by Ganesh Sahathevan
Singapore's establishment has called on the vaccinated to limit their movements, given evidence of COVID cases rising in tandem with greater movement in the community, primarily of the vaccinated, who have been given that privilege because of their fully vaccinated status.
The call has come from the voice of the establishment, Ho Ching, wife of PM Lee Hsien Loong, who has a commanding presence on Facebook. Ho Ching's Facebook exhortation to the vaccinated was posted on Facebook yesterday, 21 September 2021.
TO BE READ WITH
9 hours ago
Taking a look at the Google mobility data for Sg since 1 May 2021.
Below is the change in mobility relative to the January period in 2020.
The blue line is the daily % change, while the orange line is the rolling 7-day average.
The gray shaded area are the new daily cases, on a daily or a rolling 7-day average basis.
These are based on visiting the retail and leisure venues, mostly to restaurants, eateries, pubs and such.
It takes Google a few days to update each time, so the latest data available in the charts below is up to 15 Sep 2021.
First, the daily mobility blue line chart.
I was surprised as i was expecting the weekly peak to be on Sunday. Turned out we are more likely to be eating out on Saturday, than Sunday.
Such mobility data is a proxy fo the daily activities - and these can be affected by policies such as the phase 2 heightened alert, any festive or public holidays, and most of all, the social behaviour of our people as a population.
Next, the rolling 7-day average data in the orange line chart. This shows the average of the past 7 days at any one date.
We can see 2 points.
One is whenever we have a change in eating and drinking activities, it takes about 3-4 weeks before we see the clear signs of the impact in the new case numbers.
This is not bcos there are no cases earlier. But it is more likely that there is silent transmission of asymptomatic transmission, possibly for several generations, especially now that we have many vaccinated folks, until there are enough people with symptoms showing up.
So the mobility data is one possible predictor of future infection transmissions that are serious enough to show up like the Jurong Fishery Port supercluster.
The other point about the 7-day rolling average mobility data is most encouraging.
As of the week up to 15 Sep, we are seeing the activities bending downwards.
Yay!
A big big thank you, everyone!
It means as of last week, we are beginning to slow down the mask off activities at various makan and drinking places.
This also will hopefully show up in 2 weeks’ time as a slowing down of the rapidly rising daily numbers.
Thank you, all, for heeding the call to slow things down a bit.
A final observation looking at the waves of the gray shaded areas.
Here, we can obviously see after the fact, that the waves can rise exponentially and fast, doubling every week.
More importantly, the small exponential rise at the beginning can be deceptive and fool us bcos the numbers look small.
So we are lulled into complacency, and often don’t act fast enough to make a difference.
And folks, this is not about this or that authority telling us to act, bcos we already have folks saying they are tired of the Covid safety restrictions.
This is us, being as disciplined as our healthcare workers and frontline teams.
If they are still beavering away, pushing to do this and that, coming to vaccinate people in their homes past their dinner time, looking after patients in isolation wards, ICUs and CCFs, the least we can do is to stay calm and measured in all that we do.
It’s fine to dine out with family, or with a small regular group of friends.
This does not enlarge the attack surface for the virus.
But if we wish to meet and socialise with many diverse people for mask down eating, drinking or smoking, let’s put a fire break in between.
If we are vaccinated, we are likely to recover faster within a week. So just in case we are the silent transmitter, we can take a break of a week before we meet up with a different group for meals and leisure.
If we are unvaccinated, we are likely to take as long as 2 weeks to recover and become non infectious. So let’s take a break of 2 weeks before we meet up with another group for meals or drinks, if we are not vaccinated.
In other words, no shut down of restaurants and pubs or hawker centres, if we ourselves can discipline and regulate our activities to minimise the attack surface for the virus.
Govts can do this for us.
Govts can only make blunt rules which they can police and enforce, like limit hawker and coffee shop dining to 2 pax regardless of vaccination status, or limit to 5 for other eateries provided these are checked to be vaccinated, to be tested negative, or are unvaccinated preteens from the same household family.
But we are living, thinking, and hopefully responsible, people, who can take the extra step to self regulate in a way that we can continue our social activities in a measured wat for the next 2 months or so.
This can go a long way to help dampen the rise in new cases, and reduce the pressures and stress on our healthcare workers and other front liners, by reducing the numbers and speed of increase of local transmissions.
So folks, a big thank you, for slowing down the makan abd drinking activities since last week.
Keep well - and keep it up to keep down the mask down activities for another 2 months.
We can expect the local cases to continue to rise, hopefully at a slower and slower pace until it turns downwards, until we can lower it to a more manageable level.
This does not mean we need to keep our activities muted forever.
Before year end, we should have covered another 10,000 - 25,000, hopefully even more of the remaining older folks for their vaccination, plus cover perhaps another 150,000 to 250,000, perhaps even more of the 60++ people for their 3rd shot boosters, plus open up vaccination for our kindergarten and primary school kids - when these are done, we can open up with wider steps.
Let’s work towards a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year, folks.
Keep safe, and space out our interactions with diverse people for meals and drinks in the meantime.
And bend that curve down some more, and space out our Saturday partying.
===
Charts below are reconstructed from mobility data from Google, and new case data from MOH.
Google has other mobility data, eg for homes, workplaces, parks, grocery and pharmacies, public transport stations, etc.
Below is the change in mobility relative to the January period in 2020.
The blue line is the daily % change, while the orange line is the rolling 7-day average.
The gray shaded area are the new daily cases, on a daily or a rolling 7-day average basis.
These are based on visiting the retail and leisure venues, mostly to restaurants, eateries, pubs and such.
It takes Google a few days to update each time, so the latest data available in the charts below is up to 15 Sep 2021.
First, the daily mobility blue line chart.
I was surprised as i was expecting the weekly peak to be on Sunday. Turned out we are more likely to be eating out on Saturday, than Sunday.
Such mobility data is a proxy fo the daily activities - and these can be affected by policies such as the phase 2 heightened alert, any festive or public holidays, and most of all, the social behaviour of our people as a population.
Next, the rolling 7-day average data in the orange line chart. This shows the average of the past 7 days at any one date.
We can see 2 points.
One is whenever we have a change in eating and drinking activities, it takes about 3-4 weeks before we see the clear signs of the impact in the new case numbers.
This is not bcos there are no cases earlier. But it is more likely that there is silent transmission of asymptomatic transmission, possibly for several generations, especially now that we have many vaccinated folks, until there are enough people with symptoms showing up.
So the mobility data is one possible predictor of future infection transmissions that are serious enough to show up like the Jurong Fishery Port supercluster.
The other point about the 7-day rolling average mobility data is most encouraging.
As of the week up to 15 Sep, we are seeing the activities bending downwards.
Yay!
A big big thank you, everyone!
It means as of last week, we are beginning to slow down the mask off activities at various makan and drinking places.
This also will hopefully show up in 2 weeks’ time as a slowing down of the rapidly rising daily numbers.
Thank you, all, for heeding the call to slow things down a bit.
A final observation looking at the waves of the gray shaded areas.
Here, we can obviously see after the fact, that the waves can rise exponentially and fast, doubling every week.
More importantly, the small exponential rise at the beginning can be deceptive and fool us bcos the numbers look small.
So we are lulled into complacency, and often don’t act fast enough to make a difference.
And folks, this is not about this or that authority telling us to act, bcos we already have folks saying they are tired of the Covid safety restrictions.
This is us, being as disciplined as our healthcare workers and frontline teams.
If they are still beavering away, pushing to do this and that, coming to vaccinate people in their homes past their dinner time, looking after patients in isolation wards, ICUs and CCFs, the least we can do is to stay calm and measured in all that we do.
It’s fine to dine out with family, or with a small regular group of friends.
This does not enlarge the attack surface for the virus.
But if we wish to meet and socialise with many diverse people for mask down eating, drinking or smoking, let’s put a fire break in between.
If we are vaccinated, we are likely to recover faster within a week. So just in case we are the silent transmitter, we can take a break of a week before we meet up with a different group for meals and leisure.
If we are unvaccinated, we are likely to take as long as 2 weeks to recover and become non infectious. So let’s take a break of 2 weeks before we meet up with another group for meals or drinks, if we are not vaccinated.
In other words, no shut down of restaurants and pubs or hawker centres, if we ourselves can discipline and regulate our activities to minimise the attack surface for the virus.
Govts can do this for us.
Govts can only make blunt rules which they can police and enforce, like limit hawker and coffee shop dining to 2 pax regardless of vaccination status, or limit to 5 for other eateries provided these are checked to be vaccinated, to be tested negative, or are unvaccinated preteens from the same household family.
But we are living, thinking, and hopefully responsible, people, who can take the extra step to self regulate in a way that we can continue our social activities in a measured wat for the next 2 months or so.
This can go a long way to help dampen the rise in new cases, and reduce the pressures and stress on our healthcare workers and other front liners, by reducing the numbers and speed of increase of local transmissions.
So folks, a big thank you, for slowing down the makan abd drinking activities since last week.
Keep well - and keep it up to keep down the mask down activities for another 2 months.
We can expect the local cases to continue to rise, hopefully at a slower and slower pace until it turns downwards, until we can lower it to a more manageable level.
This does not mean we need to keep our activities muted forever.
Before year end, we should have covered another 10,000 - 25,000, hopefully even more of the remaining older folks for their vaccination, plus cover perhaps another 150,000 to 250,000, perhaps even more of the 60++ people for their 3rd shot boosters, plus open up vaccination for our kindergarten and primary school kids - when these are done, we can open up with wider steps.
Let’s work towards a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year, folks.
Keep safe, and space out our interactions with diverse people for meals and drinks in the meantime.
And bend that curve down some more, and space out our Saturday partying.
===
Charts below are reconstructed from mobility data from Google, and new case data from MOH.
Google has other mobility data, eg for homes, workplaces, parks, grocery and pharmacies, public transport stations, etc.
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