WE NEED YOUR HELP!
Please donate to keep ReaderRant online to serve political discussion and its members. (Blue Ridge Photography pays the bills for RR).
Singapore did a massively stupid thing: They had a very tight lockdown, everybody wears masks, etc. So they had a few hundred cases. But they just completely forgot about their foreign workers! I guess they were invisible, so nobody thought about them. They all live in very crowded dorms, take jammed buses and trucks to get to work, etc.
“This reflects the deliberate invisibilization of the foreign worker; the whole machinery of state operates as though they don’t exist,” Alex Au, vice president of TWC2, told the Washington Post.
Singapore’s outbreak serves as a cautionary tale for neglecting marginalized communities during a pandemic. It’s hard not to see parallels between Singapore’s migrant workers and the U.S.’s underclass of essential workers who labor without the necessary safety protections, or our undocumented farmworkers who are somehow considered both “essential” and “illegal” (and are even being detained on the job).
Oh wow. I admire Singapore as a rational country in which the government listens to scientists... and they still managed to screw up royally. Darn!
Please take COVID-19 seriously; don't panic but don't deny it; practice social distancing (stay 6ft from people); wash your hands a lot, don't touch your face, don't gather with too many people, so that you help us contain it.
