Just Saying | Singapore ‘idiot’s guide’ to coronavirus crisis control: don’t do it like Hong Kong
- Yonden Lhatoo strongly recommends listening to the recent rant by the city state’s trade minister, against panic-stricken citizens snapping up masks and stockpiling essential goods when there is no need to
If you haven’t yet heard that leaked audio clip of Singaporean Trade and Industry Minister Chan Chun Sing’s recent rant against “idiots” panic buying masks and stripping store shelves of daily essentials such as rice, noodles and toilet paper, I cannot recommend it enough.
It’s an appeal to common sense and a lament for the lack of it, as well as a contemptuous rebuke to mass hysteria, mob mentality and selfish, irrational behaviour triggered by the coronavirus crisis. And it’s all delivered in classic Singaporean style – thickly accented, punctuated regularly with Singlish slang, and simultaneously crude, hilarious and on point.
Chan explains his government’s initial decision to distribute four masks to every household as taking a “gamble to calm the nerves”, rather than a supreme necessity and right for each citizen.
“But to issue four to every family, I burn another 5 million masks from my limited stockpile. When China now asks for masks, right, China is burning at a rate of hundreds of millions a day. Which country, and even which production line, can meet China’s needs? Cannot, right?”
Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor’s handling of the crisis provides a handy guide for Chan on how not to do it, otherwise “I can guarantee you today our hospital system would have broken down”.
