Singapore: coronavirus update

And welcome to this video. Probably you realize by now that the format is a little different from usual. And the reason is that I'm not speaking about trading or investing today, but rather about my point of view concerning the coronavirus that is affecting, as you probably know, many countries, including Singapore, where I live now. Today is 16th of February and we have 72 cases confirmed and there are others under investigation. So the number is not particularly high. Considering the number of people In Singapore, that is 5,6 million, I don't remember exactly. But the thing is that in terms of percentage is very low, but at the same time is growing and people start to be afraid. Especially when it was one week ago, I think they raised the alert level to orange. Okay, so in Singapore now after sars, we have a kind of color system starting from green that means everything fine and you have yellow, orange and red. Red is the worst. Now we are at orange level. The moment they raised level to orange, guess what happened? People started to panic. So that weekend I remember I went to the supermarket and it was crazy. You have queues, 30, 40 minutes of queues to pay. And they run out of hand sanitizer everywhere. Even in the pharmacy, they run out of the mask, you know, to put to protect yourself at the supermarket. They run out of toilet paper. I still have to understand what this fear of not having toilet paper. But okay, for this reason supermarkets start to put a limit. So now you cannot buy more than certain amount of food that it makes sense. And there was on the news a few days ago Redmart that does food delivery. They were sorry to inform that there were some disruption, especially after one order. Imagine one person ordered more than 800kg of stuff. Can you imagine 800kg? Now there are different levels of being afraid or scared, but that is completely crazy. What we say in my videos about trading and investing is that emotions like fear and greed can drive your actions. And when this happens, usually the actions are not so good. And that's what's happening here because people are afraid. Afraid that this virus is unknown. Afraid that the numbers that are coming from outside may or may not be reliable. Especially when we started to have the first cases that were not related to people coming from Wuhan in China, where the virus started to spread. But they are local, transmitted. Then people start to be afraid. And just to share with you, there was a case also near to where I work. So now they started to implement some measures. Like whenever you go to work, you have to go through a temperature screening. If you are above 37 degrees or something like that, you're not allowed to enter. And some companies started already to ask people to work from home if possible. So of course the situation again, if you look at the numbers is not so bad yet hopefully will not become bad. But the problem is that is already disrupting the life of people. Okay, so this is something to take into account and personally I was supposed to go to the US next month for a trip seminar around two weeks, but I may have to cancel. Why that first? Because by that time around 8, 9 of March, they may already have implemented some restrictions for people coming from Singapore. So imagine if I go there and then they put me on a two weeks observation, then I can stay home. However, the other thing is that if I have to fly there and it's a very long flight, you know, the first one to San Francisco is more than 16 hours and you're on a plane with people that may or may not be. Well, you know, the problem is that even, even if they don't have symptoms, they may still be infected because there is this two, three weeks period. So I was thinking, do you really want to take the risk? And then you go there and then maybe you are also infected and maybe when you are there something happened in the U.S. well, I know is unlikely, but you know, it's possible, it's possible. So of course there are some disruptions in this sense. And also personally I'm not going outside as much as before. And this is also linked to the fact that it's very hard to find masks now and hand sanitizer. When the government did something good, they distribute to everyone 4 masks. But with 4 masks you cannot really use them for long because technically every time you go out and you put the mask on, then you should throw it, you cannot reuse them. Now this is more or less the update currently. So if you look at the numbers you see that Singapore after China and Japan, but Japan there is a story of the cruise. So after that we are the country that is most affected. But I also believe that is because Singapore is really taking measures and controlling everything. So I kind of trust the numbers that are released so that we have 72 cases. I'm not sure that in every other countries the number that are reported are really accurate. So this is something has to take into account. Now I don't know for how long this will last. We don't know if it's at the peak, at the beginning, it's very hard to predict. And then he's not, I'm not an expert on that. I cannot say, but I believe that for a few months the situation will be like that. I want also to tell you something about how people are reacting here in terms of how they deal with people from China. Because there are some people, and this is expected, that they are blaming Chinese, they are saying, oh, it's your fault. And then you start to see on the media a lot of messages, sometimes not really nice against people from China. And then there was a case, I think last week where someone from a university was in a post, he referred to this as the Wuhan virus, right? And some Chinese student was upset because he says racist. So there start to be this kind of discussions. But to me the thing is that the focus should not be on the name that you give to this or the origin, but rather on what to do now, because it happened already, right? So the best thing is now to contain and hopefully being able to stop the spreading. At the same time, I hope that this accident will give some indication in terms of maybe behaviors that should be changed in the future to avoid this kind of problem happen again. I've seen also another type of post that I really don't like because I can understand people that are afraid. It's a natural reaction. Of course you have the extreme case like the 800kg, but I can understand why people panic, why they go to the supermarket, even though it's not the best thing to do, probably. But I understand the reason behind and again is emotions. I can understand why people are upset with China and why this happened again is driven by emotion, by fear. You are afraid, you are upset because maybe your plans have been disrupted and then you want to find someone to blame. What I really don't understand is people that are making fun of this because I've seen posts, I've seen situations where people are just making stupid jokes about this virus. And this to me is really stupid because what's the point? It's not driven by emotion, it's not driven by fear. It's just stupid to me, especially because there are people suffering. The situation in some locations is not. Is not very easy. And then there is a lot of uncertainty around that. We don't know how many people will be eventually affected. So this is something that really I don't understand. So what to do now? Well, we have to see what will be the developments. Maybe they will stop the flight to and from Singapore. We don't know if the situation gets worse, hopefully not at the same time. The suggestions are to avoid situations that are potentially risky. So for example, going to crowded areas. Here they stop already all the masses. So the church now is even this. I think starting from this Sunday they stopped the mass because a cluster of cases was related to a church. So avoid these situations. If you go too crowded or if you really have to go, put a mask. If possible, use hand sanitizer, wash your hands, personal hygiene and what else. I mean preventing is the best thing to do at this stage. And also because this is a virus and there are no treatment so far to prevent it, the best way is to prevent by staying healthy. So also eat healthy and take vitamin, take supplement and boost your immune system as much as possible. And with that I think is the is the only thing we can do at this point. Right? So this video was just for giving you an update in case you don't know what is the situation here. Because what you read on the news, what you listen on tv, especially if you live far from here, may or may not be accurate. So my point of view as expat living in Singapore is this. If there are other updates, I will make another video. That's all for now, so thank you again for watching. If you have any question about the situation you want to know something about, more specifically about what's going on here, just leave me a comment or send me a message and I will reply to you and again, see you next time.