DECEMBER 22 — An unexpectedly devastating Covid-19 pandemic has made us rethink whether our socioeconomic models work. It changes not only the way humans socialize but also coerce humanity to relook into the way how human civilisations would sustain and coexist with diseases and environment.

As compared to the Spanish flu pandemic between 1918 and 1922 which caused an estimated number of 20 to 50 million deaths worldwide out of an estimated 1.8 billion world population; in British Malaya and northern Borneo, it was estimated 35 thousand deaths attributed to the Spanish flu pandemic of the total 3.5 million population then.

The extremely high death rate of Spanish flu was due to very little knowledge about the disease, poverty and absence of effective scientific measures such as specific molecular-based tests, vaccines and anti-viral agents.

The Covid pandemic has caused fewer deaths so far due to our better medical knowledge, much more advanced data-driven public health measures and facilities and effective supportive treatments available.

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Today the world has a population of 7.4 billion and the Covid pandemic has caused about 1.7 million deaths and more than 77 million confirmed cases worldwide by December 21, 2020. It is estimated to reach nearly 170 million Covid confirmed cases and 4 million total Covid deaths worldwide by the end of the first quarter 2021 without any vaccination and public health measures.

Even with an effective vaccine rollout within the first quarter of 2021, the estimated total number of Covid deaths worldwide would reach 3 million. Nonetheless, with mandated mask wearing and social distancing, it could be reduced to 2.5 million deaths.

Situation would be better stabilised with an effective vaccine rollout towards the midyear 2021, and hopefully all border restrictions would be lifted the earliest by the end of 2021.

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Our policymakers failed to realise that the MCO was merely to buy time with the foremost intention to prioritize the protection of the health care system itself from being overwhelmed by subsequent exponential spikes in Covid cases again.

Both Singapore and Indonesia had a much higher initial upsurge of Covid confirmed cases than Malaysia during the second wave of Covid epidemic because these two neighbbouring countries declared respective lockdowns a few weeks later than Malaysia.

Nonetheless, Singapore has been extremely proactive in massive testing especially on high risk groups and foreign workers living in dormitories. It has also gone into high level research such as developing their own rapid test kits and vaccines.

Testing and prone public health measures have helped Singapore contain the epidemic. The next key strategy for Singapore is to roll out free, mass vaccination program from December 28.

Even though Indonesia stumbled a little at the initial stage of the pandemic by failing to acknowledge, it has started out mass testing as well early procurement for vaccines from China, carrying out Phase 3 clinical trials on Covid vaccines as early as July 2020.

I believe Indonesia has collected enough data on China-made vaccines to commence a mass vaccination programme soon.

In its post-second wave preparation, Malaysia seems to be less proactive in preparation for the next essential stage of free mass vaccination programme, while concerns have been raised over the lack of transparency in the vaccine procurement process.

The complacency by the powers-that-be has attributed to the surge of most local Covid transmissions in the third wave, which shows an intrinsic weakness among the main policymakers who do not take expert’s advice seriously.

If there are no proactive strategies are being deployed from now, it is quite possible that Malaysia will possibly reach 100 thousand in total confirmed cases by the end of this year. The accumulative number of confirmed Covid cases may reach 150 to 200 thousand and a near total of 1,000 deaths, respectively, in the first quarter of 2021.

A free, mass vaccination programme targeting more than 70 per cent of the population to achieve herd immunity against Covid is the only hopeful way out of the crisis.

Malaysia made an early and bold move in having the first lockdown in containing the second wave of Covid, but the various departments failed to utilize the golden window period to gear up measures in combating the pandemic, including being innovative in scaling up our technology advancement by getting ourselves involved in vaccines clinical trials before being able to invent our own vaccines and rapid test kits.

Even though we do not have the technology to invent and produce our own vaccines yet, we should have learned from other countries, such as Indonesia, Brazil, Turkey and UAE which had adopted early bold measures by participating in various Covid vaccines’ Phase 3 clinical trials.

An early participation in clinical on various vaccine clinical trials would help our authorities concerned to speed up the process on approving the emergency use of any vaccines without having compromised on their safety profile and efficacy concerns.

An effective vaccination programme would lessen the adverse impact of the pandemic on our socioeconomic life, beyond the mortality and morbidity caused by the virus itself, but also deaths and sufferings from suicides, mental illnesses, joblessness, poverty and sheer hunger arisen from a global economic depression.

It determines how well and fast our economy would be able to recover too. The actual economic recovery would depend solely on the ultimately effective control of the pandemic and restoration of investors’ confidence.

According to Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) and the Department of Statistics Malaysia, Malaysia’s economy has shown a recovery after the first MCO announced in March, and its GDP growth rebounded with a smaller decline in GDP in the 3rd quarter of the year at a -2.7 per cent from a sharp decline of -17.1 per cent in the second quarter.

Nevertheless, the people’s sufferings and businesses’ losses may be much worse than the statistics appears.

Direct cash handouts and moratoriums in loan repayment may temporarily ease the pain. In view of the government’s current total debt and liability exposures at a whooping RM1.257 trillion, or 87.3 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product, it is hard to predict how far the government can go in terms of aiding the people, industries and forging a new direction for future economic development.

Nonetheless, the economic rebound depends largely on the medium and long term policy adaptation to improve Malaysia’s competiveness and workforce productivity.

Bank Negara Malaysia had in August also predicted that the economy will rebound in 2021, with a projected GDP growth rate of 5.5 per cent to 8.0 per cent. The World Bank expects growth to resume in 2021 at 6.9 percent as the outbreak eases.

Nonetheless, I personally opine that these optimistic predictions are based on the presumption that the pandemic would be well over by the middle of 2021.

The pandemic could only be effectively contained if two specific health measures are being carried out successfully-that is, effective public health measures such as social distancing and extensive screening tests being carried out diligently, and, until an effective mass vaccination programme is completed, aiming at 70 per cent of more of the a population for herd immunity.

Nevertheless, a transparent procurement process for effective vaccines and their fair distribution would be the next test to our policymakers’ resilience and competence.

Malaysia could study in-depth the past experience in containing the Ebola outbreak in West Africa between 2014 and 2016, whereas vaccines at clinical trial stages were approved for emergency “ring vaccination” programme initiated by WHO, in which known direct contacts with the infected clusters and their direct contacts were vaccinated as part of the clinical trials, as compared to the control group which was vaccinated at a slightly delayed stage as the control group due to ethics that, in placebo-controlled studies, the placebo control group might be put at risk.

This approach was able to contain Ebola pandemic while the vaccines full usage was only approved until December 2019.

Even though a successful and fair deployment of effective vaccines means placing a quick halt of the Covid pandemic that would effectively revive the pre-pandemic socioeconomic life including shielding people from unemployment, putting factories back to production, prevent more firms from closure, rekindle job and social security, protect mental and physical health of any communities, all necessary measures need to be taken to ensure short and long term safety of those who are being vaccinated.

There are currently more than 700 thousand Malaysians unemployed and a conservative estimation of more than 15 thousand Malaysians previously working in Singapore have been retrenched. The unemployment figures could be higher if taking into unregistered self-employed blue collar workers and small businesses.

Many more Malaysians working and living overseas may need to return in the next few years post-pandemic era. Hopefully this would exert a positive pressure on changing and reforming our societal mindset and socioeconomic policies.

While there are 1.7 million native-born Malaysians living overseas, there are nearly 2 million registered mostly blue-collar foreign workers living and working in Malaysia. The actual number of foreigners living and working in Malaysia might be higher.

This has spelled out an alarming predicament that Malaysia would stay forever a medium-income nation if no reforms are being made to right the direction of the country.

Most of the overseas Malaysian returnees, who are better trained and experienced white-collar or skilled workers, face the problems of less creative and stimulating local corporate culture, poor emoluments, lack of job opportunities of similar nature, the demands towards an more open immigration and education policies for the welfare of their children and foreign spouses.

Our currency exchange rate and purchasing power have declined over decades which has lowered our workers’ wages in nominal terms but increased our industries’ dependency on cheaper foreign labourers. Many better skilled Malaysian blue-collar workers and professionals would have continued to remain working overseas if not for the layoffs caused by the Covid pandemic.

Nonetheless, this also provides a deeper insight into our own education and TVET system while planning for economic recovery besides incentive being given to attract investments, create jobs through infrastructure projects.

Malaysian overseas returnees are mainly skilled workers and professionals who could help in reskilling our local workers and providing a new direction to propel the country towards more advanced R&D and Industry 4.0, that would create better quality jobs and incomes for our workforce.

The industrialists and investors would have to re-strategize their direction in investment to help remodel Malaysia’s economy to create more productive and higher income jobs while automating the traditionally labour-intensive industries. The pandemic further forge a necessity for diversifications of our labour-intensive economy to a more AI-intensive one.

Various essential sectors, including agriculture, food and water security, renewable energy have been tipped by IMF, World Bank and international economists to be the next wave of post-pandemic economic and environmental rejuvenation. Malaysia should not miss the boat again.

Illicit capital outflow and corruption

According to Global Financial Integrity, Malaysia is among the top five developing countries with the largest annual average value gaps or trade-related illicit financial flows (in US dollars) in their bilateral trade with 36 advanced economies over the 10-year period 2008-2017:

  • China – US$323.8 billion (population: 1.386 billion as at 2017)
  • Mexico – US$62.9 billion (population: 124.8 million as at 2017)
  • Russia – US$56.8 billion (population: 144.5 million as at 2017)
  • Poland – US$40.9 billion (population: 37.97 million as at 2017)
  • Malaysia – US$36.7 billion (population 31.11 million as at 2017)

In terms of trade-related IFFs per capita, Malaysia tops China (US$449 per capita), Mexico (US$504 per capita), Russia (US$393 per capita), and Poland (US$1077 per capita) with an average IFFs of US$ 1179 per capita over the same decade.

It reflects the seriousness of tax evasion, profits from criminal activity, corruption and money laundering that have vastly adverse effects on rule of law, private investment confidence, government revenues and the country’s socioeconomic development.

The pandemic should force us to revamp the country by not only stamping out corruption and idle minds, but also provide a new direction for us to move forward as a nation.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer(s) or organisation(s) and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.