Quora Answer: Is There a Lesson for the US Reopening, with Singapore’s 2nd Wave Experience?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “A second wave of COVID-19 infection has hit Singapore due, in part to insufficient testing, which allowed infected people back into the general population.  Now, Singapore is on total lockdown.  Is there a lesson for the US before we start reopening?”

This second wave spike has got nothing to do with inadequate testing.  It was caused by a policy blindspot pertaining to foreign worker dormitories.  If we consider Singapore residents, both citizens and permanent residents, the trend has held steady, and is eventually declining.  This means that measures were appropriate, and adequate.  The are even measures in place to mitigate imported cases from overseas.  All of that worked.

Our problem is that we forgot about our foreign workers, and the state of their housing.  They were housed in close proximity in relatively crowded dormitories, and this allowed clusters to develop, and infections to spread.  Once this policy blindspot was noticed, it was immediately addressed, which means locking down, constant testing, and mitigating the spread by moving healthy workers to alternative housing.  We are talking about thousands of workers, so this necessitated a multi-government agency approach and a huge logistics exercise to house them, feed them, and see to their needs.

In the long term, once this pandemic has passed, I would hope that legislation pertaining to housing and welfare of foreign workers will be strengthened, and this will not be allowed to happen.  That it was allowed to develop, in the first place, is a national shame that has to be addressed.

There is little correlation to the situation in the United States since they are at a different stage of the pandemic, and they have not even addressed it.  Logistically, the United States is woefully unprepared at state and federal level to address the spike in infections.  Legislatively, there is little scope for emergency action to take necessary action to quarantine and test.  There is little political will to do so in a contentious political climate.  By the time this is over, the fractured American political climate will result in a horrendous unnecessary death toll.  There is no equivalent incompetency in Singapore, or elsewhere in the developed world.