Singapore’s Covid Numbers Must Learn to Tell a Different Story
If the city-state wants to go back to trying to live with the virus, it must interpret the data in ways that will make its people feel safe, not fearful.
Almost normal for a moment: The day after tourists took this boat trip, Singapore re-imposed restrictions.
Photographer: NurPhoto/NurPhotoIn the earliest days of Covid-19, we were scared and uninformed. The only way to make sense of a deadly virus spreading around the world was to quantify it – the number of cases and deaths, countries it had reached, age groups it affected.
We have learned a lot in the past 18 months, but too little has changed in terms of our response mechanisms, particularly in “Zero Covid” countries such as Singapore, where I live, and Australia. The impulse to count every case has become debilitating. It’s time to focus on a more informative set of data.