their products is kind of being spread and supported even by the who's who in Singapore. Not only they did not dispute such disgusting smears, they also supported them by their actions, by employing foreigners to fill top management positions and often seen engaging foreign head hunters to hunt around the world for top management positions. And such disgraceful thoughts and comments are repeated quite often by the local media as if this is the truth, this is the fact, Singapore has no talents. Why are local media celebrating such lies, backing up such lies, like the survey mentioned above?

As long as the stupidity has no cure idiots keep allowing this narrative to go on and on, who would want to employ local graduates? On the other hand, the third world countries are praising their own graduates from their funny universities as better than Singapore graduates. And the Singapore;s idiotic who's who accept this without protest, without question, and happily filled even govt positions with funny foreign graduates from funny universities, including fakes and cheats.

What do all these mean to our institutions of higher learnings and Singapore education as a whole? Would it be cheaper and more productive to close them all down and send all our young to the funny universities around us, cheaper and better?

What do you think? What pay so much for a piece of a paper that cannot be eaten, and cannot get a good job?

PS. There are many Singaporean talents overseas but unable to return, unable to find equivalent positions in Singapore, simply because the imbeciles allowed the foreigners to set the narrative, to control the employment industry, to decide who is talent, who to be employed.  This is a crime committed by the imbeciles against our very own talents, with many local PMETs now retrenched, unemployed, underemployed or forced to retire prematurely.

 

 

 

Covid19 - I think the hysteria about reopening Singapore, voiced by some, is really out of place.

 
🔴 There's no alternative at this point.

Last year was different - the whole world was looking for a solution and it was found in the vaccines. But, first of all, no vaccine offers complete immunity and, secondly, quickly mutating viruses are always going to pose challenges to vaccine development.

This is why, for example, we have new flu jabs every year, because new strains emerge all the time.

Given that there are no new, miracle solutions coming, that could somehow wipe the virus out completely, and that vast majority of the population in Singapore is vaccinated, the only thing to do is to return to normal life - albeit responsibly.
No country can be on lockdown forever and zero-Covid strategies are untenable, because the virus is transmitted very easily. Not even North Korea was able to keep it out.

A change in mindset is needed.

Over the past 18 months people have been conditioned to react to relatively high infection figures with fear. It was justified in 2020 but not today.

The figures that need to be tracked are deaths and ICU hospitalizations, signifying severity of the virus (both compared against the vaccination status of the patients too - as we know it's the unvaccinated who are the most affected at this point).

So far only 73 people died of COVID in Singapore. This is less than 100+ who die in traffic accidents every year or an average of about 800 who die of regular flu.

We also have to remember that many of the patients that passed away due to COVID would have likely fallen prey to influenza or other common viruses, due to their already weakened state. In international statistics, the novel coronavirus pretty much wiped out flu as a cause of death in countries around the world (even though, of course, it is also responsible for a large number of excess deaths - but not in Singapore).

In other words, so far the death toll of C19 for the year and a half since the outbreak started in SG is on par with an average MONTH of flu deaths in a regular year.

Of course both viruses are different and Covid may impact even younger, healthier people more severely. Nevertheless, we have to maintain a sense of proportion.

Even at this point Singapore is doing many times better than comparable developed countries attempting large scale reopening.

In terms of death toll it is orders of magnitude better than most countries, in fact. Western nations lost anywhere between 1500 to 3000 people for 1 million inhabitants. In Singapore that figure is just 12-13 - easily over 100 times less.

As for patients in ICU, it's currently ca. 4 per million inhabitants - compared to 70 in the US, around 30 in Israel, France or Switzerland, 20 in countries like Germany, Belgium or Canada.

🔴 Considering that during previous waves this figure peaked around the world at anywhere between 60 to 120, SG still has a long way to go before it can start getting worried.

Since all that could have been done, has been done, it's now time to return to normal - however responsible - life, instead of expecting new lockdowns that threaten thousands of livelihoods. 

Anonymous

Meng Wanzhou - Biden slammed scum Trump

 Finally Biden took up the cudgel and threw it at Trump, ending a period of living under the dictates of this rascal. Biden had struck a deal with Xi and Meng Wanzhou is now back in China after a final plea of not guilty, that she was innocent of all the charges. Trump must be furiously mad for sleepy Joe to destroy his dubious scheme and threw it in his face.

This is the biggest slap Biden gave to the scoundrel Trump for illegally and shamefully arresting an innocent Chinese citizen just to attack and cripple Huawei as a competitor in 5G technology. After 3 years of this dirty and slimy act, what did the Americans achieved? Nothing, no 5G to show and still struggling to find out what is 5G. In the same time, under this unfair pressure from the evil Americans, Huawei has broken its dependence on American technology, developed its own chips, developed its own operating system and moving on to 6G.

The Americans would still be crying out loud that China stole its technology, technology that the Americans did not have in the first place.

Boy PM Trudeau now looking more stupid than ever. The whole shitty political game was decided by the Americans. He was a little boy ball picker. The Americans said pick, he would pick, run, he would run. Now the Americans said game over, he has to surrender Meng Wanzhou back to China. He has practically no say in this matter. Did he gain anything other than for Trump to pat his head and said, good boy?

And for all the silly things he had done to please Trump, the Canadian economy got tanked, and two Americans were arrested and stayed in Chinese jail for 3 years, sentenced to prison and one facing death row. The only consolation is for China to release these two Canadians after spending time in isolation in China.

Are all these worth it?

This sordid story does not end with the return of Meng to China. It is just the beginning for Canada. Biden may have struck a deal with Xi and American China relations may be on the mend, but not Canadian China relations. Canada would be kept in cold storage for some time to come.

Meng Wanzhou would be honoured as a heroine in China, having been unfairly arrested by the silly Canadian boy PM on behalf of the gangster Trump, and having to endure the separation from family and country and the prospect of not returning to her homeland. Meng Wanzhou stood the ground with great strength and dignity and is now famous not just in China, but also the world. She is a mighty woman standing against the might of two horrible western govts and returned home in honour, unscathed, and did not waver under immense pressure, alone in a foreign land.

China has a new heroine to add to its long history and civilisation.

PS. This episode is a good reminder to all the crony countries that think America is an honourable and good place to visit and to park their money in. They stand to have their money confiscated and they be arrested by fabricated lies and charges cooked up by the evil Americans.