The Institute of Policy Studies' (IPS) two-year-long scenario-planning project, called Reimagining Singapore 2030, will include hypothetical events down the road and decisions on how to approach them. If, for example, Singapore is battered by another and new pandemic in that year, should citizens support greater investment in public health and a focus on safety measures, or prioritise minimising economic disruptions and ensuring that business continues as usual? The choice is stark enough even today, when repeated returns of restrictions have become a fact of everyday life, with the Government balancing socially punitive measures with ameliorative steps to reduce their economic impact.

However, bad though Covid-19 has been, it might not be the worst. Leading global experts, who predict that future pandemics would be more frequent and deadly, and need urgent global investments and reforms, have warned that pandemics would cost governments 700 times what they are proposing in yearly additional international investments. The gigantic scope of global challenges to come, which will be felt intensely in Singapore, calls on citizens to provide frank inputs into the trade-offs between public health and economics that the country will need to make. The IPS project is enhanced by the provision of an online interactive engagement tool. A beta version of this, dubbed Quest2030, will be available next January, with the goal of drawing at least 20,000 public participants.