COMMENT | Many businesses are clamouring for an early end to the movement control order or MCO. It’s easy to understand why – they are losing much money as production is reduced or even halted while they are under pressure to maintain jobs.

However, they need to be mindful that any premature lifting of the MCO without changes in the rules of behaviour is likely to unleash a severe second round which may be much more difficult to contain.

That will mean businesses will have to shut down again and for a longer period while putting undue strain on the health system to keep the pandemic from reasserting itself and to produce the kind of health care required to keep the number of deaths down.

Under that scenario, the health and well-being of the entire population is put at major risk while the economy will plunge even more than before as sectors have to be kept closed for a longer time to check the pandemic – a double whammy that no sane person wants.

It is prudent to err on the side of caution and suffer economic consequences for a bit longer than to be pressured into a premature lifting of the MCO and risk putting both health and the economy into catastrophe which will make recovery even more difficult and cause much more agony and suffering than necessary.

A Trump-like optimism that we should get along with our lives and hope that the pandemic will just disappear into thin air just as it appeared out of thin air almost – like a miracle – is to disregard all that science and medicine has taught us and descend into folklore and misplaced, misguided, blind...