4 New Things We Learn from Lawrence Wong’s National Broadcast Speech

When it was announced on Saturday that PM Lee and a few ministers would be addressing us in the next two weeks, we all went

But after thinking for a while…we were like

And after the pilot episode last Sunday, we all went

So I won’t blame you if you decide to cancel your subscription, but hey: it might sound more like a summary of all the press conferences conducted in the last few months, there are some new info.

Like the fact that PM Lee has more than just pink and blue shirts.

And that National Development Minister Lawrence Wong has his hair cut by his wife again. Or maybe not. It’s hard to tell from gelled hair.

But here are some new things we learn from the second episode of The National Broadcast, starring Lawerence Wong:

2 Months of Circuit Breaker Allow the Authorities to Build Up Their Capabilities

While we all stay home and binge on Netflix, Ah Gong has been busy.

Other than holding press conferences again and again to deliver bad news, they’ve been working behind the scene to build up the resources needed to fight COVID-19, and it’s not just things that we can see, like those new community facilities that have been hogging the headlines.

Instead, they’ve been procuring more COVID-19 test kits, building more laboratory capacity, and recruiting and training more laboratory technicians and people to carry out swabs and take blood samples.

In April 2020, only 2,000 tests were done per day.

But now, they can do 13,000 tests a day, and would soon be able to do 40,000 tests a day.

More Tests Done Means We Can Avoid Clusters

If you’re a fan of a powerful man with orange hair, you’d know that he’s very proud of the number of tests his country can conduct because testing is an important factor in the fight against COVID-19.

It’s the same for men and women with black hair.

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More tests mean we can find more cases, and from there, we can isolate them and stop the spread.

Minister Wong said, “It means that we can test higher-risk groups more extensively.  We can also do more surveillance testing in the community, including those with respiratory symptoms. This will give us a faster and more accurate sense of the number of cases circulating undetected.”

So yes, don’t be surprised if swabbing becomes a norm.

Singapore is Also Doing Serology Tests

If you’ve downloaded our app and come in daily, you’d know about the two types of tests, and the primary goal of each test.

Simply put, a PCR test will determine if you’re infected now, and a serology test will determine if you’ve once been detected.

You can’t use a serology test to check for active infections, but it’ll give us an idea of how many people might be immune to it. Do note that it’s might—information about whether anyone can be truly immune after being infected is still unclear.

In Singapore, it turns out that we’re also doing serology tests to check for previous infections.

In some other countries, people could walk in to certain places for a serology test—but not in Singapore. At least not yet.

Singapore is Testing…Shit?

Once again, we’ve written about this before, but here’s the general idea: waste from an undetected COVID-19-positive person can provide evidence of a…cluster.

Here’s a shitty example (obviously by us and not by the minister): imagine that the authorities decided to take some sample of wastewater from a building—it could be from the faeces of someone living there. A test shows the presence of the coronavirus—this could mean that people in the building are infected without them knowing.

So the authorities could go up to the building and say, “Hi, your place might be a COVID-19 cluster. Can we test everyone in your building?”

Building Owner: “How did you know?”

The authorities: “From your shit.”

It won’t sound so full of shit if you’ve read about it before, so please download our app.

Do, however, note that Minister Wong uses the phrase “wastewater from manholes” instead of…erm, faeces.

The rest of the speech comprises stuff that we’ve already known. You can watch the entire speech here:

The next episode will be on Thursday (11 June 2020) at 7:30pm, starring Senior Minister and Coordinating Minister for National Security Teo Chee Hean, with the theme “Resilience in a Changing External Environment”.

Somehow, I’m looking forward to it.

Because everything that needs to be summarised and said has been summarised and said; there should be something new on Thursday, right?

Here’s the entire schedule: