Completely baseless. Totally baseless. Allegation. Irresponsible.

These are the strong words used by the Ministry of Health (MOH) to rebut the Sunday Times commentary ("More questions than answers in hepatitis C timeline?") by Assistant Political Editor Rachel Chang.

Since we are on the subject of timelines, here is the timeline of the MOH-ST saga:

Oct. 18: In her commentary, Chang called for the Independent Review Committee looking into the Singapore General Hospital's (SGH) hepatitis C outbreak to also review the information flow from SGH to the MOH and also the political leadership.

Oct. 19: Lim Bee Khim, the Press Secretary to the Minister for Health, sent a letter to The Straits Times forum.

Oct. 20: In a letter published on ST ("MOH: Baseless allegation of political motive in disclosure of hep C cluster"), Lim said that it was "irresponsible of Ms Chang to impute improper motives to the medical professionals and public officers concerned without any evidence". Lim added that Chang's allegation is "completely baseless" and political calculations played no role in MOH's course of action.

Oct 20: ST editor apologised and said that it was not their intention to "impugn the integrity of public servants" and was "sorry that our column gave these wrong impressions".

So what happened? A summary of Chang's commentary: 

She took a few logical leaps in explaining the Hep C outbreak timeline.

Chang's piece was devoted to describing reactions a "thinking Singaporean" might have after knowing that civil servants at the MOH alerted Health Minister Gan Kim Yong of the outbreak only on Sept. 18 (a week after GE2015 concluded) when they first met officially with SGH about the matter on Sept. 3.

The three reactions a "thinking Singaporean" might have, according to Chang, are:

1. The "mere 16 days" between Sept 3 and 18 is "perhaps just the standard pace of the workings of large bureacracies", and the same timeline "in any other month except the politically significant one of September 2015 would likely have raised no eyebrows".

2. The delay was political in nature but a "crisis is good for the PAP's vote" and that it would unlikely "have had any impact at all on the PAP's landslide win of 69.9 per cent at the Sept 11 polls."

3. Public and civil servants were under "external or self-imposed" pressures to "leave their political leaders out of the loop until the polls were over".

So where are the leaps of logic?

In attempting to argue that this incident would not have a negative impact on the PAP's vote share, Chang made a few leaps of logic in the second reaction.

Here's what she wrote in full:

"The second is to persevere, as most opposition parties and opposition-leaning observers have done, in the belief that there was a political delay.

Those in this group must parse the question of the PAP Government's motivation.

Say the information had been made public smack in the middle of the campaign, in early September.

Would the news of 22 people being infected with a deadly virus in Singapore's largest hospital have had a negative impact on the PAP Government's vote?

The fault was SGH's, the situation had already been contained, and there were no Sars-like implications that would shut down large swathes of society.

If anything, a crisis is good for the PAP's vote, as its electoral history has shown. Singaporeans tend to rally around strong leadership when in doubt.

The only danger is that the news would have distracted from the PAP's campaign message, and given fodder to opposition parties in the hustings. No doubt there are political consultants and spin masters who would counsel politicians not to take the chance.

In my view, it was unlikely that the news, if it had been made known in late August or early September, would have had any impact at all on the PAP's landslide win of 69.9 per cent at the Sept 11 polls.

But as it was not, we will never know for sure."

To rubber stamp that a "crisis is good for the PAP's vote" is over-simplifying things here.

A Hep C outbreak is a public health crisis. But is it similar to crises that have been caused externally — like SARS or the Asian Financial Crisis which coincidentally resulted in improved PAP vote shares?

Are Singaporeans likely to rally around the PAP because they are in doubt over the Hep C outbreak?

How are all these conclusions drawn? Where is the causal relationship? This smacks of confirmation bias.

As it stands, five deaths may be linked to the outbreak and they should not be reduced to something Chang terms a "distraction" to the PAP's campaign message.

A weird light to paint the public and civil service in

Chang goes on to describe the third reaction of a "thinking Singaporean" as one where civil and public servants involved were pressured to keep Minister Gan out of the loop.

She explained this as the public service becoming more politically savvy since GE2011.

If we were to buy her argument, that would mean she just accused the public service of covering up an outbreak from the political leadership during GE2015 because they have gotten sophisticated.

So instead of the "opposition parties and opposition-leaning observers" version of events involving the PAP withholding information during GE2015, Chang has placed the smoking gun on the public service.

But Chang is not wrong to ask questions about the Hep C timeline:

1. There was a perception of tardiness by MOH in revealing important information 

The press conference was conducted on October 6 to inform the public about the convening of the Independent Review Committee to investigate the Hep C Cluster in SGH.

The briefing to the Minister was conducted on September 25, with Minister Gan instructing that an independent review committee be set up.

It took merely three days (Sep 28) for the members of the Review Committee to be appointed but it took eight days for MOH and SGH to prepare for the press conference on October 6.

And even the eight days of press conference preparation were insufficient: MOH, for some reason, failed to reveal the timeline of what exactly happened that day, and it took them an additional day before finally providing this.

2. Another question on timeline — "Late August"

When MOH provided the timeline on Oct. 7, it listed the exact dates of their courses of action, save for one key moment — the date when SGH notified MOH of the cluster.

When exactly is late August? In this day and age, it is not difficult for MOH to trace the very first email or telephone call from SGH to MOH on this matter.

3. MOH is making leaps of logic in its criticism of The Straits Times too. 

Check out the concluding statement by Lim:

"Straits Times journalism cannot consist of repeating gossip while claiming to air opinions. Singaporeans expect higher standards of journalism from our newspapers, especially a paper of record."

In other words, Rachel Chang's commentary = Straits Times journalism = A possible lack of standards of journalism in Singapore.

A late US senator once said, "if the newspapers of a country are filled with good news, the jails of that country will be filled with good people".

The Hep C incident is bad news for Singapore. Hence, Singaporeans also expect higher standards of journalism from our newspapers, as we expect The Straits Times to pose some hard questions to MOH and SGH.

In fact, this is the first Straits Times commentary that analysed MOH's response. An earlier Straits Times commentary on the matter focused only on SGH's slow reaction in informing MOH ("SGH hep C outbreak: SGH's delay raises questions on info flow").

While MOH is right to take issue with Chang's allegation of political motive in the disclosure of the Hep C cluster, Singaporeans also expect the authorities not to create a scapegoat out of the Straits Times because of just one article.

MOH will do well to adhere to the spirit of the comments given by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Minister Gan.

PM Lee told the media at the official opening of Ng Teng Fong General Hospital (Oct 10) that the government approach to such incidents “must always be first to put things right, to find out what’s wrong, to put things right, to safeguard the health and well-being of patients”. He added that the government “always (has) to be open and transparent with the public and with the patients about what has happened” because “we must maintain public confidence, and trust in the healthcare system”.

Minister Gan told The Straits Times (Oct 17) that a key objective of the committee is to identify areas for improvement and added that MOH has told the Committee that SGH and MOH will adopt an "open attitude" and extend full support for their work.

Let's hope that the MOH can adopt an "open attitude" and not approach newspapers in such a combative and adversarial manner when the papers ask hard questions.

Related articles:

5 important questions we hope the MOH review on the Hep C outbreak can answer

SGH-Hep C spread may be the first comms crisis for the government after General Election

4 patients died at Singapore General Hospital, possibly due to Hepatitis C infection

Top photo collage created by Belmont Lay.

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