Containment of Covid-19 Spread

I sent this letter to the two ministers who co-chair the task force two week ago. I sent them a reminder after a week. They did not acknowledge or reply on both occasions.

Maybe, they were already checked into IMH (institute of mental health). Hahaha.
https://tklcloud.com/Feedback/feedback2.aspx?id=2956

Creating jobs for Singaporeans after the pandemic

The Singapore economy will be transformed.

The global economy in the future will have less global trade. Most countries will manufacture a bigger proportion of their products at home. This will affect Singapore badly. There will be less global trade and the need for financial services. Many of the well paying jobs in the past will disappear.

How can Singaporeans, especially the younger ones, find jobs in the future?
https://tklcloud.com/Feedback/feedback2.aspx?id=2955

Wisdom of the Crowd - New Issues

1. Will international travel and tourism recover after the pandemic is over?
2. How will the covid-19 pandemic be eradicated?

Vote in
https://tklcloud.com/Crowd2/vote.aspx

WOTC - Teleconferencing

Wisdom of the Crowd: 52% of respondents are not familiar with the use of teleconferencing. For the remaining 48%, more than half prefer to use Zoom over the other platforms.

https://tklcloud.com/Crowd2/chart.aspx?ID=1961

WOTC - Most popular teleconferencing platform

Wisdom of the Crowd: 60% of respondents are willing to use Zoom for teleconferencing. The other 40% prefer to use other platforms.

https://tklcloud.com/Crowd2/chart.aspx?ID=1960

Will international travel and tourism recover after the pandemic?

The pandemic will be over by mid 2021 or earlier. It may die off naturally or a vaccine will be found.

It is likely that international travel and tourism will resume.

But I do not expect it to return to the level that occurred prior to the pandemic. Here are my reasons:

http://tklcloud.com/Feedback/feedback2.aspx?id=2951

Quora: What do you think of Trump saying that the U.S. is going to seek compensation from China over COVID-19?

Kevin Randolf, Self Employed, answered

What for?

The truth, and that's what any court outside the USA looks at, is that the USA had as much warning and probably more than everyone in the world and yet failed to respond indeed it played politics and lied to its population about the seriousness of the pandemic, taking no real steps to address the issue until 8 weeks after most of the world!

The USA also had at least 12 personnel within the WHO during the entire progress of this outbreak!

However I would suspect that Iraq's people have a rock solid case against the USA for the 2nd Iraq war and subsequent theft of it's oil assets amongst other things!

This is backed up solid evidence and even confessions!

We all know that America considers itself above the law anyway so nothing will happen, hell if you're American you can drive on the wrong side of the road in a foreign country and kill someone and your government will help you escape!

So I hope you'll excuse the world when it doesn't agree with America, yet again, refusing to take responsibility for it's own actions and continually blaming others!

Your credibility is zero!

Changing to a new lifestyle

The circuit breaker caused people to work from home and children to use home based learning. People also get familiar with ordering food to be delivered to the home.

After the pandemic, I expect the following change to the lifestypes in Singapore.
https://tklcloud.com/Feedback/feedback2.aspx?id=2947

Wisdom of the Crowd - New Issues

1. Do you support the extension of the circuit breaker?

2. Will Singapore's economy recover after the circuit breaker?

Vote in
https://tklcloud.com/Crowd2/vote.aspx

WOTC - Home based earning

Wisdom of the Crowd: 63% of the respondents said that the students find it difficult to carry out home learning.

https://tklcloud.com/Crowd2/chart.aspx?ID=1958

WOTC - Working at home

Wisdom of the Crowd: 68% of the respondents like working at home for office based jobs.

https://tklcloud.com/Crowd2/chart.aspx?ID=1959

Bring manufacturing back home

After the pandemic, I see many countries will try to bring manufacturing back to their home countries. They will want to shorten the supply chain. It will be reverse of globalization that has happened during the past three decades. 

This move will be driven by two factors. One is the need to create jobs in the home country. The other is to have security in the supply of essential products.

There will be greater emphasis on the security of food supplies. Many countries will build their agriculture. Governments will create stockpiles for food staples that has to be grown in other countries.

Businesses will still reply on overseas supplies for some of their raw materials. They will have to build inventories of their raw materials to prevent a disruption of supplies. For essential products, a bigger inventory will be required.

Governments are also likely to create stockpiles of essential materials and food.

To make local manufacturing viable, countries will have to implement tariffs on imports. We will see a return to a higher level of protectionism. World trade will reduce to some extent, but not totally. 

In the new economic order, I see more protectionism, less globalization, building of stockpiles of essential products, less world trade. 

Singapore will be badly affected by these trends, as we provide logistic services and have a small home market. We will have to adjust to the changes ahead. 

https://tklcloud.com/Feedback/feedback2.aspx?id=2946

Expansion of isolation facilities

I wish to give credit to the ministerial task force for the speed in which they have expanded the isolation facilities for people who are tested positive for the covid-19 virus.

They have already added 18,000 beds within a short time and plan to add another 23,000 beds by the end of June. See report.

This was useful to accommodate the recent spite in cases, most of which are found in the foreign worker dormitories.

My friend, who is a skeptic, said that this is not an outstanding achievement. It does not require highly paid ministers to arrive at this decision or to oversees its execution. He said that many other countries have also responded in this manner. We only need to follow their lead.

My friend also pointed out that many ordinary people have suggested earlier to expand the facilities. These people are not as highly paid as the ministers.

I do not want to argue against my friend, the skeptic. So, I will give credit to our highly paid ministers for their good response.

I do criticize the ministers for their bad judgment in many aspects of their handling of this crisis, especially with the costly and unnecessary circuit breaker. That is a separate issue.

I have put up several dozen posts on the handling of the covid-19 crisis over the past two months. See here. My approach is different from the ministerial task force on many issues. I will leave it to history to judge whether the ministerial task force had acted correctly.


https://tklcloud.com/Feedback/feedback2.aspx?id=2945

Life will be different after the pandemic

After the covid-19 pandemic is over, we will see a different world. Life will be different.

Many countries will bring their production back home. They will rely less on China to manufacture the essential products.

There will be more online activities - schooling, work from home, marketing.

GDP growth will be slower. It will be better for the environment and reduce the harm from climate change.

I will share views of the new way of life from other thinkings. I will also share my views.
https://tklcloud.com/Feedback/feedback2.aspx?id=2942​​​​​​​

Government act like monkey see, monkey do

Governments act like monkey see, monkey do. Singapore is worse. We follow other government blindly, even when our risk is quite different from them.

https://tklcloud.com/Feedback/feedback2.aspx?id=2937

Swedish economy also suffered a downturn

Mr. Tan
You favored the approach taken by Sweden where they did not have a lockdown and suffer a smaller economic impact.

Can you read this report. It said that Sweden will suffer an economic decline that may be worse than other countries that have a lockdown.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/30/coronavirus-sweden-economy-to-contract-as-severely-as-the-rest-of-europe.html?&qsearchterm=sweden

What you say now?

TKL reply
Hello. The circuit breaker measures adopted in Singapore caused an estimated $60 billion for 6 million people. We also suffer a big economic decline.

Sweden has a population of 10 million people? Did they spend $100 billion (SGD) to provide relief measures? I do not think they spent money to this scale. I think that they real cost is quite modest, compared to Singapore.

Similarly America had to provide economic relief of several trillion dollars. Their spending per capita is similar to Singapore.

It was possible to reduce the spread of the virus through other measures, instead of a lockdown or circuit breaker. Our minister made a poor judgment to impose the circuit breaker measures.

https://tklcloud.com/Feedback/feedback2.aspx?id=2936

Quora: After the covid-19 threat is over, will you be less likely to purchase Chinese-made products?

Lance Chambers answered:

I don’t have a problem with China.

They didn’t create the virus. They didn’t ALLOW it to escape their borders and infect others.

They worked as hard as they could to stop it and it seems that they have succeeded.

At the start when they first realised that Civid-19 wasn’t the regular flu that erupts in China it was too late. They let the world know that this was different as soon as they realised the truth.

They are donating PPE to a host of nations that are in dire need and even to the US. After all the insults being aimed at them by the US. I would not have sent America anything if I was in control of China. Maybe it a good thing I’m not in charge.

In fact I think I will start buying from Alibaba from now on and leave Amazon alone. Not only will that improve my bank balance but I will be buying from what I believe is a far more moral nation.

Why is NRIC now used for entry to malls and supermarkets?

Many people question why are malls and supermarkets asking people to bring their NRIC when private establishments are not allowed to ask for NRIC under the law.

My answer - the law is STUPID. The NRIC is the best way to identify a person. It should not be a secret.

The ban on the use of NRIC was another bad judgment by the government. We are now seeing problems arising from the bad law.

This government made a lot of costly policy mistakes that harm the economy, increase our cost of doing business and damage our competitiveness.

The ban on the use of NRIC has caused the private establishments to send tens of million dollars to change their computer system. It also increased their operating costs.

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/…/covid-19-bring-nric-super…?

Dealing with the economic downturn

I have written several posts on I would deal with the economic downturn caused by the covid-19 pandemic.

My most important post is here:
https://tklcloud.com/Feedback/feedback2.aspx?id=2682

Here are a collection of posts on dealing with the economic downturn.
https://tklcloud.com/Feedback/latest.aspx?idorg=226

Singapore's response to the covid-19 crisis

Someone asked me - what are my views about covid-19.

He was a regular follower. I am surprised that he had to ask this question. Maybe he was not paying attention.

I refer him to this website. I must have put up several dozen posts on this topic.
https://tklcloud.com/Feedback/latest.aspx?idorg=215

I can summarise my key view.

The virus is mild in Singapore. It resulted in 14 deaths. Only 22 are now in ICU. In comparison, America has 61,000 deaths.

Our death rate is 2 per million. America is 168. Some countries in Europe have a death rate between 300 to 520.

The virus is serious in other countries. It is mild in Singapore.

To stop the spread of the virus, we could have followed the practice in S Korea and Taiwan. They strengthen social distancing and encourage the use of face mask. They did not implement any lockdown or circuit breaker.

Our lockdown will probably cost the government $60 billion (my estimate). It is a LOT OF MONEY. It is not $60 million. It is BILLIONS. It could have been avoided.

Several hundred thousand livelihoods were severely disrupted. They involved workers and the self employed. Most of them do not get adequate compensation.

I know that there are many cases discovered among the foreign workers living in the crowded dormitories. It was possible to isolate the infected people and to quarantine those who are not sick.

We would have to stop work in the construction and other worksites which rely on these foreign workers as most of the foreign workers were isolated or quarantined.

There was no need to stop work in the workplaces for the locals. The risk of transmission is low and the impact is not serious.

My views are based on my reading of reports from experts all over the world and my special analysis of the data in Singapore and around the world.

I form my opinion after careful study and analysis. I do not give comments out of ignorance or prejudice.

I disagree with the logic put up by many people. They argue that the virus was dangerous in other countries. They said that we would see similar deaths if we do not implement the same measures that they did.

Their views ignore the facts. The virus is mild in Singapore. We are not seeing the same kind of hospitalization, intensive care and deaths.

I disagree with the circuit breaker when it was first introduced and when it was extended. 

https://tklcloud.com/Feedback/feedback2.aspx?id=2934