Carl D wrote on Mar 8
th, 2020 at 8:47am:
I notice Singapore has been able to deal with this crisis quite well so far.
https://fortune.com/2020/02/28/singapore-coronavirus-contained-response/The difference between Singapore and Australia is that Singapore has been
proactive instead of
reactive in dealing with coronavirus. Singapore's Prime Minister was not scared to make the tough decisions early on that were needed to protect their people.
The other notable thing about Singapore was that panic buying was starting to set in like it is here and in other parts of the world but after Singapore's Prime Minister made an announcement telling everyone not to panic and there were no shortages of toilet paper, etc. things have settled down and the panic buying seems to have stopped.
Whether what they've done is just delaying the inevitable remains to be seen but at least it gives them more time while the search for a vaccine continues.
Meanwhile, here in "stick your heads in the sand and hope it all just goes away land" we're still waiting for our Prime Minister to (at least) address the nation.
The so called leaders here are always one step behind in trying to deal with coronavirus (Scotty from Marketing was too busy worrying about his alleged surplus and not wanting to disrupt the economy).
By the time new cases are discovered here in Australia they've already passed the virus on to others. Looks like it will now be unstoppable, you can't play "catch up" with something like this and ever hope to win which should have been obvious 2 months ago.
Singapore is a very different place and a very different people to here.
They are far more prone to respect authority and not question their leadership, although that last point is slowly changing.
I have never felt safer in my life than when I lived and worked there, but that safety does come at a cost.
But the more I think about it, the most it seems worthy of paying... But that cost is to freedoms.
It really puts into perspective what we have here, how lucky we are, but mostly how we take it for granted like the Americans do. If nobody stands up for it, it will be gone and unlike Singapore, we won't have much to show for it.
But we better not criticise Morrison. It's ok he was an abysmal failure during the bushfires when he wasn't totally absent or now that he's shutting down questions about sports rorts after lying about them hoping that people will forget but now we have to praise his handling, or lack thereof, of the impacts and flow-on effects of COVID-19, from the coming economic issues to the panicked people.
And there's nothing he can do about the latter because he's burnt all trust with the people and is seen as nothing but Scotty from marketing by the vast majority.