In your Straits Times op-ed, you also
said you don't think COVID-19 will necessarily lead to such a great transformation.
Now here's where I think some people are having some issues trying to put these two together because
for many observers, COVID-19 has revealed a lot of the flaws in modernity, in modern society
and for them, these people, they are impassioned about changing the system for the better.
So they want to put together the
Prof Chan Heng Chee who says
democracy is done in responsiveness to the people, 
to argue against
the Chan Heng Chee who says COVID-19 might not
be such a great transformation because
they say, this time really is different.
This time people are suffering so badly,
they need the strong state, a crisis is a
terrible thing to waste.
How do we make the best use of this
crisis to transform societies and governments for the better.
I thought that would come up. When I use the word great transformation,
I really do mean a great transformation in historical terms over decades.
In fact Jared Diamond, the guy who wrote Guns Germs and Steel, called COVID-19 a bagatelle
something not very important - it's not as important as nuclear war, depletion of resources,
climate change, and I think inequality.
So after a while, COVID-19 will pass, 
but in my lecture on Singapore,
I will return to this because I feel that COVID-19 hits Singapore differently, because of the nature of Singapore.
First, we are a country
that is so dependent on trade,
the reconfiguration of the supply chains but 
when I look globally and over historical time -
I just think that there's a lot of people hyperventilating
about a lot of great changes that are going to happen.
But there are equally a group of urbanologist and so on to say wait a minute,
don't underestimate the difficulty of changing human behaviour.
So it is at one level, 
the great transformation over years - I'm talking of that.
Now transformation in Singapore 
and don't waste a crisis, yes.
I know exactly where these questions are coming from and I do agree with them that this COVID-19
has brought up in fact all the points about
the foreign workers, the situation and
I think that's being addressed and a good thing it is being addressed.
But I'm speaking on a global scale 
and over a longer period.
So when I come to
Singapore, I will say that COVID-19,
however has a deeper impression
and meaning for Singapore.
That last comment - So that's how I am talking globally now and because I've been -
Yuval Harari too - he thinks in eons and he looks at centuries and the projection of time.
When I look back at all the other crises,
we really reverted a lot to norm, with some changes, we internalised some changes.
I think this COVID-19 will last next year. We won't change our behaviour till there's a vaccine.
When there's a vaccine we will travel, things will be opening up much more and people are talking of one and a half years to get the vaccine
so let me just be conservative and push it to next year, end of next year, or middle of next year.
Then after that we will start changing and I think the economic recovery will be the hardest one for everybody globally.
Will it take ten years like the Great Depression or will it be faster?
I have seen how the Global Financial Crisis bounced back much quicker than we thought.
I saw the Asian Financial Crisis bounce back much faster than we thought and if you look at 9/11, people got over it.
So I'm taking that historical recent record to guide my thinking.
But it might be that we could still argue about that.  When SARS happened it was basically over in four months, if not less,
and then we had the sharpest rise in Singapore economic activity in all recorded history.
The Global Financial Crisis was massive
on the same kind of scale that we're talking about now.
But it was not personal.
It happened out there and happened with
financial collateralisation, CDO squares
and large financial institutions and in some ways all people sort of abdicated on that.
We said you the treasury, you the financial regulator fix it. And they did it.
But this time, COVID-19, it is personal to a degree that none of these previous crises were because
we see people around us affected, we see the rising numbers in our community,
so maybe, I'm a little bit more hopeful that there will be change, but we'll have to see,
but certainly in Singapore there will be.
