YOURSAY | Finally, the penny drops - virus can travel from Selangor to KL

 

YOURSAY | ‘Instead of feeling the sting immediately, we’re just prolonging the pain.'

Six S'gor districts to be placed under MCO for 12 days - Ismail Sabri

No Raya open houses but visits allowed with conditions

MCO 3.0 for all of KL from May 7

Goliath: The handling of this pandemic literally brings the worst out of any incompetent government, and Malaysia clearly shows this horrifying mismanagement at its worst.

From the basic fundamental of informing the public correctly and appropriately to the economic impact on the poor - all have been handled with disastrous negligence and incompetence.

All these MCOs (movement control orders) are half-baked and utterly confusing. Instead of feeling the sting immediately, we’re just prolonging the pain. Had we bitten the bullet and do a complete lockdown months ago, and spending enough money to take care of the plummeting economy, we would have come out in a much better situation.

But no, we have a cabinet that just churns out three- or four-letter acronyms loaded with SOPs (standard operating procedures) that change ever so often, nobody knows what they are anymore.

I think it’s time to step aside and let someone else do a much more orchestrated, well-thought-out, and focused job in handling this crisis.

Newday: Well, I am not surprised. Schools reopened, bazaars allowed to happen, weddings, parties... It was business as normal everywhere even though Covid-19 refused to lay down. This is really poor decision-making by those in charge of our welfare.

If you had not ignored the statistics and kept places of mass gathering shut down, maybe at this point in time we would almost be back to normal with the economic recovery a real one. Not this forever limping along and the rakyat stuck in no man’s land. We will remember come GE15.

Even now you deny Kelantan’s request for total lockdown. How does that make sense in light of this announcement (to impose MCO in Kuala Lumpur and parts of Selangor)?

GrayLlama6431: What about Putrajaya? It is surrounded by red zones in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur. Will there be another announcement tomorrow?

GreenBirdCovid19: Isn’t the MCO supposed to control movement? We need to go back to the March 2020-style MCO like what Kelantan wants.

1) Fifteen people in a house? Who is going to control that? If one visitor gets Covid-19, he or she will transfer it to his 14 relatives. All these relatives will go back to their homes and infect even more people.

2) You let students go back home but disallow interstate travelling? Again, who is there to control it? If one student gets Covid-19, he or she can transfer the virus to other family members.

3) Will schools remain open? Seriously, where do these ministers’ brains come from? If the teachers or students eat together without masks, they will transfer the virus.

This pandemic has been here for over a year and we have a choice of either Singapore or India - which country do we want to follow?

The Analyser: The Hotspots Identification for Dynamic Engagement (Hide) system designed by the government can locate potential hotspots ahead of time, said Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Khairy Jamaluddin.

I think in the rest of the world it’s called contact tracing but, apparently, the Malaysian government has developed expertise in predicting the whereabouts of fools not complying with the MCO before they even arrive.

I wonder how long it took for yet another committee to come up with another eminently forgettable acronym which will fade into oblivion because yet another system fails… no doubt at great cost.

And as if the virus can recognise a line on a map. Yet another useless plan specifically designed to confuse by a collection of amateurs pursuing a goal that no one else can see.

Absolutism is the only way to address the pandemic problem, not an idiotically complicated piecemeal approach with no real planning. The inability of Malaysians to learn from the experiences of others is legendary. That’s why they keep re-inventing the wheel.

Mazilamani: Are we being fair to the Muslims who need protection from the virus? Permitting visits for Hari Raya is unimaginable. Who is going to keep count of only 15 gathering at one time?

Why do we keep forgetting about the elderly and children easily vulnerable to the virus? Remember a majority of the elderly have not even received the first dose of the vaccine.

Kneazle: Covid-19 must have whispered into Defence Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob's ear that they are taking a break on the first day of Raya.

So, 15 guests can drop by but no open house?

Scoop: @Kneazle, the comments on the livestream of Ismail’s announcement I viewed were mostly Malays. Their reaction was overwhelmingly negative to what they saw as inadequate measures to control the surge in cases. The angry emojis outnumbered other reactions about 10 to one.

Scoop: Indoor dining where people are not wearing masks is a higher risk than outdoor bazaars where people are wearing masks. Read any studies on the transmission of Covid-19 outdoors as opposed to indoors in enclosed spaces.

That said, I’d shut the bazaars too.

Velarooks: @Scoop, it's true. Singapore, China, and Saudi Arabia, to my knowledge, say clusters are from indoor spaces where people are maskless, especially in restaurants.

The last three people I know in the last month who got Covid-19 all caught it from socialising over a meal. One of them was part of that bank staff dinner cluster that led to 28-plus people catching it.

Beman: The more I think about it, it seems that the conditions for visits during Raya are made for the convenience of the rich and the ministers to have gatherings in their large houses without violating Covid-19 SOP.

My small flat is already crowded whenever I have five or six visitors at the same time. - Mkini