Singapore—In April, Bloomberg declared Singapore “the world’s best place to be during Covid.”
A scant six months later, the country ranked 39th, its lowest ranking ever on Bloomberg’s Covid Resilience Ranking scale, amid record-high Covid infections and deaths....
On Bloomberg’s list Singapore is now ranked lower than South Africa, with its nearly three million Covid cases and 90,000 deaths, and whose vaccination rate is yet to reach 20 per cent.
The reasons why the island-nation rated poorly are the stringent local measures that have limited people’s mobility, the slow travel reopening and flight capacity recovery that is far less than that of the US and Europe, even though Singapore has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world.
The above is reported in theindependent.sg
From being the safest country to be in, Singapore is now one of the highest risk country to be in, with daily infection at more than 3,000 daily as reported officially. This is the price Singapore is willing to pay to open up to allow more visitors including those from high risk countries, countries that are ranked at Level 4 according to the American CDC. Anyway what is the difference is Singapore is also ranked at Level 4? There is a saying, if one is a leper, there is no need to fear lepers anymore.
But why the huge drop from number 1 to number 39? This is like moving from first world to third world, so easily done. The reasons, did not open its leg wide enough for more lepers to come in. If this is the reason, Singapore has no problem in regaining its number 1 position. Just game the ranking system that Singapore knows best. It is like bringing in more foreign academics to replace local academics, nevermind if the local academics become jobless, as long as the ranking of Singapore universities looked good by providing more jobs for foreigners. Never mind if the graduates cannot find good jobs and and seen as untalented and unsuitable for the job market. As long as the ranking is high for the universities, that is the important consideration.
So do not be surprised that Singapore would soon be number 1 again, by opening its leg wider as needed to meet the requirements. The number of daily infection can go to 10,000, does not matter as long as the ranking is good as required. Just loosen all the restrictions on movement of people, open up the restaurants etc etc. all will be fine.
Singapore only loves to be number 1. Number 1 in opening legs wide wide for anything.