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

NTUC website for SIRS application is down

My friend tried to login to this website, operated by NTUC, to submit an application for the Self Employed Income Relief scheme. He was not able to login.

He has been trying several times for a few days. He was not able to login.

He has wasted a lot of time. This is probably the experience of several tens of thousand of applicants.

Maybe several hundred thousand applicants are trying to login .

I can make a guess what has happened. The website was designed to carry out the entire process flow. This is a complicated process, as it probably requires to check the entered data against many government websites. Any of these links could be a cause of failure.

The complicated system can probably handle a limited number of transactions every minute. When the volume exceeds this capacity, it is likely to crash the system.

This is probably what had happened.

If I were to design the system, I would create a light weight website that allows the applicant to enter just the essential details - name, email, telephone, occupation.

It will not attempt to ask for documents to be uploaded or to verify the information.

My lightweight website is considered as stage 1.

I will then send an email to the applicants with a link to go to the full website to go through the entire process. I will time the sending out of the email so that the volume is controlled to a level that the system can cope. This will not crash the system.

Stage 1 can be considered to be a queuing system. It will manage stage 2 to spread out the actual processing of the applications.

I hope that a person in charge can work on this this suggestion soon.

https://tklcloud.com/Feedback/feedback2.aspx?id=2933

WOTC - Vote in the general election

Wisdom of the Crowd: 90% of the respondents said that they will vote non-PAP at the general election.

https://tklcloud.com/Crowd2/chart.aspx?ID=1957

WOTC - Performance of ministers in Task Force

Wisdom of the Crowd: 88% of the respondents have a negative opinion about the performance of the ministers in the task force.

https://tklcloud.com/Crowd2/chart.aspx?ID=1956

Wisdom of the Crowd - New Issues

1. Is the rally in the global stock market justified?
2. Do the infected foreign workers pose a serious danger to the general community?

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

Do not be caught looking like an idiot

Think before you make your comment or ask stupid questions.
Do not be caught looking like an idiot. OK?

Read this post
https://tklcloud.com/Feedback/feedback2.aspx?id=2928

Testing of 300,000 foreign workers

I have seen comments by many people - why can't we test all the foreign workers in the dormitory at one go? Why are we testing them in small batches every day?

The answer is simple.
https://tklcloud.com/Feedback/feedback2.aspx?id=2928

Herd immunity among the foreign workers?

We may already have achieved herd immunity among the foreign workers. What does this mean?

https://tklcloud.com/Feedback/feedback2.aspx?id=2927

Sale of regulatory credit by Tesla

The average forecast of Wall Street analysts was a loss of $0.36 per spare for Tesla for 1Q 2020. The actual results showed a profit of $1.24 per share.

Why were the analysts wrong? One contributing factor was the income of $354 million from the sale of regulatory credit, which is 64% higher than 1Q of 2019.

What is this regulatory credit? It is given to a car manufacturer based on the qualifying vehicles that it sold. This is to encourage manufacturers to move to electric vehicles.

If the car manufacturer did not achieve its quota, it has to pay a penalty on the shortfall. Alternatively, it can buy the credit from another manufacturer like Tesla.

As Tesla makes only electric vehicles, it has a lot of regulatory credit to sell to other manufacturers.

The question is - why does Tesla sells more credit during 1Q 2020 than normal? The answer is simple - Tesla lowers the price of the regulatory credit to get the revenue booked in the quarter, so that it can show a profit.

It is a simple business strategy. All businesses lower the price to increase the sales, right?

In spite of the challenges for 2Q 2020, I expect that Tesla will continue to make a profit. They will then qualify to be included in the S&P 500.

https://tklcloud.com/Feedback/feedback2.aspx?id=2926

Why are some foreign workers not infected?

I have revised this article about the infection of the foreign workers living in dormitories. Instead of creating a panic, I wish to suggest that the findings actually suggest some good news.

http://tklcloud.com/Feedback/feedback2.aspx?id=2920

Wisdom of the Crowd - New Issues

1. Was it wise to extend the circuit breaker?

2. Will the second wave of covid-19 be more serious?

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

Win a book prize

A book prize will be given out to all participants who submitted at least 10 votes for the Wisdom of the Crowd website for this month. It will close tomorrow.

To win this prize, you can vote now.
https://tklcloud.com/Crowd2/u_issue.aspx

WOTC - Extension of circuit breaker

Wisdom of the Crowd: 67% of the respondents support the extension of the circuit breaker by another month. 33% disagree.

https://tklcloud.com/Crowd2/chart.aspx?ID=1955

WOTC - TraceTogether app

Wisdom of the Crowd: 19% of the respondents have tried the TraceTogether app and like it. 17% tried it and gave it up. The others are not aware about it.

https://tklcloud.com/Crowd2/chart.aspx?ID=1954