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Many migrant workers in Singapore are the only breadwinners for their families back home in Bangladesh/India/Myanmar. One of the reasons the Singapore governmen
by reddothomme 6y ago
Many migrant workers in Singapore are the only breadwinners for their families back home in Bangladesh/India/Myanmar. One of the reasons the Singapore government has done extensive testing way beyond global standards is that many of these foreign workers are financially disincentivized to seek medical help the moment the first symptoms appear. The fact that Singapore's leader has publicly promised stable incomes for this affected group speaks volumes of the government.
As a fellow south east asian, I am deathly afraid of the under-reporting and testing in other ASEAN countries. Singapore. A 2017 statista study of migrant worker populations in South East Asia (https://www.statista.com/statistics/711513/asean-number-of-migrant-workers-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/711513/asean-number-of-m...) shows that Malaysia and Thailand have much larger migrant worker populations than Singapore. Their living conditions are either on par or worse than the ones living in Singapore, yet there are apparently no Covid-19 clusters among migrant populations in other ASEAN countries. This is extremely alarming.
- tim333 6y agoThailand just yesterday reported some.
- _-___________-_ 6y agoIt would be extremely alarming if there were large numbers of deaths or hospital admissions occurring among the Singapore workers who are testing positive. Given that there are virtually none, the lack of testing in other ASEAN countries is hardly extremely alarming. A lack of data is less concerning if you wouldn't do anything differently if you had the data.
- bob33212 6y agoIf it turns out that the infection rate is higher and the death rate is lower for healthy individuals than originally estimated it would be extremely alarming that were are not taking a totally different approach to handling this pandemic
- _-___________-_ 6y agoagreed.