An Extended MCO

Yesterday, the Prime Minister declared that our present Movement Control Order (MCO), which ends on Tuesday next week will be extended until 14th April. Thus, effectively our stay-at-home period is about a month. Now to those with a fixed salary scheme, this only means we get to work at home longer. But many particularly businesses which need to operate daily to ensure income (particularly small ones), will suffer. While I may not have the experience to be in such a situation, my other half is. If ever she decides not to work, there will be less income or even losses. So I can imagine how difficult these prolonged MCO can be to them. Of course she is in a critical sector that was allowed to operate during the MCO which 'helps'. On the bigger scale, there is a need to lessen the infection rate since otherwise we might end up with a crippled work force that in the end leads to bigger economic loss. Quoting Prof. Raina MacIntyre in Australian ABC News report: "If you don't control the disease, your economic losses are going to be far greater and the recovery time is going to be a lot longer…So it's just a fallacy to think it's a choice between saving lives and jobs."

I do not pretend to be anywhere knowledgeable about infectious disease dynamics (in realistic terms, beyond the SIR model), but this begs the question of how long should we expect for the MCO to go? Well, according to a report, analysts at JP Morgan Chase & Co (don't know who they are) predicted that the infection peak will be in mid-April (which coincides with the end of MCO period), after which, I suppose the infection will decrease. The report further said that the infection rate will slow down to 100-250 per day. This is roughly what we have now (see below); in other words - they are expecting a larger infection rate sometime soon. From the https://www.outbreak.my/ website, one can get some info on the Covid-19 infection statistics. I'm listing the figures of daily increase (new cases) from just before the surge seen on 15 March.

• 26 March: 235 new cases
• 25 March: 172 cases
• 24 March: 106 cases
• 23 March: 212 cases
• 22 March: 123 cases
• 21 March: 153 cases
• 20 March: 130 cases (went past 1000th infection)
• 19 March: 110 cases
• 18 March: 117 cases (MCO put in place)
• 17 March: 120 cases
• 16 March: 125 cases
• 15 March: 190 cases
• 14 March: 41 cases

Note: 

• Went past 100th infection on 9th March - at this stage, we have only seen the first wave.
• The Tabligh Ijtima' meeting was during 28 February-1 March and the surge seen on 15 March is right after the incubation period of 14 days.
• The Ministry claims that the infection has reached the 5th generation from the Tabligh cluster (perhaps this means 5 node-distance away from an infected node that attended the Tabligh meeting).
• The whole graph (incomplete pending contact tracing) can be seen at https://www.outbreak.my/cases.
• There is now a Wikimedia entry for Malaysia Covid-19 cases at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_Malaysia.

Even if we hit the peak around mid-April, one expects the same rate of infection as we see now will still linger on for some extended period. In fact some predicted this Covid-19 crisis will prolonged up to more than a year before we could resume a 'normal' life. The best bet is perhaps life will not get back to its previous normalcy. There will be permanent changes to our lives and even culture, of which I would like to ponder on. Will not discuss it now though.