Malcontentment

I will say something controversial.

It has gone on long enough. It is time to bring back sanity to the rules and regulations surrounding the entire pantomime that is the COVID-19 management in SIN city. The political capital that had been previously amassed has already been spent, and it is all going downhill there---there will be other ways of regaining the lost political capital some time in the future, way before the next election, I'm sure; they will always find a way to do so.

So there is no excuse to not bite the bullet and do the right thing now.

What is the right thing then? Instead of throwing money towards various ``support schemes'' to keep entire industry sectors in the thrall of the government (and thus justifying the need to increase taxes in the near future to make up for the shortfall from ``emergency spending''), work towards reducing the many rules that restrict movement so that people can start to organically support the various businesses that are on these ``support schemes''---this means actually planning for an exit rather than just taking knee-jerk reactions. I know that there is a crisis to manage, but I would be disappointed if the powers that be had not set aside a skeleton crew (or even planned time among the existing task force) to actually think about how our exit might look like, to define the end conditions of what constitutes a ``successful management of the COVID-19 crisis in SIN city'', and to communicate it to the general public. Without a defined end-state that everyone is made aware of, there is simply no way to proceed, and the task force might as well be formalised as yet another ministry instead since it will essentially exist ``forever'' as its mission is never complete.

Instead of focusing on trying to regain global reputation through being overtly friendly to those outside of SIN city at the expense of neglecting the residents of SIN city, focus on rebuilding the local community towards actually being self-responsible and making their own risk assessments. The vaccination rate of SIN city residents are already exceedingly high, and after two long years, COVID-19 isn't going anywhere, ever. Standardise the restrictions to ensure consistency between what is allowed locally, and what is allowed under the MICE events. Foreign capital will always appear sweet, but without the backing of the residents who are the value adders of these capital, what's the point of having so much capital? It will simply come, realise that it is all a sham, and then leave as quickly. The rise and fall of various national-level initiatives that involve foreign investment are but a demonstration of this ``easy come, easy go'' nature---businesses have no morality nor responsibility to anyone and anywhere they go, save for their profits. I know that SIN city has mostly been an entrpôt for most of its history, but come on, residents (permanent, or even citizens) actually exist and they are backbone of the economy. The whole incapability of the healthcare sector to weather all cases is a long term problem that has been overlooked for too long---take that as an existing limitation, formulate a better strategy to keep those who are not actually that ill to stay home, and remember to strengthen this sector in the future (it's a technical debt that needs to be paid for). On that note, the changes in regulation to allow those who are less ill to convalesce at home did arrive, but damn it came late.

COVID-19 was a shake-up that could allow a rewriting of our social norms to make it more resilient, to bring back more of that gotong royong that was alluded to as being the key success factor of early post-war SIN city. Instead, we get a people who are afraid of their own shadow, seeing danger at every corner, misfed with misinformation, thrown into chaos from the myriads of rules that seem to be unprincipled, stressed out and tired with little to no end in sight, while developing stronger anti-social attitudes that can undermine everyone's safety and right to living all at once as it all comes together.

If the true purpose was to reshape a people to remove any last vestiges of discernment to make them more pliable and serf-like, then perhaps the powers that be have succeeded well. The only thing lacking is probably a social credit system, but with all the so-called ``digitalisation'' going on at the national level, it is a matter of time before some watershed event kicks in to give enough political momentum to bring it online---it takes a strong and principled government to not want to do that with all that tempting data that is already collected. I mean, we are already lugging around a tracking beacon under the TraceTogether programme, and it has suffered at least one mission creep from only just enabling contact tracing to a shibboleth for basic living activities under the SafeEntry programme due to its gate-keeping nature of demonstrating vaccination status, with no end in sight.

I will eat my words on the day when an official announcement of a specific deadline for the retiring of the TraceTogether programme; frankly, I'm not going to hold my breath on this one.

That's all for now. Also note that this is the last post for October---all the October posts have titles that begin with `M'. It was tricky to figure out what title to use each time, but it all turned out well. Consider it a type of warm up for the NaNoWriMo that kickstarts tomorrow.

Till the next update.