I will admit that when the whole virus situation started I didn’t take it seriously. I don’t remember being concerned about SARS, H1N1 or any similar diseases. I think there is a callousness and naivety that comes with youth. Maybe the effectiveness of the Singapore government in those earlier situations lulled me into a false sense of security.
Then the news and research started trickling in, before exploding in line with the case numbers. I became seriously concerned with South Korea, and the rapid spread in Italy along with the rest of Europe kickstarted my sense of fear and dread, especially after parsing through threads like this on twitter:
This is the first time in my life we’re facing a global epidemic, and nobody has any idea what is truly in store. There is the part about the virus, then there is the part of the fallout due to the virus. The former is bad enough, and I shudder to think about the latter.
Singapore is lauded, probably rightly so for handling the situation well. But I think we’re hardly out of the woods. We are not in lockdown, people are still flying in, and the malls are still crowded. We just need a few asymptomatic people walking around to start new clusters and make the linear growing numbers into exponential ones.
There are so many threads on social media about the situation in Europe, with many people saying that one week ago they were living their lives as per normal, and it took just one week for their hospitals to reach their capacity. I strongly feel that Singapore should do perform tests on anyone who wants to be tested, as well as people exhibiting mild symptoms. I am worried that if we wait till the number of cases implode, it will be too late:
I am a nobody, and people hardly read this blog. I am not writing this to advocate for action, but rather to express my fear. I don’t mind laughing at my own paranoia in future. I realised many people are relying on mainstream media for their updates, so they may not know how dire is the situation in other countries, or that there is increasing evidence that people who exhibit no symptoms can be highly contagious.
“On Tuesday, Dr. Sandra Ciesek, director of the Institute of Medical Virology in Frankfurt, Germany, tested 24 passengers who had just flown in from Israel. Seven of the 24 passengers tested positive for coronavirus. Four of those had no symptoms, and Ciesek was surprised to find that the viral load of the specimens from the asymptomatic patients was higher than the viral load of the specimens from the three patients who did have symptoms. Viral load is a measure of the concentration of the virus in someone’s respiratory secretions. A higher load means that someone is more likely to spread the infection to other people.”
– Infected people without symptoms might be driving the spread of coronavirus more than we realized, CNN
I am personally staying at home as much as possible, except for my morning rides at the park where it is open air and everyone is at least a few metres away from me. I remain grateful that I have cycling as my crutch.
I don’t feel safe at all. I am very worried for the elderly in my family, especially those who already have chronic conditions. I can only hope that the current measures will work against all odds, and that this is the precise time when we can demonstrate the advances in our medical science to develop an effective treatment for it.
Everyone, please stay safe, and try to keep everyone else safe by practicing social distancing.