Did Singapore drop the ball in its eagerness to show the world that it could achieve the impossible?

Singapore was praised by the World Health Organisation for its early response to coronovirus without the need for enforced lockdowns.
Our politicians have stressed that a lockdown is an unlikely option. This is despite many other countries imposing broad lockdowns and closing borders weeks ago, including our neighbours Malaysia and Thailand.
But now with the closure of schools and most workplaces and the suspension of non-essential services, we are as good as in partial or three-quarter lockdown.
However, the Prime Minister and cabinet ministers kept using the term “circuit breaker” to describe the strictest measures yet to stem the spread of COVID-19.
How on earth a circuit breaker got into the picture we will never know.
Perhaps it’s because Health Minister Gan Kim Yong has a degree in electrical engineering.
Or perhaps it’s because the word “lockdown” is to be avoided at all cost. After all, Singapore has been lavished praised for fighting COVID-19 without resorting to a lockdown of any sort.
It is possible that where initially we were ahead of the curve, we may now have fallen behind other countries which bit the bullet and imposed lockdowns instead of piecemeal measures. One day, close tuition centres. Another day, close pubs. Next day, something else. It just didn’t add up to much in the fight against a deadly invisible enemy.
On the use of face masks, we are also left playing catch-up.
In Hong Kong, politicians set the example by wearing masks almost immediately after the COVID-19 outbreak. But Trade and Industry Minister Chan Chun Sing, behind closed doors, said that Singapore’s hospital system “would have broken down” if politicians wore surgical masks like in Hong Kong.
In Taiwan, mask-wearing has strongly been advocated by the government from the get-go and is even made compulsory on trains and buses.
Going forward, let’s hope that the priority should not be to win praise from the likes of World Health Organisation and Barbra Streisand but to protect and save lives the best way we can.