Read on Twitter
Thankful for the chance to write about my home, Singapore, because while it did many things right, its failure to contain a mass COVID outbreak last year can teach us important lessons about NOT ignoring marginalized populations and civil society in public health crises. (1/4) https://twitter.com/scottlgreer/status/1386470071359479813
Lessons from Singapore: 1) Strong public health capacity only works when resources are extended to EVERYONE including marginalized populations. SG did not provide migrant workers the same access to healthcare as citizens - this led to a blindspot in monitoring COVID spread. (2/4)
2) DON'T ignore civil society - they play a vital role in bridging the gap between the government and people who don't have political access. Civil society orgs warned us that the workers' poor living conditions could lead to COVID spread. We ignored them to our detriment. (3/4)
TLDR: to quote the last line of my chapter - "Viruses are apolitical; even if the government wants to ignore certain populations, virus outbreaks will not." Include marginalized populations into your policymaking. None of us are protected until we are all protected. (4/4)
Thank you to @hanisahsani, @angabridged and other Singaporean scholars who are much more experienced in academia than me and provided much needed feedback on this chapter! Will miss you at Michigan so much!!
