It has been a weird week of everyone trying to stay sane as we started a one-month Circuit Breaker lockdown of the entire country. S’pore thought it was out of the woods a few weeks back as coronavirus cases were declining. Little did we know that the 1st wave was just the beginning of more to come.
As the Western world started to grapple with the viral onslaught, a call was made in S’pore in mid-Mar to get its overseas students to return from the infected countries. This started the 2nd wave when they brought back the disease into the country. After realizing what was happening, the authorities had to quickly institute strict 14 days quarantine on returnees the moment they touched down at the airport. Given that hotels were already suffering from a lack of business anyway, this was a win-win situation for hotels to at least have some business during these trying times.
Then the 3rd wave struck last week. Asymptomatic virus carriers were still able to spread the virus while displaying little or no symptoms at all. The explosion of cases occurred at the workers’ dormitories that were housing them by the thousands. Years ago, the government decided to house all foreign migrant workers in large dormitories manned by private companies as a way to ensure that a certain acceptable level of standard was provided for their living quarters. Previously, the employers would seek less than preferred housing for them at the construction sites or at cheap and unhygienic locations.
These huge dorms house 10 to 20 men to a room and can contain up to 5,000 to 10,000 workers. Employers pay a monthly per-person fee to these companies who have to follow rules set by the Ministry of Manpower and Health. They have common kitchens for cooking, sports facilities and a resident supermarket where the workers can buy groceries for meals after work.
Interestingly, I went to visit 3 of these dorms a few years ago as a possible investment opportunity. My friend’s friend operated the supermarket for one of these facilities and wanted to put up a bid to run a similar supermarket for a new dorm. So we spent a few trips visiting them to check out the situation there. I also did my own investigation at one of them in the East Coast, even going to their canteen for a meal.
Now that this 3rd wave had happened, many people were highly critical of the supposedly time bomb that had happened. Most citizens were not even aware of this dorm industry and why we were very dependent on these foreign migrant workers for our infrastructure projects. I had an argument with some good friends on this. Making sweeping statements and hindsight comments are always easy. We just have to look at the history and facts before making a judgement call. No one would have wanted this to happen in the first place and everyone is trying to contain the problem now.
By the latest estimates, 50,000 workers have now been quarantined and many new cases had surfaced. We are now facing a resurgence of new daily highs. The government decided last Thurs that a full countrywide lockdown of a month is now warranted. They call it a Circuit Breaker exercise which looks and smells like a complete lockdown, except then it is less stringent as we are still allowed to move around for groceries and necessities. It started on 07 Apr, Tue and will last till 04 May. It could be extended, subject to conditions then. Meanwhile, the army had also been activated to provide living quarters for the workers as a stop-gap measure.
Cases in the USA continue to surge and they now have more than half a million cases and 18k+ deaths. The peaks have not even been reached and Trump talks about reopening the country again soon, after the recently announced Apr lockdown… This guy does not have any human empathy at all to be a president, asking everyone to forget about this sad episode once it is over!
As the world goes into a shutdown mode in order to starve the virus, the only bright lining is that most major countries are locking down at the same time in a semi-coordinated way this month. Hopefully, that would work and scientists would know more about how we can treat the virus soon. But there are yet many other countries that are still way behind the curve like Africa, South America and Indonesia. What eventually happens to them will also ultimately affect the rest of the world too. Look at S’pore’s case with the 2nd and 3rd wave. This might also happen to those that passed their peaks to only realise that the curve may shoot up again.
In my Myanmar job this week, we had set out an action plan to address the situation based on a few assumptions which are fluid at best. The government had just issued a directive to lockdown for this month too. We aim to hunker down for the next 3 months as business slows and to keep liquidity high as a conservative move. We did a lot of conference calls with our lenders this week to update them on the country situation as well as our company’s proactive plans and to keep communication channels open.
Myanmar is only starting to experience the 1st wave and may not be prepared for it, as their biggest annual holiday starts this weekend. They also have a lot of citizens who are migrant workers returnees from neighbouring countries who have started lockdowns elsewhere. Without jobs and ahead of a big annual celebration, most are return back to their villages en masse. It is a difficult scenario that is unravelling in real-time.
This coronavirus event has taken the world by storm, choking off its oxygen and forcing us to our knees. It seems like mother nature is exacting revenge on mankind for not heeding its warnings. This shut down of the global economy has actually given Gaia time to repair itself. Pollution and climate warming has been coming off and mother earth recovers. It is the only silver lining I can see in these depressing times.
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