[zozin]

Singapore was supposed to be a model society/mode of governance. Give up a bunch of your rights, and in exchange intelligent technocrats would guide the country much better than a messy democracy ever could (i.e., the philosopher king model). Covid has exposed the fact that the Emperor, regardless of where s/he reigns, truly has no clothes, and thus that top-down governance models simply do not work all that well, especially during times of crisis when decisions have untold amount of externalities.

In retrospect thinking that the vaccine would fix everything and things would go back to normal after n% of the population is fully vaccinated is utterly brain dead. The vaccine does not stop the spread, it creates a false sense of security and embitters the population since the reward for +18 months of inhumane restrictions is nothing but false hope.