Don't Assume It Is Benign

I have decided to stop lunching at Chong Pang Market for a while. I was there on Monday this week. 5 metres away from me, a woman had a dry hacking cough which she liberally distributed into the air. She was also not masked. I still worry about the viral load that I might have gotten from her and wonder if it might be the Covid19. I am loading up on echinacea tea and spraying propolis up my nose everyday!

The Chong Pang hawker centre is quite poorly designed. The hawker centre is itself bordered by rows of shops on 3 sides. The remaining side is a hot carpark. Within that 3 sided square, the hawker stalls form yet another 3-sided square. Many of the tables are found within this smaller square. It is a heat trap in normal times, hot air penned in
- by the cooking fires inside the stalls
- AND the outer square of shophouses.

In times of Covid19, it also traps cough and sneeze droplets. The tables are also too near the hawker stalls. If I am seated at a table near a popular hawker stall, I have to tolerate a long queue snaking behind me. Some in the queue cough/sneeze liberally into the air at my back.

The design of Marsiling Market is better. The hawker stalls form an interior circle. The tables are further away from the stalls.  The tables are placed on the outer circle. This means there are many more tables that face the open air. A good half of Marsiling Market's outer perimeter is bordered by a grass patch. In Marsiling Market, it is much easier to find a well ventilated table, flooded with sunlight. This makes a huge difference in these Covid19 times. The Covid19 virus dies quickly in sunlight, floats poorly in humid environments and is less transmissible at higher temperatures of above 30 Deg C.

I will still tapau food from Chong Pang Market but I won't sit down and eat there for at least a few weeks.

I have said before that Singaporeans have no clue how their actions impact others. Singaporeans still preserve the uncouth manners of our uneducated coolie forefathers, where Share My Snot was the equivalent of male bonding.

The Jurong SAFRA cluster is the largest cluster of Covid19 to date. One irresponsible person was already unwell but insisted on attending the dinner party. He/she probably assumed that he did NOT have the Covid19. This assumption lead to a whopping 18 more cases. If any of these 18 cases died, I wonder if this ONE irresponsible person would be prosecuted for involuntary manslaughter? If any of the cases died, leaving behind young children, can this ONE person be sued for criminal negligence?

When I drafted my tuition centre's Covid19 SOP, I included a provision that any child found to arrive unwell would be expelled. Some parents of unwell children assured me that their children were only a little sick. The assumption, of course, was that they had not been to China, that they knew no one who had been back from China. Hence, the little sick was merely a benign sniffle. When The Husband came home and snotted at me, he also assumed it was benign. He had not been to China and had not come into contact with anyone who had.

It is such careless assumptions that will kill folks above 50+ with pre-existing conditions. For you, the illness may be just a little sick. For another, it can mean death.