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In case you can't read above Facebook post :
Keep going, Singapore!
We’ll leave no one behind in Singapore.
We have been part of the global effort to eradicate smallpox through vaccination before and through to our early years of independence.
The co-ordinated global effort led to its formal eradication in 1980, within living memory of over half of our population.
We are also part of the global effort to eradicate polio - remember the polio vaccines we have had to take?
We are now almost there, with sporadic small outbreaks of polio in less than a handful war torn countries or remote island states.
Both smallpox and polio are highly infectious with R0 of 5~7.
The Delta variant of Covid has an R0 of 5~6, possibly as high as 8~9.
So infectiousness of Delta covid is very similar to both smallpox and polio.
We had eradicated smallpox very early in Singapore, with a vaccination campaign.
With every country doing this systematically with WHO support and guidance, the last smallpox case happened in Somalia in 1977.
Since then, we have not seen smallpox re-appear anywhere.
This was why WHO declared the formal global eradication of smallpox in 1980.
We have been dutifully vaccinating against polio in Sg as well.
We have since witnessed how the world has progressively squeezed down polio over the decades.
We now may have small sporadic outbreaks in less than a handful of troubled places.
The rest of the world by and large remains polio free, largely bcos of an effective vaccination coverage.
So, folks, we have done it before, and we will do it again.
True, there is much that we do not yet know how the Covid virus will surprise us yet again, just as it has thrown Delta at us in a fierce onslaught everywhere that it can find a nosehold or throathold.
Even in fiercely restrictive China, where they have tightly controlled borders and protective entry quarantines, and rapid and extensive testing of entire cities internally, the Delta has seeped through and is wafting here and there, not so easily snuffed out like its ancestral Wuhan variant.
But the power of vaccination is our most powerful defence, to stimulate and train our immune fighters to recognise and target the Covid virus, and be ready to prevent infection, or prevent severe or fatal illness.
But, together, we are stronger than the sum of parts.
Together, as more of us are vaccinated, the more we protect others and in turn protect ourselves.
Together, we can do it, and leave no one behind!
