It seemed like a small thing, but wow, the sensation of wind on my face after years of this shit was... incredible.
By February of 2024, masks were no longer required on public transport. There was a real sense that this was the last remnants of COVID-19 restrictions being lifted.
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| Masking no longer required on public transport. |
Cinemas were allowed to open to full capacity. Swimming complexes and gyms no longer required users to go through a daily booking process, with penalties for no-shows. People tossed their contact tracing tokens. I kept mine around because it was cute.
Large gatherings were allowed again. With that, employers began pushing for a return to office. People started travelling again - ticket prices stopped being ridiculously expensive.
It felt like Singapore, after years of slumber, was starting to wake up once more.
2024 to now
COVID-19 didn't go away. However, it rapidly began to feel like it had become yesterday's news. COVID-19 was no longer the extinction event it had once threatened to be.As a nation, we took cautious steps on the road to recovery. Some things were never quite the same again. Some businesses folded even after restrictions were lifted. Professionals pivoted to different careers. There was a limit, after all, to how much Government intervention could accomplish.
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| Mental health and depression. |
And for some reason - perhaps this was just my imagination - the issue of mental health seemed to come to the forefront of societal consciousness. Either the causes of depression predated COVID-19 and this was merely exacerbated due to social distancing and lockdowns, or the long-term effects of having contracted COVID-19 had some effect on brain chemistry.
Because it wasn't just the medical effects of COVID-19. The damage dealt to the economy was not inconsiderable.
Even now, big tech is in the process of laying off all the tech people they snapped up during the dark years of COVID-19. That bubble has burst. It seems especially bad in Silicon Valley, though Singapore is affected as well due to the simple fact that big tech also has offices in Singapore.
As a software developer, I am just profoundly glad that I never hopped on to that gravy train. Sometimes being completely mediocre is a blessing.
Final thoughts
I've said earlier that Singaporeans generally seemed to be becoming alarmingly stupid during the pandemic. Upon further reflection, the truth may have been far worse.You see, Singaporeans are generally well-educated. We can speak and even write in a variety of languages. We are capable of rational thought. Therefore I find it hard to believe that the average Singaporean would have difficulty understanding the concepts I outlined earlier. No, what Singaporeans suffer from isn't stupidity; rather, it is Main Character Syndrome. The inability to grasp that there are things bigger than them, and that not everything is about them. The inability to get over themselves.
However, for good or ill, this was what the Singapore Government had to work with. It wasn't all bad. Some of us stepped up - some in small ways like myself, some in more substantive ways. We responded as a society, and while there might have been plenty of grumbling as we did it, it is part and parcel of the Singapore DNA. These were heartening signs in what looked like a sea of negativity. On my part, the crists had awakened some kind of social conscience within myself. I wasn't exactly rushing out to the frontlines to offer my aid. I didn't become a Safe Distancing Ambassador or help deliver supplies. I didn't help swab thousands of people a day to test for COVID-19. And I certainly did not participate in helping to write new and interesting software that could help Singapore tide over this crisis. That all said, I gained a new appreciation for how well-run Singapore generally is, and did my small part as a citizen.
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| Small corner stores. |
I spared a few thoughts for my immediate community rather than focus on my own survival. Any money that the Singapore Government disbursed to citizens as aid during this period, I promptly donated to charity. I took pains to patronize small stores and hawkers, as these were the most vulnerable to changes in the economy.
And, despite the fact that I didn't know for sure that vaccination jabs were absolutely safe, I took them.
What does that have to do with a social conscience? You see, Singapore is in a unique situation. The size of this country, with its lack of manpower and natural resources, means that we must open our borders to foreign investment in order to survive. Had we insisted on staying closed, Singapore would have sunk just as surely as if all of us had been overrun by the coronavirus. Sure, we would have sunk slower, but we would have sunk nonetheless. Singapore required at least eighty percent of her citizens to be vaccinated before we could open our borders. There was a chance I could die if I accepted the jab. I took that chance. I will never be great. I'll never be a Bill Gates or a Steve Jobs. I will never cure cancer, create art that will transcend generations, or otherwise achieve anything monumental. But whatever small thing I could do for my country, I did. The jab was never about saving my statistically insignificant life. At the risk of sounding cliche, it was for the greater good. I do value my life... I'm just not vain enough to think it's more important than the millions of livelihoods at stake.
Epilogue
It's 2025. COVID-19 is a distant memory, but not so distant that the turmoil has not left its mark. Now and again, we see some remnant of the measures that were in place during the pandemic. The posters. The tracing tokens. Hand sanitizer. Abandoned gantries. |
| Remnants of those dark years. |
It's recent enough that any talk of a possible pandemic is instantly compared to COVID-19. Not the Spanish Flu. Not the Red Death, or the Bubonic Plague.
The world seems to have recovered, but the scars run deep.
COVID-19 was nothing to sneeze at, y'all!
T___T
T___T
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