In other words, the Ministry left it up to the people. And the Prime Minister asked everyone to carry on with a smile. No one was going to go against this directive. The numbers say it all:

1 in 5 people

got on with their lives enthusiastically despite being ill, and were subsequently diagnosed with the coronavirus.

While the event organiser for the Safra Jurong dinner, Ms Liang Fengyi, has said she feels guilty for organising the event, there has hardly been a whisper at the upper echelons of political office expressing regret about the vaguely worded directives that led to the current increase in cases.

The solution? The PA and RC members won’t be socialising anymore. All courses and activities organised by both entities will be suspended.

It feels like a reactive approach—wait for shit to happen and then fix it. That approach hasn’t worked globally, which is why countries are now reeling and implementing extreme and preemptive measures to contain the pandemic.

To date, there have been cautious discussions about rolling out social distancing measures in stages. Much of the “calibrated” approach relies on individuals and clusters of people exercising common sense and staying home if they’re sick in the interim.

The problem is, this won’t work in Singapore. You can’t tell people who’ve been trained to show up to suddenly exercise their own judgment and pull a no-show, or explain why they aren’t there. It’s nerve-wracking. And on some level, I suspect the government knows this. So their revised strategy feels like something that has been plucked from a book on parenting: give your child broad guidelines on being socially responsible. Watch your child fuck it up. Castigate your child for not understanding, or adhering to, the broad guidelines. Enforce black and white rules in stages, extracting emotions of contrition along the way, to avoid all-out rebellion and social collapse. Mould an obedient human being.

And while they’re sorting that out, they’ve rolled out a campaign, right on time. In this case the 1968 Keep Singapore Clean campaign has been retrofitted and launched as SG Clean. It reminds us that we’ve gone from inconsiderate littering to inconsiderate socialising, and we still don’t wash our hands properly, which could now threaten Singapore’s socio-economic stability.

So, Singaporeans: don’t become a “case” in yet another clusterfuck. Don’t wait for the government’s calibrated response to the global pandemic. The crisis is here. Stay home if you’re sick and be socially irresponsible for a change.