In Singapore, Quarantine Comes with Sea View, Room Service | Hacker News Reader

In Singapore, Quarantine Comes with Sea View, Room Service

bloomberg.com

31 pointscow925 comments

I'm in Singapore

That girl got lucky. Most people end up in a cheap service apartment. You get assigned something and have no choice. I have a few friends who are currently in less luxurious accomodations

Is it just me or does this kinda sound like an advertisement for the tourist industry? Call me cynical.

I mean yeah people are being put up in hotels because it makes sense.

Or maybe the government just cares for its residents. Getting stuck in a room for 2 weeks is not easy. Govt is just trying to make it more tolerable.

Its one way the Singapore government is helping the tourism industry. No tourists are allowed in, there are many empty rooms.

This. They also housed 100+k Malaysian commuters locked out of JB when the causeway was closed in local hotels.

Win win win for workers, employers and the country

In Australia a similar scheme (almost exactly the same by the look of it) has recently been implemented.

Needless to say, people complained about being confined to their 4 or 5 star hotel room.

I understand the boredom, but people had a week to get back to Australia after the government recommended it, and it seems a decent trade off between individual freedoms and killing people. For context, in Australia over 50% of the current covid-19 cases are from people returning from overseas[1]

[1] https://www.health.gov.au/news/health-alerts/novel-coronavir... (scroll down or search for "acquired overseas")

The government keeps repeating the claim that most cases have been acquired overseas, but testing criteria in every state explicitly only include people who have returned from overseas or have had known contact with a confirmed case (up until a few days ago when it was very slightly broadened). The stats reflect the testing criteria, not the true distribution here.

Whilst it's a common complaint that the testing criteria isn't wide enough, Australia is testing more than most countries (3rd in the world per population at the end of last week), and there are limited numbers of the tests available.

There's also not much evidence that significant numbers of cases are being missed.

Outside NSW there is hardly any community transmission from unknown sources (probably less than 50 cases in the whole country). We'd see that if we were missing cases.

In NSW the criteria was expanded as soon as there was evidence of wider community transmission. Victoria started random testing this week too.

IMHO this was a reasonable trade-off between limited test availability and risk.

I'd also note that there are 1.5 blood (antibody) tests being rolled out this week across Australia. That should give us insights into anything that has been missed.

They've been getting broader testing underway and are employing it where there seem to be community breakouts, but I have to agree with your parent poster. There has been community transmission, so stressing so strongly that travelers are the vector lead to complacency.

The messaging was bad. If you tell people over and over that it's only the travelers (but you only test the travelers) and downplay the community aspect then you're misrepresenting the risk.

People were, until very recently, continuing to host wine and dinner parties so long as no recent travelers were present. With travelers who arrived the day before the mandatory quarantine came into effect treated as being safe to invite.

People aren't rational in these situations, you can't give them such an easy mental shortcut or they'll take it every time.

Many Australians were coming home from countries with broader (at the time) testing, more extensive contact tracing and still fewer cases than Australia, but the community's eye was still being actively trained on them specifically, and not simply people as the primary vector.

I don't think anyone has said "it's only travellers".

But yes, they absolutely present the biggest risk. Until March 23 (I think? Something like that) every single local transmission in Australia had been traced back to a traveller or a connection to one.

The OP said "The stats reflect the testing criteria, not the true distribution here" and my argument is that actually the stats are probably pretty accurate and given how well tracing has worked and the limits on the number of tests available the criteria was pretty reasonable.

Sorry, you're right. The messaging was that it's primarily the travelers.

My feeling is that the quarantines definitely should have gone ahead, but in justifying them to the public the govt. seemed to place a little too much emphasis, such that people interpreted (as they do, in a crisis) most significant risk as only risk.

I think the government had a bunch of libertarians in their ear complaining about "infringing on our freedom" to lock people in an enforced quarantine.

This sounds ridiculous, but I know someone who said "This is a nightmare! Australia has taken away all freedoms" in response to the announcement.

In that context (and I can well believe the LNP would have people like this) I think the emphasis on "the forced quarantine is limited to travellers" makes sense.

Fair point, but by the time the federal government recommended it, many flights were already being cancelled, especially through hubs such as Singapore and Hong Kong. It was not easy to organise flights.

My flight to Melbourne via Singapore was eventually cancelled, and I'm still waiting for SQ to get back to me what they're planning to do with my ticket.

This kind of publicity is good for tourism . I guess when the pandemic is over tourists will be rushing to Singapore with a vengeance.

So rich people, who were traveling around the world, are being provided luxurious isolation facilities by the government, while the poor, who didn't venture out of their country, will have to now practice "social distancing" mostly on their own cost. Off course these are sensible actions to take in the current time, but this just feels weird.

This is a temporary measure for travelers returning from the US and UK only. The Singapore government has been very clear that any future travellers who venture outside Singapore and contract COVID will be fully responsible for their costs.

Also, the largest group of people "enjoying" their isolation is uni students returning from overseas. Likely not the poorest folks in Singapore, but more ramen than caviar in terms of the personal wealth spectrum.

It probably also helps that all the hotel rooms are currently empty.

> luxurious isolation facilities

How exactly is a tiny hotel room with extremely limited room service “luxurious”?

If you're going to make ridiculous and nonsensical political jabs like this at least be slightly informed.

1) There is no lockdown / shelter-in-place / quarantine in Singapore. Normal residents can go about their daily lives as usual, with a few restrictions for crowd control and a lot of temperature checks.

2) Being stuck in a hotel room for two weeks, no matter how luxurious, is a lot less pleasant than being able to carry on with your life as usual.

3) This is done because returnees from the US and UK pose a high risk to Singaporean, and if they are quarantined at home with family that risks spreading it to family and then into society.

Writing this from a cafe by the river in Singapore, not locked into my apt. It's a beautiful day today with lots of people walking around.

The quality of governance in Singapore makes even a spoiled dutch man like me jealous.

Would be even cooler if they found a way to maximize personal liberties too (referring to the freedom of expression, religion and sexuality). It's hard to see why it couldn't just embrace those. I doubt these freedoms are the gateway drug to democracy they fear it is.

You're pretty free in terms of expression, religion, and sexuality here. In fact, it's probably one of the most sexually liberal places in Asia. Hell, prostitution is even legal here.

You do need to follow the rules though or face incredibly harsh punishments for any crimes (including drugs etc).

Why the hell are we not just doing temperature checks and requiring masks in public here? Hell of a lot better than a lockdown and way less damaging to the economy.

Because Singapore has things more or less under control, and "we" (the US, I presume) manifestly do not.

I like stories about how Singaporeans are doing well because unlike with Scandinavian countries the woodwork-crawlers can't use the muddy and dark-implications heavy "homogenous population" argument.

Instead they can point to how well fascism works!

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