Letters | Unequal Hong Kong can’t live with Covid-19, unlike Singapore

Readers discuss what strategy Hong Kong should adopt in balancing the need to curb the spread of Covid-19 with economic and other concerns

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A woman pulls a trolley of cardboard boxes and old electronics down Elgin Street in Central in August 2020. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Published: 7:30am, 25 Aug 2021

I would like to respond to Cliff Buddle’s column, “Time for Hong Kong to emerge from its ever-shrinking bubble” (August 21), which argued that Hong Kong should follow Singapore’s “live with the virus” strategy because “many countries now accept it is impossible to eliminate Covid-19” and “Hong Kong’s status as an international city … is at stake” if it continues to isolate itself from the rest of the world.

However, Hong Kong is not a monolithic society that consists of only international high-flyers. With a Gini coefficient of 0.54, Hong Kong is a much more unequal society than Singapore, whose number is a modest 0.35. That means a vast majority of Hongkongers cannot afford the kind of international travel that is viewed as an essential fact of life by the elites.

The elites need to understand that the virus has an outsize impact on the low-income segment of society. What may be a mere inconvenience for the elites can mean the difference between life and death for the poor.

The elites have benefited enormously from the pandemic as the value of their investment portfolios soared, fuelled by the easy money the government created to support the economy. It’s time for the rich to do their part and stick it out like everybody else.

Huan Liu, Sham Tseng

Hong Kong needs a roadmap to a Covid-endemic future

The zero-Covid policy has largely isolated Hong Kong from the misery of infection and death, with rates one-hundredth of those seen elsewhere in the world (“Coronavirus: Hong Kong’s ‘zero infection’ policy unsustainable, expert warns, urging elderly to get vaccinated”, August 22). But our economy has suffered, with social connections broken and many of our industries decimated. Where is our road map to the future, with Covid-19 endemic?