Been thinking about tourism a lot. Read this article. It was very sad. Because states are scrambling to do something, anything to stimulate the economy, induce spending, but this won’t work. /1

Malaysia is heavily reliant on that good ol’ tourism money. Which dried up last year. Domestic tourists? Sure. But our domestic purchasing power is weak, overall. And definitely not 5 million tourists. That would be 1/6th of the country. Unrealistic. But even if 2/

1/6th of Malaysia showed up in Perak, it’d be a one-shot game. We spend for a weekend, leave. Probably don’t go again to Perak for a long time. Probably don’t spend that much anyway because of job or salary cuts. We are a closed circuit now - zero inflow. 3/

So what do we need? We need foreign tourists to spend, to go eat a bunch of kaya toast, go spelunking in a cave, go to the rainforest, go to a lake resort. But who is going to come now? Why come to Malaysia when Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand - all safer options? 4/

Which comes down to my fundamental point: we cannot rely on domestic tourism to boost the tourism sector. We either pivot - retrain a huge chunk of our workforce to be in non-tourism (very hard to do) OR we get ourselves together and just really, seriously, fight covid 5/

This would be my plan. Pay people below a certain income threshold to stay home. Pay people to be temporarily unemployed. Give people cash - so they can eat, pay bills, feed and clothe their kids. Get over this covid hump. Don’t say we don’t have money. Just don’t. 6/

Everybody stay home for a month. We give time for the hospitals to recover. We shut it all down. But we keep ppl fed, housed, clothed. Give ppl cash. We get over covid - enough to restart the economy. We reopen schools - bc we will end up paying for this education loss forever 7/

Then, after we have our internal stuff under control, we put in a system to let tourists in. We impose quarantine. We figure out a way to make quarantine as pleasant as possible for tourists. After they’re done with quarantine, they go to Perak. Or wherever. And spend, spend 8/

But nothing will be able to fully restart before we get Covid under control. So, that should be the main priority. Take care of the healthcare system, people, and workers first - WE are the economy. It’s not a dichotomy. I think we can do both - lives and livelihoods. 9/

Just really frustrated about this. I don’t like having first row seats to an economic collapse, as I’m sure you don’t either. This requires planning, and strategy, but I truly believe we can do it. I just don’t know that we really want to. /10