APRIL 27 — If we’ve been hiding our defects over time, we will break eventually. Someone who is more restrained with her qualities is better placed to avoid catastrophe.

Consider Malaysia and Singapore’s handling of Covid-19. 

All the way until mid-April, Singapore was lauded as a global "model” of how to contain the virus; people were saying the island-state was amazing at contact-tracing, it somehow managed to keep infected numbers low despite opening their schools, etc.

Then BOOM. The numbers exploded and now Singapore is among the countries in Asean with some of the highest infections.

Basically, up till mid-April Singapore’s test results were hiding her defects.

For the whole of March, the island-state mirrored Malaysia’s mentality up to mid-March. Recall again how "unimaginable” a lockdown (or movement control order aka MCO) seemed to so many of us even at the start of March?

That’s because, like Singapore, Malaysia’s February and early March numbers also hid our weaknesses.

But after MCO Phase 1, we woke up. We took measures and social distancing and abiding by the MCO became virtues. 

Thus by late April, Malaysia’s numbers have dropped (yet, alas, we need to be careful – more below).

Fault-hiding is universal

There are essentially two kinds of people: Those who hide their flaws and those who hide their qualities. 

If problems are hidden, then although there may be some advantage in the short-term, eventually the person (or system) will crack. 

We are already seeing this with the education sector. Thanks to the MCO, many schools are discovering how unprepared they are when students are no longer required to be physically present in a classroom.

It gets worse. If it is "obvious” (duh) that learning can happen without the classroom and if it is obvious that many websites offer BETTER e-learning tools and experiences than what traditional schools and universities can offer, the question looms large: Are educational institutions still necessary?

Moving away from Covid-19 examples, there are also many instances throughout history in which a seemingly "indestructible” entity collapsed almost overnight: