When it comes to releasing data, the government’s attitude has generally been that less is more.

A few recent examples: when POFMA was being debated in Parliament last year, Minister K Shanmugam rejected MP Louis Ng and NMP Irene Quay’s calls for a Freedom of Information Act. His reasons? Civil servants would be “inundated’”with “odd requests”, and such an Act would mainly benefit lawyers, businessmen, and journalists (never mind that it’s our job to ask questions).

And on January 20th, in a speech at the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) conference, Minister Chan (yes, him again) audaciously declared that sharing data “will not be a panacea to policy issues”.

He then followed up with this gem:

“If people don’t trust you, you can give as much data as you want, and you will not win over the hearts or the minds of the people.”

I’m sorry, but this is absolutely bonkers.

Saying that people’s trust is a prerequisite for releasing information is completely backwards. Being forthcoming with information is what creates trust. It is the ultimate gesture of transparency from a government which understands that a vice grip on information doesn’t guarantee control. It only gives the impression of having something to hide.

A public health crisis like the Wuhan virus outbreak shows how an open, communicative government is critical to maintaining public confidence. When authorities insist on withholding information, they effectively cede control of the narrative. And in the absence of clear direction, people will automatically assume the worst.

When the virus was first detected in Wuhan, public health officials claimed that the illness posed little danger. According to the Guardian, the official line from China’s national health commission was that the situation was “controllable”.

Before you could so much as sneeze, hundreds of people were sick. Wuhan went into lockdown. People started speculating that millions had ‘fled’ the city ahead of time, though nobody knew for sure (or if it was just Chinese New Year travel). ‘Whistleblower’ videos began circulating on Weibo and WhatsApp, purportedly showing bodies lying on gurneys in Chinese hospitals and ‘nurses’ claiming the body count was being wildly under-declared.

It’s possible that some of the rumours were trolls at work. It’s also possible that some of them stemmed from ordinary people, badly spooked, who had resorted to filling information gaps with guesswork.