SARS puts Singapore under the microscope

Chua Lee Hoong The Straits Times Asia News Network Singapore

A month and a half into the SARS crisis in Singapore, you know that despite the still-rising casualty toll, life is regaining some normalcy because:

* The kids are going back to school, suitably fortified with the relevant information;

* People are trickling back to the shopping malls;

* Friends, the American sitcom, replaces viruses as the topic of dinner conversations;

* Fitness companies recover from their shock to think up new ways of "awe-ing" their customers, such as this: Buy a stationary bicycle or treadmill and get a thermometer and one month's supply of masks. SARS notwithstanding, the entrepreneurial spirit still thrives.

Not that the crisis is by any means over -- as Health Minister Lim Hng Kiang said: "We are in this for the long haul."

A tight cordon continues to be maintained against viral spread, as tight as the one against terrorist infiltration of Singapore. Paramedics in camouflage fatigues, gloves and surgical masks greet air passengers from SARS-afflicted countries, making an otherwise bustling Changi Airport look like a combat zone.

Cameras installed in homes ensure that people under home quarantine don't venture out, and those who do will get an electronic tag slapped around their wrists -- measures which prompt the International Herald Tribune to call Singapore "a country with a reputation for dramatic approaches to public policy".

Dramatic or not, SARS is putting Singapore under the microscope in more ways than one.

The world is watching how it handles this medical crisis: The World Health Organization's Dr. David Mansoor said recently that if Singapore can't contain the outbreak, it's going to be very hard for other countries to do so.

Neighboring countries are watching too, in particular Malaysia, whose citizens commuting across the Causeway daily to work are a potential health hazard 50,000 strong. The joint Singapore-Malaysia border health committee will hold its first meeting in Kuala Lumpur today to review procedures to prevent the disease from spreading.

Singapore took the first step towards bilateral cooperation on SARS when Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong rang up the then-Acting Malaysian Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Badawi, to tell him of the transmission risk and to offer Singapore's assistance.

On the international front, it is even considering taking the temperatures of all out-bound air passengers at Changi so as to curb the export of SARS. This, said PM Goh, would hopefully influence other countries into similar screening measures. "That way there is a better chance we can keep this under control," he said.

Within Singapore, SARS has thrown up issues otherwise seldom discussed, such as the privacy of the individual.

Should SARS patients be named? The media's practice has always been to try to give as much information, including names, as possible so the public gets the full picture. Better to be open about it as otherwise, all sorts of rumors might be spread about who had been stricken.

But there is also another side to this: A name also means opening the window to bigotry, discrimination and other ways for the Ugly Singaporean to show himself.

The New Paper's poll this week shows 61 percent saying No to naming patients and 39 percent saying Yes. Unfortunately, we can't deduce what the figures imply about the Singapore character until we know why people said No or Yes.

I'm reminded here of that press conference Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong gave two Sundays ago, when instead of shaking hands with journalists as is his usual practice, he resorted to the Thai style of greeting, hands clasped together.

Not knowing why he did that, I thought then that the Prime Minister was overreacting to the SARS scare. But I've since found out that he had a good reason for his behavior: Education Minister Teo Chee Hean paid a visit to the family of one of the SARS victims in his constituency, shook hands, and came down with a fever.

The fever proved a false alarm, but it alerted the political leadership to potential hazards they had hitherto not thought of. So, better safe than sorry.

Tough choices are also facing people lower down the ladder, in hospitals, workplaces and residential estates: To mask or not to mask; to shake or not to shake; even to talk or not to talk.

Tales of heroism battle it out with tales of selfishness and bigotry, both captured vividly in the pages of this newspaper. But it is probably the former which are winning, going by the public outpouring of sympathy and gratitude for the hospital workers risking their lives daily working in SARS danger zones.

Whoever thought Singaporeans have become so pragmatic that heroism is dead thought wrong: This crisis shows that like flesh- and-blood human beings elsewhere, the desire for heroes, and to be heroes, is alive and well.

I was moved especially by two recent e-mail messages. One came from a Singaporean woman doctor in Australia who is getting married to an Australian doctor this Saturday. SARS or no SARS, she declares, she is coming back to Singapore for her wedding because this, for her, is home.

The other came from a young man: "If I were a doctor now, I would be proud to be able to serve my nation in this fight to eradicate this virus from our land, and I would do everything in my ability to ensure it's contained. In these troubled times, we need doctors and nurses who aspire to be heroes and, sadly, heroes do make sacrifices. I wish I could be one of them but I'm not a doctor."

As Singapore returns slowly to normalcy, these are the legacies to remember and cherish.