Facebook - "To be factually honest, I don't even know or want to comprehend what Singapore is trying to do or want to do. Anyone with an expert level of comprehension can always sit over coffee with me, and explain in cats and dogs language, what the hell we are trying to achieve.
We want endemic status.
We want internal opening.
We want external incoming.
We want economy opening up.
We want to be top vaccinated nation.
We want a "new normal".
We want to live with it.
We want herd immunity.
We want all of the above and what we do is flick HBL and dine in regulations switches.
Am I complaining? Nope. I am just trying to make sense of this circus, so that in 20 years time when my grandkids ask me...
"Tok, how did Singapore manage to increase the numbers of Covid cases in less than 3 months, with over 80% vaccination rates and claiming that Singapore was in endemic mode, while all the while just playing with the numbers 5 & 2?"... I will have the answer."
Singapore’s Travelers Face Omicron Chaos - The Washington Post - "the government’s approach to pandemic management, once strict and orderly, has become increasingly inconsistent and chaotic. Residents who have returned this month from travel abroad are describing situations where they have been forced from their homes, ordered to share quarantine facilities with complete strangers, told to hand their unsupervised children off to authorities, and urged to abandon their pets. Some now face hefty hospital bills. This treatment is a far cry from what travelers expected of the quarantine-free program for vaccinated passengers from countries including the U.S., U.K., France, South Korea and India that had been announced with great fanfare this fall. The setback will dent Singapore’s status as a smoothly functioning financial center.
Many people on Bertha Henson's Facebook were pooh-poohing this, but many others had corroborating information
Bertha Henson
Comments: "I personally had horrible experience with the authorities when my mom recently returned from overseas for the first time since covid. It was no brainer questions, meaning nothing complicated, but no one could give me the answers that even make sense to begin with. So I personally not surprised with the content of this article, my experience with them was as long theres something new in part of the processes, in this case Omicron, the front liners are not adequately trained to give the right instructions/advise at all."
"only thing I heard is processes elsewhere are way much more human-centric than here"
"this is totally what has been happening. Almost everyone I know who goes into quarantine does so with a total stranger in a hotel room."
"Actually quarantine in a room with complete strangers, it’s highly possible it’s true. Happened to my friend’s mom during the chinatown outbreak. But instead of a hotel, she was in one of the chalets. Hotel is definitely an upgrade. And no tv for them btw."
"The various agencies giving conflicting info is not new"
"there were stories before actually. About how processes were so much easier to follow in other places compared to Singapore"
"Before Omicron, the (adult) child of my friend also was sent to a hotel room with a stranger in it. I understand maybe they can't take over every hotel room here, but isn't this a counter-productive move?"
"It’s quite true. Had an appeal from a family for their dog and one of the neighbours stepped in. Husband tested negative on multiple days but was on plane (biz trip) with someone who had Omnicron, got picked up to NCID. Family didn’t travel and tested negative on multiple days, got picked up to hotel. I don’t know if the children are separated, but they are young toddlers. Xmas is now spent separated, even tho all tested negative and dog thankfully had a kind neighbour step in. So yeah, totally true. The problem is, Sporeans can’t think out of the box and follow orders blindly hence the conflicting instructions. Doesn’t surprise me one bit."
"Not sure how widespread but there were lapses. I saw a doctor asking for information about where his elderly father was taken to; a friend received conflicting instructions for three days..."
"Check the fb group called Travelling in and out of Singapore. Lots of similar stories there, with flight numbers"
Meme - "Apparently my mom needed to do a serology test upon return, not because to prove she is vaccinated but to prove she has the natural anti-bodies. I was told by MOH the results can take up to 3 weeks to be reflected onto the trace together app. So I asked how can she access the restaurants for the time being? The first officer I spoke to told me she can't, until the results are uploaded. I was like what, I challenged the officer by asking them, are u saying all the travellers who come into SG go through the same shit? How does that make sense? He firmly said yes, ALL freaking travellers be it local or foreigners need to take a serology blood test, wait for the results to be out and again wait for the results to be uploaded to the trace tog app before u can freaking step into a restaurant or a mall!! What BS is that? I ended the call. I called the and time, and spoke to another MOH officer. This time round, I was told there is such a thing called - temporary token for VTL passengers, which u can collect it upon arrival. I asked him where is the collection point, and he asked for my mom s residence address. I said Eunos. And he said oh Changi airport is the nearest. I was like what?! So what are the other locations then? He said seletar airport and woodlands checkpoint? How helpful are the options, why even bother asking me for address of residence. So I said ok, which part of the airport can I collect the token? He told me TS, I said ok which part
of He told me it's under ICA and asked me to contact ICA instead...... tried calling to ICA for the next 2 days, it just directs you to automated messages. No matter what options I chose, there s no freaking way for u to speak to anybody, at all."
Shared by someone in that thread
Facebook - "I arrived on Singapore Airlines SQ437 on 16th December at 7:30am (way after the official arrival time of 23.59 on the 15th December for the VTL from Maldives). I have spent the past 24 hours on the phone to Immigration & Checkpoints Authority Singapore waiting for 2 hours at a time to get through, being hung up on, being told everything from I am free to go out of the house and do as I please to I have to spend 7 days locked in the house, to I have to speak to Singapore Airlines to get confirmation it was a VTL flight (after 2 hours on the phone to them they confirmed it was a VTL flight).... ICA are now saying my flight isnt valid as I left Maldives at 11.57 on the 15th December... which is the opposite of what their website says, as it's all about the arrival time on the 16th. No one has any idea what is going on..."
Singapore’s Long-Awaited Opening Is Flopping Even Before Omicron - "Even before the new omicron variant forced the delay of several vaccinated travel lanes, Singapore’s grand reopening was off to a slow start. Despite the social media hype and initial bookings rush, the number of people actually traveling using the city-state’s quarantine-free travel lanes is surprisingly few... Some 20,510 travelers received approval to enter Singapore since the first travel lanes kicked off in early September through Nov. 26, just 12.5% of the around 164,500 people theoretically allowed in under the nation’s daily quotas. Including Singapore citizens, permanent residents and children aged 12 and below who don’t need to apply for re-entry approval, that figure rises to 37,001, still only 22.5% of the total possible. While omicron will start to be reflected in carriers’ schedules in coming days, Singapore’s recovery already ranked the slowest among major countries in the Asia-Pacific region... While no-one expected the floodgates to open right away and the daily quotas put a natural cap on visitors, the numbers coming in on the vaccinated travel lanes average out to less than 500 people a day, a far cry from the more than 181,600 travelers who used to stream through Changi Airport 365 days a year pre-Covid. “The numbers aren’t all that fantastic,” said Mohshin Aziz, director of the Pangolin Aviation Recovery Fund, which invests in aviation-related businesses. “The first to travel will be those who need to see family or who are going borderline insane with the travel curbs. But after that, reality will sink in very quickly” considering the high cost of air tickets and Covid tests. Omicron “creates an additional layer of anxiety”... The cost of vaccinated travel lane flights, the price of Covid tests and the restrictions on daily life after arrival are putting many people off coming to the island nation, Hannah Pearson, the Kuala Lumpur-based director of tourism consultancy Pear Anderson, said. Most visitors to Singapore on vaccinated travel lane flights must take a Covid test upon arrival at the airport for around S$160 ($117). “What happens if you’re a family of six? You can’t eat out. What are you going to do? You’re still not getting this full travel experience,” she said, referencing the fact that local rules in Singapore currently restrict dining to groups of five. Singapore, where you can drive the length of the island in under two hours, also typically isn’t a place where travelers spend much time, she said. Many tourists use the nation as a transit destination en route to Europe or Australia, often never leaving the airport... Mohshin, who was on one of the first vaccinated travel lane flights to Kuala Lumpur on Monday, said the cost of a round-trip ticket to Malaysia’s capital, plus forking out for the numerous Covid tests at either end, can rival a fare to a Europe... There’s also the risk that unless Singapore acts swiftly to protect its own borders, omicron enters and spreads substantially in the densely populated city-state, causing other countries to turn their backs on the nation, further thwarting efforts to open up. “To me that’s what we want to avoid,” Associate Professor Alex Cook, vice-dean of research at the National University of Singapore’s Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, said. “I’m not convinced that we need to stop it from getting into the country, but we want to avoid other people blocking the border, turning from Singapore.”"
FAUCI FACT-CHECKED: College football has not become the 'superspreader' he claimed they would | The Post Millennial - "Dr. Fauci told MSNBC's Joy Reid on Sept. 7 2021 that he feared that the upcoming college football season would turn out to be a series of "superspreader" events. This has not proven the be the case, however... Fauci has also recently changed his own definition of "fully vaccinated", as well as dodged legitimate questions on natural immunity when interviewed by Anderson Cooper."
Sask. Health Authority says COVID risk level not determined by 'age or fitness level' | The Post Millennial - "Rather, they say that risk from COVID is determined by vaccine status. The health authority justifies the claim by stating that 78 percent of all new cases and hospitalizations in the province in the month of September were "unvaccinated or partially vaccinated people." The claim, however, was debunked and called "disingenuous" by infectious disease expert Sumon Chakrabarti, who pointed out the tweet's half-truths: "To be clear: Yes! Get vaccinated if you're eligible. But to ignore something like age (which is the biggest risk factor for severe disease) is not being helpful.""
"Science"!
Fact check: COVID-19 vaccines work to protect others - "“Getting vaccinated benefits both you and the people in your community!" she said in an email. "Vaccinated people are way less likely to get COVID-19 in the first place. The most recent (U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) estimates suggest that vaccinated people are 800% less likely to get COVID than unvaccinated people. If you don't get COVID, you can't spread COVID to someone else.”"
A covid hystericist claimed that "all along they have mentioned that the vaccines protect against serious disease and not infection". When I dug this August 2021 article up, which was only 4 months old at the time, he asked me if I was an anti-vaxxer
COVID omicron variant: IHME models predict 140M infections this winter
The government and media obsession with cases instead of hospitalisations and deaths never made sense. But the continuing moral panic over cases shows that they don't believe the vaccines work
India Reports Lowest Daily Covid-19 Cases In 543 Days Despite Busy Festival Season
Weird. Covid was supoosed to wipe out the population of India
Prior Covid Infection Is As Effective At Preventing The Virus As Vaccination, U.K. Study Suggests - "The study published by the U.K.’s Office of National Statistics (ONS) looked at more than 8,000 positive coronavirus tests across Britain between May and August, when delta was the dominant variant. During this time, people who had previously recovered from Covid-19 were about 71% less likely to contract it a second time, the analysis found. This represents about the same level of protection the study found was offered by two doses of the vaccines made by Pfizer and AstraZeneca, which have been prominently used in Europe’s inoculation drive."
This won't stop the demonisation of natural immunity
Those who recovered from Covid less likely than vaccinated to get infected during Delta - "both vaccination and prior infection offered strong protection against infection and hospitalization from Covid-19 during the Delta wave — and that case and hospitalization rates were actually lower among people who had recovered from Covid-19 than among those who had been vaccinated... Erica Pan, California’s state epidemiologist, said hospitalizations among those who were vaccinated were mostly among older people."
The CDC has been infiltrated by anti-vaxxers
Of course we must pretend that hospitalizations among those who were not vaccinated were not mostly among older people
Taking vitamins 'cuts risk of Covid infection by 13 per cent' - "Taking multivitamins may reduce the chance of getting a Covid-19 infection by 13 per cent, at least for women, a new study looking at over-the-counter remedies suggests. Researchers from King’s College London, who have been using an app to track people in Britain with symptoms of coronavirus since the start of the pandemic, found that simple supplements appeared to play a role in the risk of testing positive."
This is about as good evidence as all the observational mask studies "showing" that they work
The vaccines worked. We can safely lift lockdown | The Spectator - "We are being told simultaneously that we have successful vaccines and that major restrictions on everyday life must continue indefinitely. Both propositions cannot be true. We need to give more weight to the data on the actual success of the vaccines and less to theoretical risks of vaccine escape and/or su
in a largely vaccinated population...the level of population immunity we have now achieved by targeted vaccination and natural infection means that the SARS-Cov-2 virus in the UK has become demonstrably less fatal than seasonal influenza viruses. Given this, it is time to recognize that, in our substantially vaccinated population, Covid-19 will take its place among the 30 or so respiratory viral diseases with which humans have historically co-existed. This has been explicitly accepted in a number of recent statements by the Chief Medical Officer. For most vaccinated and other low-risk people, Covid-19 is now a mild endemic infection, likely to recur in seasonal waves which renew immunity without significantly stressing the NHS. Covid-19 no longer requires exceptional measures of control in everyday life, especially where there have been no evaluations and little credible evidence of benefit. Measures to reduce or discourage social interaction are extremely damaging to the mental health of citizens; to the education of children and young people; to people with disabilities; to new entrants to the workforce; and to the spontaneous personal connections from which innovation and enterprise emerge... We have learned that a good society cannot be created by obsessive focus on a single cause of ill-health"
Strange how those who promote the vaccines don't believe they work