KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Weeks after two of his roommates were diagnosed with COVID-19, Mohamad Arif Hassan says he’s still waiting to be tested for the coronavirus. Quarantined in his room in a sprawling foreign workers’ dormitory that has emerged as Singapore’s biggest viral cluster, Arif says he isn’t too worried because neither he nor his eight other roommates have any symptoms.
But, but…I thought covid disappears when the weather’s warm??
How can tropical Singapore be having so much infection??
Could somebody be lying??
Once belittled as a tiny red dot on the global map
In the 18th century?
Certainly not after that.
This is extremely bad news. Singapore has put a lot of effort into containment through testing, tracking and isolation. I was there in early March when Singapore was opening up after its first lockdown. Even Singapore, a small, advanced and regimented country, cannot control it.
The US has, as a nation, put no effort into containment. I fear greatly what our re-opening will bring.
And, it’s not only Singapore…
Abusing and neglecting the poor doesn’t seem to be a sustainable plan. They get sick too.
I know, let’s abolish Obamacare and replace it with…
Underpants + ??? = Health Plan
Traced back to one selfish idiot who used his newly-won free-dumb to go bar-hopping.
I’ll stock up and drink at home for the next couple of years…
And Singapore is considered something of a success story in dealing with the outbreak of the virus. Just think what people in the US will have to deal with when we experience widespread dumbfuckery such as this display that happened over the weekend.
They’re not giving the migrant workers decent quarters, but they’re keeping them paid and fed and isolated, and they’re testing them all. So a C- for decency, but still better than any meatpacking town in the US.
so many people have said it, but it’s worth repeating: Singapore was considered a success story!
When we get to August and hit the 500K mark (at least) maybe all those never-Demmers will come to their senses.
What you do to the least of us…may soon be done to you!
Yeah, buddy. If this is what success looks like I don’t want to see failure. I suspect I’m going to get to see it though.
Only slightly off-topic, I just got a WaPo headline that most White House officials will be required to wear masks. The sole (in both senses) exception is Trumplethinskin.
Have I mentioned lately how much I hate these people?
I know, let’s abolish Obamacare and replace it with…
Underpants + ??? = Health Plan
Sorry. No government-funded underpants if you’re poor.
We gained independence from Malaysia in … 1965. Still squished-on-one-side-dot indeed, at that point.
(“we”: I’m originally from Sg)
__
The worker dorms are a whole 'nother world, though. By North American standards, it’s almost impossible to imagine just how small they are, on a floor-space-per-person basis… maybe MAYBE like… 5 sq m, or about 50 sq ft, per each person?
Really.
They’re rarely over 2 stories high, but there are so many people in so little space that social distancing would be a very serious challenge just coming down 1 flight of damn stairs at commute time.
Remember, Singapore is THE most expensive place to live, per sq ft, on planet earth (for comparable accommodations).
Net result: Cost-effective dorm situations are going to become exactly like the migrant worker housing in Abu Dhabi (where, currently, it’s mostly US museums etc using that labor — I still have not figured out why Abu Dhabi needs, or even wants, a Guggenheim of their own; maybe y’all can help a gurl out there)
or in Doha (where, as this crowd will undoubtedly know, it’s de-facto slave labor building the 2022 World Cup facilities).
Only difference: Sg won’t confiscate your passport to keep you in the country as … leverage.
Longer commute from across the waterway has not been doable since… before 1965, when both sides of said waterway were still Malaysia. Can’t cross one of the world’s most secure borders twice a damn day.
But not “belittled,” surely. Or if it was belittled, then by whom? Even in 1965 Singapore was already more sophisticated in many ways than much of Asia, never mind Malaysia.
Anyway, I notice that you say “gained independence” – but I remember that Lee Kuan Yew was in tears when that break-up occurred. He was at least ambivalent about it; some would even say he did not want it. (He certainly made the best of it afterwards, that’s for sure.)
I see that his son is now nearing “retirement.” Will he actually retire or hang on to considerable power the way his father did?
Glad to see your comment, by the way.
^^ 
this was unexpected and even a bit humbling. whence such honors?
For over 100 years (if this _lys has the memory right), most of the XIX century + the XX up to WWII… the place just kept getting flipped back and forth between colonial unpleasants. Major players being a million zillion different forms of the UK (among them, “the UK”; “the Raj”; “Straits Settlements”; “British Malaya”; among others), and those Japanese colonials too — just as awful and on-brand as in Korea.
ETA———
Also, pretty much a storage warehouse for British trade goods, during much of that time.
Originally for the British + Dutch East India Co. ((two colonial interests with different languages and cultures and lifeways, what could ever possibly go wrong?)); later for all those other avatars of the UK.
Still weird to think how quickly … a whole island of warehouse district … turned into the world’s most expensive shelter-in-place ahah.
Is the UK still trying to limn itself as “Singapore-upon-Thames” or whatever the fuck Johnson was doing a couple years back, by the way?
Because they ought to just stop that, if so. Have never even tried to implement anything remotely close to the not-quite-autocratic-but-damn-close, high-tariff, ultra-protectionist iron fists of Customs that were half or more of what brought Sg to global economic preeminence.
————/ETA
“Gained independence”, yep, those are the carefully chosen words, for a story that is 2-sides’d to this day in Singapore’s schools.
The story of the official government documents is that good ol’ S’pore was the first, and still the last and only, country to be handed its marching orders and You’re Fired!™ against its greater collective ‘will’. Independence forced upon it, as it were… by Malaysia (official country of birth of one foundling _lys), which itself had been independent for all of … 2 years, at that point.
The story confused, well and truly. I honestly thought I was just a stupid kid, until I revisited the docs I could find a few years later and realized that at that point I had leveled up to stupid teenager! no, it really WAS a gigantic confusing mess.
On the other hand, that hand-to-hand combat training (my dad is a vet of the Sg armed forces; Sg and Israel are a league all their own as far as that kind of close-quarters training is concerned). About THAT, there was never any confusion at all.
In considering the potential retirement of Sg heads of state… you may want to look up the base salary, if you don’t know where I’m going with that.
Yes, “independence” was forced upon that generation of Singaporeans; and subsequent generations have been glad of it.
No, by that time in 1965, Malaysia (or its antecedents) had been officially independent of the UK for about eight years, not two.
Again, glad to see your comments. Thanks for writing.
once again you’re welcome… but… is there a catch? ahah.
–
speaking of … scrawlin’s of a _lys … do you happen to have seen the below?
in which I am an extra credible narrator, having gone back multiple times for … stories of Korea, from family friends.
The drama😭
I can’t imagine what it was like to … grow up in that kind of tumultuous sequence of military dictatorships. Did anyone have … a childhood in any true sense?
Not until now. Thanks for re-posting. I will take a look, probably tomorrow.
And on that note … have a great evening.
Thanks; you too.