The latest (part 1)

May 06, 2020

I miss Sudirman on game day

Hello friends!

Today, let’s check-in quickly with our maritime Asean (except for Brunei and Timor who, for size reasons, will be popped into the Mekong list for tomorrow). There’s a couple here that need to be unpacked further and, after making my own long weekend, I’m very excited to crack into them later this week. So keep an eye out!  

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And, still looking for pitches! Hit that reply or forward on to any interested friends and colleagues. 

Stay safe out there and see you tomorrow.

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Coronavirus in the Philippines has been shoved aside in the last day after network ABS-CBN was yanked off screens. Regine Cabato for the Washington Post has more and we’ll be back to get into this properly shortly. 

As of Tuesday, the Health Ministry reported an additional 199 confirmed cases bringing the total just shy of 10,000. The Ministry also confirmed another 14 deaths. The agency also announced its capacity for testing has improved with every COVID-19 lab now testing a combined 8,000 people a day. Upping the amount of accredited COVID-19 labs is integral to the government’s plan to reopen the country, Vince Dizon of the COVID-19 task force told CNN Philippines. 

The changes mark one more twist in the complex history of Philippine nurses, whose professional origins date back to American colonial rule more than a century ago when they were trained to care for U.S. soldiers.

Often tapped to fill shortages in other nations, Philippine nurses are the backbone of many healthcare facilities across the world and disproportionately planted on the front lines against COVID-19. In California, nearly one-fifth of registered nurses are ethnic Filipinos in a state where less than 4% of the population is Filipino.

“If our nurses were to come back from overseas, the healthcare systems of those countries would collapse,” said Ted Herbosa, former Philippine Health Department undersecretary and an advisor to the nation’s COVID-19 task force.

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Despite optimistic thoughts that perhaps the curve was flattening in Indonesia, the country yesterday reported a record new cases. The task force reported 484 new cases but noted the new deaths remains in single digits. Deaths from suspected coronavirus infections are not currently counted in the total. 

The impact on the region’s largest economy is deeper than first thought. While Indonesia did not introduce lockdown measures until well into the first quarter, growth has been even lower than expected to register just 2.97 percent growth making it the slowest quarter in nearly 20 years. Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati has previously warned recession could be on the cards, but her ministry is working hard to prevent it. 

For the past few weeks, conspiracy theories on COVID-19 have found their way into the public discourse among Indonesians. What started as misinformation soon turned into something potentially more sinister, and further promoted by a number of people with huge followings.

Perhaps one of the more prominent figures among them is Bali punk rock icon I Gede Ari Astina, who is more commonly known as JRX or Jerinx, of the band Superman is Dead (SID). Since at least late March, Jerinx has shared conspiracy theories on his Instagram ⁠— where he has over 848,000 followers ⁠— and further called on his fans to be wary of reports coming out from the mainstream media and to question Bill Gates, the World Health Organization and what he termed as the “global narrative.” 

Jerinx appears to be putting up a fight against the “global elite,” though without valid references or accountable research that goes beyond the act of theorizing. Early on, one of Jerinx’s references comes from David Icke, a notorious conspiracy theorist whose Youtube channel has just been deleted by the platform. Icke is known for having baselessly linked COVID-19 symptoms and 5G mobile networks.

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Singapore’s ‘How did the do it!’ headlines have given way to ‘what went wrong’ explainers after the huge outbreaks in migrant worker dorms putting the city back on top of the region’s toll chart. The government confirmed yesterday an addition 632 cases, a tiny minority of which are from Singaporean nationals or PRs. 

"We have started our testing with the dormitories where there were a high number of cases detected," Health Minister Gan Kim Yong said at the start of the week. Manpower Minister Josephine Teo separately smacked down criticism that the government moved slowly in preventing outbreaks and securing the welfare of the community. We’ll get into this much deeper in the coming days. 

Hawker Melvin Chew saw his business drop by two-thirds as a result of the lockdown. But Chew was matter-of-fact about it. "Government says you have to stick to your own neighbourhood, try not to go out," he said.

While hawkers are highly regarded - there are even a few Michelin-starred food stalls - the pandemic arrived at a time when the industry was already economically vulnerable.

Street food hawkers are ageing - the average operator is 59, according to a government study  - and the tradition is threatened by changing tastes and habits as incomes rise in the city-state. Few young Singaporeans aspire to a profession that requires them to work long hours in sweltering temperatures for relatively low pay. 

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Malaysia’s health authorities reported 30 new cases yesterday and one death. The announcement came on the second day of the relaxation of the restricted movement order and is the lowest since the order first came into effect.

It’s time to take a rest, the Ministry of Health has told frontline health workers. Many of the country’s workers have been on the clock non-stop, the government says and will be given breaks over the next two weeks. But that doesn’t mean Malaysia is out of the woods yet. “We are definitely preparing for the worst. Of course, we are hoping for the best but preparing for the worst,” the ministry’s director-general, Dr. Noor Hisham Abdullah, told Channel News Asia. 

The bumpy relaxing of restrictions and the conversation around that is another thing I’d like to look at on length in coming days, so standby!

Public health experts have maintained that allowing individual states to make local health decisions allows for more targeted solutions, and called for clearer communication.

“The mismatch in messaging may lead to greater confusion on the part of both employers and employees. While there is no doubt that the economy needs to be reopened, it must not be done in a hasty manner,” said doctor Helmy Haja Mydin.

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