Group 8 : Lam O Wen 0332615 Leann Lau Li Syen 0332326 Hilman Aqil 0332341 Steven Fernando 0336748 Gan Teck You 0332294 Module : COMMUNITY SERVICE INITIATIVE Module code : UCM60102U4 Tutor : Ms. Camelia May Li Kusumo IMPACTS OF MOVEMENT CONTROL ORDER TOWARDS HUMAN SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT
Fig.1 Movement Control Order (MCO) in Malaysia 2020 has started in a very distinct way. A new, deadly disease named COVID-19 has changed almost everyone’s life in the world. Terms like ‘social distancing’, ‘lock-down’ have been introduced and practiced worldwide. The epicenter of the coronavirus had also travelled firstly from China, then to Italy and now to the United States. Even though the number of cases in a place seem to be decreasing, people should not ignore the hidden crisis of the disease. According to BBC news, Hokkaido had almost become the most successful example in fighting against the disease. (Lessons from Hokkaido's second wave of infections, Wingfield-Hayes, 2020). “It was once seen as something of a success story - a region that worked to contain, trace and isolate the virus - leading to a huge drop in numbers. But Hokkaido is in the spotlight again as it struggles to deal with a second wave of infection” by Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, BBC News, Tokyo. Tracing and isolating the patients and anyone that has ever been in contact with the patients are very important to stop the spreading of disease. Therefore, there is no doubt that movement controlling order is the best thing proposed in every country that is affected by the disease to end this pandemic.
Fig.2 Covid-19 spreading area in the world However, significant impacts come together while all the people are staying at home to prevent the spreading of viruses. A sharp drop of consumer demand resulting in an economic shutdown and causing developing countries to face financial crisis. Unusual phenomena happened in society including the decline in stock markets and increase of demand for food cause problems to people. Stock market crash, United States oil prices turn negative and many big events like these showing the world is moving towards an unpredictable future. For example, people never thought that the popularization of online classes would happen so fast. One undeniable fact is that Covid-19 pandemic made big changes in the human social environment. On the whole, the pandemic brings both pros and cons to the social environment. One of the big changes that first introduced to people are classrooms that widely bring use during this pandemic. Due to the serious impact of Covid-19, many countries have decided to close schools, colleges and universities in order to reduce direct contact between individuals. However, the education institutions for all countries are working hard on avoiding the disruption of learning to the extent possible, hence scaling up distance education based on existing technology becomes the biggest solution to all countries. In order to ensure the continuation of learning, most of the countries are using online platforms to deliver the learning content to students. In fact, the sudden changes of the education system have brought a lot of benefits to students. One of the great benefits about online learning is that it requires less of a time investment to the student and tutors, in general education system , students involves the time to get back and forth to classes, plus the times spent for waiting the tutors and other students, a report found that online learning style typically requires 4060 % less time spent than learning in a traditional classroom setting (Dexway Team, 2020), it allows the students to save their time from travelling back and forth to classes. Beside that, traditional classroom learning, this is because learning through online can happen quickly and easily, it reduces the cost of travel, course materials, and accommodation. It will benefit a lot of students when they study online at their own place, they will be relieved from playing for travel expenses especially for the other state or international students (Sunil Gupta, 2017).
Despite the benefits students gain through online education being carried out through the entire nation, disadvantages of the execution do tail its back. Traditional education done in a closed room allows greater range visibility for tutors upon their students. This would make the student’s attention to not focus reduced as they are aware of responsibility. Not for online classes, where there is no direct engagement between those two parties. A survey conducted found that 452 students at public universities in the American Midwest confirmed a significantly higher multitasking activity reportedly, texting, emailing, running through online social networks as well as watching videos and even playing games (James McWilliams,2019). Distractions are becoming a vital disadvantage to neglect their duties indirectly. Furthermore, with online classes there is without doubt internet access plays a major role in making the whole thing to work. The internet connection in rural areas are undeniably different in performance compared to the city wifi. With that said, teachers and students in the rural areas encounter difficulty carrying out online classes since the internet connection is unstable leading to lagging during class or even being disconnected from the live session. In addition, students are having more worry not having enough money to pay for data as some families might be financially distressed (Angelin Yeoh,2020). Aside from education, the Internet is beneficial for online social relationships during the pandemic. Existing media that help people to make stronger relationships during the pandemic. Most people today have their own online device to communicate with each other that allows them to interact anytime from distant places. On the one hand, Popular media such as Facebook, Zoom, Discord, and etc, these online tools are strong evidence that help people connect during the physical distancing. For example Zoom, one of the most widely used applications, software that supports groups of friends to meet each other online. Not to mention that so far, many people have created stronger ties within family members. Limitation of going outside the house is allowing them to spend more time together. Kids are also less busy, have more control over their time, are sleeping better, seeing more of their parents, playing more alone or with siblings (Mind Health Institute,2020). Young people who spent most of their time with their friends playing games or hanging out are now spending more quality time with family members. During this hard time, people will appreciate life a bit more and focus on the bigger things (Kevin Bridges, 2020). However, social distancing without access to the internet or any form of communication may have an effect on how a person copes with social distancing. In reality, everywhere in the world there are those fortunate to have higher income and there are unfortunates that have lower income. This correlates to the ability of someone to stay socially distanced with the problems of income and access to the internet (Lesley&Catherine,2020). A study shows that people with higher income can easily stay at home due to the availability of inhouse facilities that allow communication through webcam while people with lower income have a hard time coping because social distancing without access to the internet can have an effect on their social relationship. Without interaction, severe cases of mental health are bound to rise due to loneliness or contributing to loneliness. (PLoS One, 2017) states that depressive symptom scores among isolation and loneliness groups showed that those who were more isolated had higher depressive symptoms and those who felt lonely also had higher depressive symptom scores than those who did not feel lonely.
Fig.3 Internet access improves everyone’s ability to stay at home In terms of work restrictions that have been announced in different countries, it is truly agreeable. People around the world are mostly either staying at home not working or working from home. It was proved that working from home has a positive effect towards the working productivity of most individuals. They could save time commuting from one place to another and employers realised that they could save money from the real estate and also utilities bills as everyone would not be at the working place. (Schrotenboer, 2020) Not going to work or working at home could prevent the further spread of the virus and could prevent from putting their family members at risk from being exposed to the virus. As stated in the article, in the Europe countries, irresponsible and reckless people who have started returning back to their daily routine like going to work or returning back to school although restrictions have been announced to the people. This has caused a great impact towards the number of cases to rise up drastically in the country. (Laura Perez Maestro, 2020)
Fig.4 Number of cases in Malaysia
Lockdown causes schools, offices and factories to close and most industries end up being stuck in a lockup state. People are not allowed to travel to a further place using cars or planes and the scale of the logistics shrunk dramatically. These big changes in the community undoubtedly bring chain reactions to many industries and of course the world economics. Following the drop of the need for transportations, the demand of oil will drop immediately resulting in the drop of price of oil. On 21st of April 2020, the price of US oil prices turned negative for the first time in human history. The price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) reached minus $37.63 per barrel. (US oil prices turn negative as demand dries up， BBC News, 2020). Simply put, the oil seller needs to pay the buyer $37.63 for purchasing a barrel of oil. What actually makes the situation worse is the cost of closing oil wells is more expensive than paying back the buyer. This resulting decrease in oil production is very hard. (Break Even and shut-in prices for oil wells: Kemp, 2020). On the other hand, Covid-19 pandemic is the biggest reason for the 2020 Stock Market Crash which is the most impactful economic crisis since the flu pandemic of 1918. These big events might not be so serious if work restriction is not applied. For instance, the negative oil price won’t happen if the scale of logistics remains. Work restrictions can be not applied or apply on a smaller scale if the epidemic prevention work is being done very well. Furthermore, the world might take a long time to recover from stock market crash resulting by the huge scale of work restriction. Therefore, work restriction could be unnecessary if all the people strictly maintain hygiene and success to stop the spreading of the viruses.
Movement control order is obviously the best and only way to stop the spreading of Covid-19. Besides, it also urges human beings to enter the digital age earlier than expected. In education, online classes are able to solve a lot of problems that physical classes can’t avoid. Movement control order has also proved the internet can solve long distance relationship problems by still connecting people together even though they can’t meet each other physically. Last and foremost, movement control orders that bring out work restrictions are applied in many countries to stop people from having big gatherings and having face to face contact to stop the spread of viruses. In the other way, statistics and data proved that there are world scale impacts that are affected by the lockdown. There are still a lot of ignored issues that only can be done by face to face contact. Human beings should find a balance when the world is facing another similar pandemic or even the explosion of the digital era.
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Laura Perez Maestro, C., 2020. Hundreds Of Thousands Return To Work As Spain Relaxes Coronavirus Lockdown. [online] CNN. Available at: <https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/13/europe/spain-lockdown-covid-19-lockdown-easedintl/index.html> [Accessed 7 May 2020]. Schrotenboer, B., 2020. [online] Usatoday.com. Available at: <https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/05/04/coronavirus-pandemic-might-gamechanger-working-home/3061862001/> [Accessed 8 May 2020]. Martin, C. and Wason, E., 2020. Environmental Impacts Of Social Distancing, National Parks Closed Amid Pandemic, And More. [online] Resources for the Future. Available at: <https://www.resourcesmag.org/on-the-issues/issues-environmental-impacts-socialdistancing-national-parks-closed-amid-pandemic-and-more/> [Accessed 8 May 2020]. Wingfield-Hayes, R., 2020. Lessons From Hokkaido's Return To Virus Lockdown. [online] BBC News. Available at: <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-52305055> [Accessed 8 May 2020] Wallace, D., and R. Wallace. 2008. Urban systems during disasters: factors for resilience. Ecology and Society 13(1): 18. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss1/art18/ PLoS One. 2017, Social isolation, loneliness and their relationships with depressive symptoms: A population-based study, [online] URL: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5568112/ Rich Ling. 2008, Exclusion or self-isolation?: Texting and the elderly users1, [online]URL:http://www.academia.edu/download/30805649/2008-elderly-article.pdf Lesley Chiou,& Catherine Tucker. (2020). SOCIAL DISTANCING, INTERNET ACCESS AND INEQUALITY. Retrieved from Working Paper 26982 http://www.nber.org/papers/w26982 04.2020 BBC News. 2020. US Oil Prices Turn Negative As Demand Dries Up. [online] Available at: <https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52350082> [Accessed 8 May 2020]. Ipsnews.net. 2020. The Economic Impact Of COVID-19 On Developing Countries | Inter Press Service. [online] Available at: <https://www.ipsnews.net/2020/04/the-economic-impactof-covid-19-on-developing-countries/> [Accessed 7 May 2020]. kemp, j., 2020. Breakeven And Shut-In Prices For Oil Wells: Kemp. [online] U.S. Available at: <https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oil-shale-prices-kemp/breakeven-and-shut-in-prices-foroil-wells-kemp-idUSKBN0KN07C20150114> [Accessed 8 May 2020]. Yeoh, A. (2020). MCO: As lessons move online, local teachers and students struggle with uneven Internet access. Retrieved 15 May 2020, from https://www.thestar.com.my/tech/technews/2020/04/27/mco-as-lessons-move-online-local-teachers-and-students-struggle-withuneven-internet-access
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The downside of online learning. (2020). Retrieved 15 May 2020, from https://theweek.com/articles/830631/downside-online-learning Gupta, S. (2020, April 22). 9 Benefits Of eLearning For Students. Retrieved from https://elearningindustry.com/9-benefits-of-elearning-for-students Team, D. (2017, July 17). 5 Reasons Why Online Learning is More Effective. Retrieved from https://www.dexway.com/5-reasons-why-online-learning-is-more-effective/