Covid-19 responses, replete with strict lockdowns, sophisticated contact-tracing apps and clearly articulated policies, got tripped up by something in the end.
In Singapore, it was an outbreak in foreign worker dorms. In South Korea, it was the premature reopening of nightclubs. Then there were other countries that did nothing glaringly wrong and still suffered.
It only goes to show that there’s no winning the coronavirus recovery.Malaysia is a good example from column B. Despite doing a lot of things right, it has seen the steepest collapse of major East Asian economies, with a decline in gross domestic product of 17.1% from a year earlier.