Both MOH and our Defence Minister have announced that they will no longer have their daily press briefing on the Covid 19 situation in the country. They will now do the briefing on Mon, Wed and Fri.
I do hope that this is not a sort of mission accomplished or victory lap sign. Or maybe they want to send the message that we are halfway by cutting the briefing into half?
I don’t think it is time for mission accomplished yet as the chart below (which excludes the detainees) shows that we still have cases every day for the past 14 days.
- Flattening the curve is not mission accomplished.
- These people were infected prior to these 14 days. Even if you ignore the returnees, this means that the virus is still out there. This cannot be mission accomplished.
What are the potential sources of infections?
1) We still have returnees but now they just have to self-quarantine at home. This is a new procedure since early this month to replace the mandatory quarantine.
- In other countries that have supposedly controlled the virus, there have been new cases due to people going back to the country.
- If I was the govt, I would have experimented with the home quarantine procedures first before applying it wholesale.
- We have seen many u-turns in procedure yet somehow the govt thinks that we can change the form of the quarantine without having a trial run to iron out the kinks.
- It is over-confidence or being irresponsible or what knowing that there are many returnees who are sick?
2) I don’t think we have a solution yet on the foreign workers that is based on reality ie
- They are living in close quarters
- There is a strong chance that they may not seek treatment if sick
- They are going to work ie mixing with locals
What happened to the multi-agency task force that was supposed to come up with some solution?
3) We still have “spontaneous” infections. It is my way of saying that the virus is still out there. I hope some research scientist is trying to figure out this problem. Otherwise, we are just pretending that it will “mysteriously go away” to quote President Trump.
If you think this spontaneous infection is a joke, just remember that our ex-PM trial was postponed because a member of the defense team had tested for Covid.
4) Of course, the latest scary story is about how China is currently having some cases due to frozen food.
- MOH has come out to say that they have not heard of transmission by food because we cook our food and the heat kills the virus
- This statement must rank the same as the one about drinking hot water
If China is taking this seriously, shouldn’t we do so?
Flying
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To be fair, I think many countries are also groping about to figure what are the do’s and don'ts’ to open up the economy. So we are no different from many countries.
Notwithstanding this, I find the one about flying to be the strangest.
How can you ask people to social distance yet when they travel, this does not apply.
I am not sure whether you remember the equation in my 16 May post.
It is about this professor from the University of Massachusetts who had this interesting equation for Covid 19.
Exposure X Time = Infection
If not done so, you should read his blog.
According to him, the 5 most contagious places are the home, office, public transport, social events and restaurants. He argued that based on contact tracing studies, the highest risk of transmission comes from being enclosed in a crowded place.
I also saw this video about how passengers on a plane can spread the virus due to the air circulation in the plane's enclosed space. No amount of social distancing is going to help.
If our Minister made the traveling decision after seeing the video then thumbs up as he acknowledged that all the passengers are going to be infected anyway …so why have the social distancing!!
But all is not lost. I have a suggestion.
Since there is now a rapid test kit, we should test all those as part of the boarding procedures. Given that flying is not cheap, the ticket price could include the testing fee.
This should give comfort to all those planning to fly.
So how come the govt is not thinking of this?
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PS: This blog is for me to better understand COVID 19 as this will impact my investments. If you are also into equities, follow me at i4value.asia.
Disclaimer: I am not an epidemiologist, healthcare worker, pharmacist, or staff in the Ministry of Health, but rather is someone with a strong interest in numerical analysis. The content is an attempt to understand what is happening in the battle against COVID 19 from a data-based perspective. The opinions expressed here are based on information extracted from readily available public sources but I do not warrant its completeness or accuracy and should not be relied on as such.
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