Don't Nag Your Husband During Lockdown, Malaysia's Government Advises Women - NPR

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In this online poster, now removed, Malaysia's Ministry for Women, Family and Community Development advised women working at home to wear makeup and office clothes so as not to offend their husbands. Ministry for Women, Family and Community Development/Government of Malaysia hide caption

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Ministry for Women, Family and Community Development/Government of Malaysia

Malaysia has the largest number of COVID-19 cases in Southeast Asia with more than 2,900 and counting. This week, Malaysia's government also had a serious public relations issue after an ill-conceived plan went online.

Malaysia's Ministry for Women, Family and Community Development issued a series of online posters on Facebook and Instagram with the hashtag #WomenPreventCOVID19. It advised the nation's women to help with the country's partial lockdown by not nagging their husbands.

The ministry also advised women to refrain from being "sarcastic" if they asked for help with household chores. And it urged women working from home to dress up and wear makeup.

"(It) is extremely condescending both to women and men," Nisha Sabanayagam, a manager at the advocacy group All Women's Action Society, told Reuters. "These posters promote the concept of gender inequality and perpetuate the concept of patriarchy."

The posters drew swift ridicule online.

"How did we go from preventing baby dumping, fighting domestic violence to some variant of the Obedient Wives Club?" wrote @yinshaoloong.

How did we go from preventing baby dumping, fighting domestic violence to some sad variant of the Obedient Wives Club? https://t.co/1SrVYp0e5d

— Yin Shao Loong (@yinshaoloong) March 31, 2020

"Avoid wearing home clothes. Dress up as usual, put on make-up and dress neatly. OMG! This is what Rina, our Minister of Women, Family & Community Development thinks is important during the #COVID19 lockdown?" tweeted @honeyean.

Avoid wearing home clothes. Dress up as usual, put on make-up and dress neatly. OMG! This is what Rina, our Minister of Women, Family & Community Development thinks is important during the #COVID19 lockdown? No tips on how to deal with #DomesticViolence? Just state DV is a crime. pic.twitter.com/FfswtPBIPH

— Honey Tan (@honeyean) March 31, 2020

After this torrent of abuse, the ministry abruptly relented late Tuesday and abandoned its campaign. It said its suggestions were simply aimed at "maintaining positive relationships among family members during the period they are working from home."

The ministry acknowledged that the advice could have offended some people and promised to "remain cautious in the future."

Women's groups around the world have warned that the lockdowns could result in a rise in domestic violence, and some governments are reaching out to women in need. The latest World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap index puts Malaysia at 104 out of 153 countries when it comes to women's political empowerment and economic participation.

Challenged by produce

The ministry's advice to women was not the only governmental misstep as it confronted the coronavirus. The country's movement control order on March 18 specified that only the "head of the household" should leave the house to purchase necessities.

While the order did not indicate whether that person was male or female, men took it upon themselves to brave the grocery store.

It didn't work out so well for many.

Facebook posts showed male heads of households having a tough go of it in the aisles, either staring in confusion at lists in their hands or taking instruction over their cellphones from central command back home.

Malaysian Cheanu Chew made fun of both himself and others in his Facebook post headlined "Attention All Men!" He advised: Shoppers "like me, don't forget to fully charge your phone before you execute your mission. Also, get enough sleep the night before so you can stay calm over the phone to minimise disruptions during your operation."

The supermarket chain Tesco Malaysia recognized there was a problem and swiftly came to the hapless male shopper's aid with a how-to guide.

It proclaimed, "Now all husbands can shop." And assured them, "Here at Tesco, we have your back!"

In the week or so since that announcement, men may be getting a little better at the supermarket. And with the swift climbdown on its original announcement, the women's affairs ministry is apparently learning, too.

Tesco how-to

Cheanu Chew

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2020-04-01 12:32:45Z
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Japan on brink of emergency as coronavirus spreads: government spokesperson - Reuters

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wearing a protective face mask, following an outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), answers a question during an upper house parliamentary session in Tokyo, Japan April 1, 2020, in this photo taken by Kyodo. Mandatory credit Kyodo/via REUTERS

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan remains on the brink of a state of emergency as the rate of coronavirus infections continues to increase in the country, its top government spokesman said on Wednesday.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters controlling the virus was a top priority, and that the government would do “whatever is needed” to minimise the economic impact after a nationwide poll released earlier in the day showed a pessimistic turn in sentiment among manufacturers because of the virus.

Reporting by Naomi Tajitsu; Editing by Tom Hogue

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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2020-04-01 10:05:06Z
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Trump urges Florida governor to allow coronavirus-stricken ship to dock - Fox News

President Trump Tuesday urged Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to allow passengers from a Holland America cruise ship to dock in the state a day after the governor said that would be a “mistake.”

“They’re dying on the ship,” Trump said during a White House briefing. Four people have died on the ship as of Tuesday evening. Trump said he planned to call DeSantis, according to Reuters. “I’m going to do what’s right, not only for us but for humanity.”

On Monday, DeSantis said South Florida is already overwhelmed by the virus and space in hospitals needs to be reserved for local patients and foreign nationals, according to FOX 13 in Tampa.

President of Holland America cruise line pleads for compassion while Florida debates allowing ships to dock

“We cannot afford to have people who aren’t even Floridians dumped into South Florida using up those valuable resources,” he told Fox News.

Holland America’s Zaandam left Argentina on March 7 and has been stuck at sea since then.

"We think it's a mistake to be putting people into southern Florida right now, given what we're dealing with, so we would like to have medical personnel simply be dispatched to that ship, and the cruise lines can hopefully arrange for that, tend to folks who may need medical attention," DeSantis said.

Holland America officials confirmed that “four older guests” had died of the virus and at least 130 have flu-like symptoms, FOX 13 reported.

A sister ship, the Rotterdam, boarded about two-thirds of the ship's passengers who passed a medical check and should reach Miami by the end of the week, according to Reuters.

“Florida continues to receive flights from New York and it allowed spring break gatherings to go on as planned. Why turn their backs on us?” Laura Gabaroni, who boarded the sister ship with her husband, told the Associated Press. “We hope our elected officials will do the right thing: let the Americans disembark and safely quarantine.”

The U.S. Coast Guard this week also advised that Miami-based ships registered in the Bahamas should go there for help first and said those with more than 50 abroad may have to care for patients onboard “for an indefinite period of time,” according to The Miami Herald.

Ships must also arrange for private transport for sick passengers rather than relying on the Coast Guard.

CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE

Trump’s comments contrast with earlier in the month when he said the Grand Princess, another stricken ship off the coast of California, shouldn’t be allowed to dock because he didn’t want the number of coronavirus cases in the U.S. to go up, according to Reuters.

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2020-04-01 09:35:38Z
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As Wuhan reopens, China revs engine to move past coronavirus. But it's stuck in second gear. - The Washington Post

AFP Getty Images People eat McDonalds on a bench in Wuhan, China, on March 30, 2020. Wuhan, the city where the coronavirus first emerged in December, is slowly coming back to life with the complete lockdown being lifted in the coming days.

After 10 weeks confined to their apartments, unable to exercise, shop for groceries or walk their dogs, Wuhan residents are emerging into the daylight.

The subway and intercity trains are running again. Shopping malls and even the Tesla store are reopening. State-owned companies and manufacturing businesses are turning on their lights, with others to follow.

“I’ve been indoors for 70 days. Today is the first time that I came outside,” one woman who ventured into a mall this week told local television. “I feel as if I have been separated from the outside world for ages.”

Wuhan’s airport is due to reopen next week, and residents will be allowed to leave the city for the first time since it was locked down Jan. 23 to control the deadly coronavirus that originated there.

China’s leaders say the country has largely won the battle against its outbreak, reporting each day that domestic transmissions are negligible or nonexistent. The gradual reopening of parts of Hubei province — and now of Wuhan, the provincial capital — is testament to that.

But winning the war is proving to be a tougher proposition. That involves not only preventing a second wave of coronavirus infections but also restarting the economy. It’s becoming increasingly clear that officials cannot achieve both things at once.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/video/world/these-videos-show-that-life-in-wuhan-is-far-from-normal-as-coronavirus-lockdown-eases/2020/03/31/e7da2657-627f-43b7-8daa-955566ab7a59_video.html

“These obviously come into conflict, because to prevent the spread of the virus, both from overseas and from unrecorded cases, China needs to maintain some kind of social distancing measures,” said Neil Thomas, a senior researcher at the China-focused Macro Polo think tank in Chicago. “These are going to dampen demand from consumers and limit the operation of factories, the service industry and the transportation networks.”

[As dark reality sets in, president beats a retreat on reopening the U.S.]

Chinese authorities are discovering that allowing people — even those without fevers who are wearing surgical masks and are doused in hand sanitizer — to get too close to each other risks a new rise in infections. Recent media reports have focused on “silent carriers,” and studies have found that as many as one-third of people infected with the coronavirus show delayed or no symptoms.

“The possibility of a new round of infections remains relatively high,” National Health Commission spokesman Mi Feng said Sunday.

Communist Party organizations must “grasp the prevention and control of the epidemic situation with one hand, and grasp the resumption of work and production with the other,” the official CPC News declared Monday. Party outlets have ranked controlling the virus and stopping a second wave of infections above the need to restart the economy.

Roman Pilipey

EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock

A person wearing a full protective gear walks in the streets of Wuhan, China, 30 March 2020.

Like President Trump — who had said he wanted businesses to resume normal operations by Easter, only to backtrack as U.S. deaths surged — Chinese leader Xi Jinping is clearly concerned about the economic impact of a nationwide standstill.

Xi visited the huge Ningbo port and factories in Zhejiang, a hub for exports and a province he once governed, over the weekend to promise that the government would help businesses “recover in the soonest manner.”

Most economists forecast a sharp slump in China’s growth rate in the first quarter, with some predicting the first contraction since 1976. Still, at a Politburo meeting in Beijing on Friday, party leaders signaled further support for the economy, and reiterated their goal of 6 percent growth for the year as a whole.

But efforts to kick-start the economy are not going smoothly.

Despite the gradual reopening of Wuhan, things are still far from normal for the city of 11 million. Officials say that 2,535 people died there during the outbreak, while about 2,500 people remain hospitalized.

People are allowed out of their residential complexes only if they have a return-to-work pass issued by their employer, and only if the government-issued health code on their cellphone glows green — not orange or red — to show that they are healthy and cleared for travel. Residents report that some complexes deemed infection-free have quietly lost that status, without explanation.

[Locked down in Beijing, I watched China beat back the coronavirus]

In the malls that opened this week, people must stand five feet apart on escalators, and clothes that customers have tried on must be sprayed with disinfectant. Subway passengers must wear masks and sit two seats apart; footage on state media showed near-deserted cars and stations.

“They’re trying to turn the industrial engines back on as quickly as they can,” said Ryan Hass, a China expert at the Brookings Institution. “But it’s a bit of a challenge because 60 percent of the Chinese economy is the service sector. And even if they wanted people to go to movie theaters and restaurants right now, I don’t think there’s a lot of demand.”

AFP

Getty Images

Staff members stand outside a Dior store in Wuhan international plaza on March 30, 2020.

While Wuhan struggles to return to normalcy, authorities have reinstated restrictions elsewhere.

Small businesses — from karaoke bars in the northern city of Shenyang to Internet cafes in the southwestern metropolis of Chengdu — that tentatively reopened in early March have been ordered to close.

Employees rushed to get back to Moon Village, a karaoke joint in Chengdu, over the weekend and enjoyed a celebratory drink together. The parlor’s social media pages featured photos of disinfecting procedures.

It wasn’t open even a day before local authorities told it to shut its doors.

Some 600 movie theaters that had reopened after a two-month shutdown — out of 70,000 nationwide that were ordered to close at the end of January, before what should have been the biggest box-office week of the year — have been abruptly ordered to go dark.

Indoor attractions such as Madame Tussauds and the landmark Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai, and even pavilions in scenic mountain attractions, have also been told to close.

Chinese authorities have not spelled out reasons for these closures, but analysts such as Thomas say they underline the fear of new infections and the long-term impact that could have on the economy.

This U-turn has been accompanied by other sudden changes, including a ban on foreigners entering China and limited inbound flights for Chinese nationals. The number of flights arriving in the country is less than 2 percent of normal.

[‘I am so afraid’: Coronavirus isolation brings grave new hardships for the world’s poor]

“It’s a difficult calculation: public health risk versus economic risk,” said Ryan Manuel, managing director of Official China, a consultancy specializing in China’s domestic political environment.

But it’s a calculation that other countries, including Italy, Spain and the United States, will have to make.

“Everyone will need to come up with an exit strategy,” said Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief Asia-Pacific economist at Natixis, a French investment bank.

For now, she said, Chinese leaders should not worry about getting the economy back to normal. Domestic demand is low, and external demand is even lower, given the coronavirus’s rampage across the world’s largest economies.

“In a world without demand, rushing into production will create excess capacity and push prices down,” Herrero said. “So Chinese leaders could say they’re going slow for sanitary reasons, but really it’s because they can’t sell their stuff to anyone.”

Roman Pilipey

EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock

A man wearing a protective face mask walks past a security fence in the streets of Wuhan on March 30, 2020.

Liu Yang in Beijing contributed to this report.

Read more

China’s claim of coronavirus victory in Wuhan brings hope, but experts worry it is premature

As coronavirus goes global, China’s Xi asserts victory on first trip to Wuhan since outbreak

Conspiracy theorists blame U.S. for coronavirus. China is happy to encourage them.

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news

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2020-04-01 08:38:31Z
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As Wuhan reopens, China revs engine to move past coronavirus. But it's stuck in second gear. - The Washington Post

AFP Getty Images People eat McDonalds on a bench in Wuhan, China, on March 30, 2020. Wuhan, the city where the coronavirus first emerged in December, is slowly coming back to life with the complete lockdown being lifted in the coming days.

After 10 weeks confined to their apartments, unable to exercise, shop for groceries or walk their dogs, Wuhan residents are emerging into the daylight.

The subway and intercity trains are running again. Shopping malls and even the Tesla store are reopening. State-owned companies and manufacturing businesses are turning on their lights, with others to follow.

“I’ve been indoors for 70 days. Today is the first time that I came outside,” one woman who ventured into a mall this week told local television. “I feel as if I have been separated from the outside world for ages.”

Wuhan’s airport is due to reopen next week, and residents will be allowed to leave the city for the first time since it was locked down Jan. 23 to control the deadly coronavirus that originated there.

China’s leaders say the country has largely won the battle against its outbreak, reporting each day that domestic transmissions are negligible or nonexistent. The gradual reopening of parts of Hubei province — and now of Wuhan, the provincial capital — is testament to that.

But winning the war is proving to be a tougher proposition. That involves not only preventing a second wave of coronavirus infections but also restarting the economy. It’s becoming increasingly clear that officials cannot achieve both things at once.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/video/world/these-videos-show-that-life-in-wuhan-is-far-from-normal-as-coronavirus-lockdown-eases/2020/03/31/e7da2657-627f-43b7-8daa-955566ab7a59_video.html

“These obviously come into conflict, because to prevent the spread of the virus, both from overseas and from unrecorded cases, China needs to maintain some kind of social distancing measures,” said Neil Thomas, a senior researcher at the China-focused Macro Polo think tank in Chicago. “These are going to dampen demand from consumers and limit the operation of factories, the service industry and the transportation networks.”

[As dark reality sets in, president beats a retreat on reopening the U.S.]

Chinese authorities are discovering that allowing people — even those without fevers who are wearing surgical masks and are doused in hand sanitizer — to get too close to each other risks a new rise in infections. Recent media reports have focused on “silent carriers,” and studies have found that as many as one-third of people infected with the coronavirus show delayed or no symptoms.

“The possibility of a new round of infections remains relatively high,” National Health Commission spokesman Mi Feng said Sunday.

Communist Party organizations must “grasp the prevention and control of the epidemic situation with one hand, and grasp the resumption of work and production with the other,” the official CPC News declared Monday. Party outlets have ranked controlling the virus and stopping a second wave of infections above the need to restart the economy.

Roman Pilipey

EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock

A person wearing a full protective gear walks in the streets of Wuhan, China, 30 March 2020.

Like President Trump — who had said he wanted businesses to resume normal operations by Easter, only to backtrack as U.S. deaths surged — Chinese leader Xi Jinping is clearly concerned about the economic impact of a nationwide standstill.

Xi visited the huge Ningbo port and factories in Zhejiang, a hub for exports and a province he once governed, over the weekend to promise that the government would help businesses “recover in the soonest manner.”

Most economists forecast a sharp slump in China’s growth rate in the first quarter, with some predicting the first contraction since 1976. Still, at a Politburo meeting in Beijing on Friday, party leaders signaled further support for the economy, and reiterated their goal of 6 percent growth for the year as a whole.

But efforts to kick-start the economy are not going smoothly.

Despite the gradual reopening of Wuhan, things are still far from normal for the city of 11 million. Officials say that 2,535 people died there during the outbreak, while about 2,500 people remain hospitalized.

People are allowed out of their residential complexes only if they have a return-to-work pass issued by their employer, and only if the government-issued health code on their cellphone glows green — not orange or red — to show that they are healthy and cleared for travel. Residents report that some complexes deemed infection-free have quietly lost that status, without explanation.

[Locked down in Beijing, I watched China beat back the coronavirus]

In the malls that opened this week, people must stand five feet apart on escalators, and clothes that customers have tried on must be sprayed with disinfectant. Subway passengers must wear masks and sit two seats apart; footage on state media showed near-deserted cars and stations.

“They’re trying to turn the industrial engines back on as quickly as they can,” said Ryan Hass, a China expert at the Brookings Institution. “But it’s a bit of a challenge because 60 percent of the Chinese economy is the service sector. And even if they wanted people to go to movie theaters and restaurants right now, I don’t think there’s a lot of demand.”

AFP

Getty Images

Staff members stand outside a Dior store in Wuhan international plaza on March 30, 2020.

While Wuhan struggles to return to normalcy, authorities have reinstated restrictions elsewhere.

Small businesses — from karaoke bars in the northern city of Shenyang to Internet cafes in the southwestern metropolis of Chengdu — that tentatively reopened in early March have been ordered to close.

Employees rushed to get back to Moon Village, a karaoke joint in Chengdu, over the weekend and enjoyed a celebratory drink together. The parlor’s social media pages featured photos of disinfecting procedures.

It wasn’t open even a day before local authorities told it to shut its doors.

Some 600 movie theaters that had reopened after a two-month shutdown — out of 70,000 nationwide that were ordered to close at the end of January, before what should have been the biggest box-office week of the year — have been abruptly ordered to go dark.

Indoor attractions such as Madame Tussauds and the landmark Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai, and even pavilions in scenic mountain attractions, have also been told to close.

Chinese authorities have not spelled out reasons for these closures, but analysts such as Thomas say they underline the fear of new infections and the long-term impact that could have on the economy.

This U-turn has been accompanied by other sudden changes, including a ban on foreigners entering China and limited inbound flights for Chinese nationals. The number of flights arriving in the country is less than 2 percent of normal.

[‘I am so afraid’: Coronavirus isolation brings grave new hardships for the world’s poor]

“It’s a difficult calculation: public health risk versus economic risk,” said Ryan Manuel, managing director of Official China, a consultancy specializing in China’s domestic political environment.

But it’s a calculation that other countries, including Italy, Spain and the United States, will have to make.

“Everyone will need to come up with an exit strategy,” said Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief Asia-Pacific economist at Natixis, a French investment bank.

For now, she said, Chinese leaders should not worry about getting the economy back to normal. Domestic demand is low, and external demand is even lower, given the coronavirus’s rampage across the world’s largest economies.

“In a world without demand, rushing into production will create excess capacity and push prices down,” Herrero said. “So Chinese leaders could say they’re going slow for sanitary reasons, but really it’s because they can’t sell their stuff to anyone.”

Roman Pilipey

EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock

A man wearing a protective face mask walks past a security fence in the streets of Wuhan on March 30, 2020.

Liu Yang in Beijing contributed to this report.

Read more

China’s claim of coronavirus victory in Wuhan brings hope, but experts worry it is premature

As coronavirus goes global, China’s Xi asserts victory on first trip to Wuhan since outbreak

Conspiracy theorists blame U.S. for coronavirus. China is happy to encourage them.

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news

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2020-04-01 08:11:02Z
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China starts to report asymptomatic coronavirus cases - Reuters

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese health authorities began on Wednesday reporting on asymptomatic cases of the coronavirus as part of an effort to allay public fears that people could be spreading the virus without knowing they are infected with it.

FILE PHOTO: A worker in a protective suit sprays disinfectant at a middle school where classes for students in the final year of senior and junior high school have resumed amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, China March 30, 2020. Picture taken March 30, 2020. cnsphoto via REUTERS

China, where the coronavirus emerged late last year, has managed to bring its outbreak under control and is easing travel restrictions in virus hot spots.

But there are concerns that the end of lockdowns will see thousands of infectious people move back into daily life without knowing they carry the virus, because they have no symptoms and so have not been tested.

Up to now, the number of known asymptomatic cases has been classified, and it is not included in the official data, though the South China Morning Post newspaper, citing unpublished official documents, recently said it was more than 40,000.

In an effort to dispel public fears about hidden cases of the virus, the government has this week ordered health authorities to turn their attention to finding asymptomatic cases and releasing their data on them.

Health authorities in Liaoning province were the fist to do so on Wednesday, saying the province had 52 cases of people with the coronavirus who showed no symptoms as of March 31, they said in a statement on a provincial government website.

Hunan province said it had four such cases, all of them imported from abroad, it said in a statement on its website.

The National Health Commission is due to start reporting aggregate, national data on asymptomatic cases later on Wednesday.

There is debate among experts about how infectious asymptomatic cases are but the commission has said all cases would be centrally quarantined for 14 days.It said 1,541 people with asymptomatic coronavirus infections were under observation as of the end of Monday.

China has had more than 81,000 cases of the coronavirus and 3,305 deaths.

Reporting by Gabriel Crossley; Editing by Robert Birsel

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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2020-04-01 07:45:09Z
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Coronavirus - fears that Russia's President Putin has been exposed to infection - BBC News - BBC News

[unable to retrieve full-text content]

1. Coronavirus - fears that Russia's President Putin has been exposed to infection - BBC News  BBC News
2. Oil gains nearly 2%, but posts worst month and quarter on record  CNBC
3. Russian doctor who met Putin last week diagnosed with coronavirus  Reuters
4. Trump and Putin Are All Talk on Oil Price Plunge  Bloomberg
5. Coronavirus: Moscow goes into lockdown - BBC News  BBC News
6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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2020-03-31 21:57:39Z
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