Special Report: The Pandemic WAAAAY West of the Border

 

[Today's post is by Corona-zona Senior Southeast Asia Correspondent PBR]

A report from Singapore? On COVID? You got it! Why? Because I am bored out of my brains. Unlike others, I can’t embrace boredom. Humanity is a doing thing. And boredom is doing my head in.  

COVID-19 is not as much of a problem if you are on a roomy island with awesome outdoors and can manage incoming folk (like New Zealand, but certainly not the UK). COVID-19 sucks if you are on an island that is 280 sq miles with a population of almost 6 million.  For perspective, that’s about a quarter of the size of Rhode Island and with almost six times the population. With fewer White folk.

Socially, things are a tad rubbish for interaction, but it’s not like the rest of the world. Cinemas are open if you want to be in an enclosed space with folk for an hour and a half. Alcoholics can rejoice as early shutting hours for pubs have led to beer deals in the afternoon.  Beaches are open, though you have to book a slot if you intend to go on the weekend. There are also squares on the beach demarcated with tape to show where you should sit to get your tan on, but it’s just a suggestion (I go a lot, trust me, no one cares).

If you are interested in these things, for entertainment see here, and if you are desperate to go to the nation’s nicest beaches on the weekend, go here. By the way, you can do most things except that the state wants you to have a tracker on you – as explained by the BBC.

For you capitalists, the attempts by Singapore at being the international poster boy for business as usual has flopped. The desire to bring the World Economic Forum to Singapore has gone south. And face-to-face meetings are not going to happen for business folk who absolutely believe in-person meetings are required for deals to be made.

Singapore is a great place to live not because it’s a great place to live. It’s great because it is Asia-lite. But more importantly, it’s a jump off to places like Bali, Indonesia and Changmai, Thailand. Being stuck here, one realises it’s rather pants. How many variants and discussions on the national dish can one have? 

Oh, you may want to know about how Singapore is doing with regard to COVID. According to the government, overall there have been 59,780 cases, 59,641 recovered, and 29 deaths.  According to Our World in Data, on Valentine’s Day there were 14.4 new cases per day on a seven-day trailing average.  That equates to 0.24 cases per 100K population.  For comparison, the United States had 90416.3 new cases, which equates to 27.28 per 100K. That’s more than two orders of magnitude difference lah.

Let the host of this blog know if you want specifics about anything. I’ll try my best to respond. I am, if it has not come across, terribly bored.


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