At first impression, it seems the Covid-19 pandemic has become the great leveller. No matter how wealthy we are, how fancy our homes, whether we are bank executives or
domestic helpers, we’re all self-isolating, feeling threatened by the coronavirus.
Suddenly, our politics don’t matter and which part of town we live in isn’t important. What matters is that at the basest of levels – survival – we’re all in this together and if we don’t help one another, many of us might not make it.
But isolation is only a commonality. Behind the perceived levelling has been the crash of
equity markets. How that has affected the wealth of Hong Kong’s billionaires isn’t yet clear; as of last July, according to the global real estate firm Savills, the city had 79 of them, second in the world only to New York, which had 85.
Despite the crisis and the related economic downturn, which has cut across almost all sectors, the silence of Hong Kong’s tycoons has been deafening. Only the
second richest, Li Ka-shing, has publicly shown his philanthropic side, with his
donation last month of 250,000 face masks to the needy, as well as protective clothing and respirators to public hospitals.
That is despite the outbreak worsening Hong Kong’s recession, hitting vital economic sectors and leaving
many jobless or with their incomes slashed. Those suffering the most are the poorest in society, the ones who have the least job security and are struggling to get by day to day.
The people who don’t enjoy the luxury of working from home include
delivery drivers, market vendors, cleaners, hotel, restaurant and bar staff, who all essentially work on the front line and are therefore the most vulnerable. They cannot afford to get sick.
Then there is the debate about whether
well-off entertainers who are putting out videos and music to make us feel better are doing it for publicity or genuinely worried about the well-being of their fans. But there is a valid counterargument: without videos, movies, music, books and art, how could we get through
weeks and possibly
months of being forced to stay at home?
Pubs and bars, as well as cinemas, libraries, parks and
gyms have been ordered to close and we have been left to our own devices about how to keep our minds and bodies active and healthy. Without entertainers, well-paid or not, our sanity would also be at risk.
It is at times of crisis that people shine, though. There are endless accounts of how ordinary people overseas have selflessly given of their time to help the needy.
Among them are a woman in Singapore who has been handing out masks sourced from Vietnam to the public, everyday folk packing food in New York for the jobless who can no longer afford to buy it, Polish volunteers delivering coffee, energy drinks and packed lunches to overworked medical staff in hospitals, and an Australian bookstore that is providing a free bicycle delivery service to locked-down homes.
I’m not aware of similar acts of heroism by ordinary people in Hong Kong; perhaps we are too frightened to venture outside to walk quarantined people’s dogs for them or offer support to our front-line doctors and nurses.
I also wonder what the government is doing to help potentially hundreds of thousands of people who are likely to be out of work as a result of forced closures and the lack of business. Promised
budget handouts of HK$10,000 and social welfare cash payments do not go far in the
world’s most expensive city.
We should be sparing a thought for those who have been made less well-off or put at risk of infection. Only through working together and helping one another can we successfully get through to the other side of this crisis. It’s about time those billionaires, many of whom have profited so much from Hong Kong, began giving back to the community in this urgent time of need.
The charitable among us may consider looking beyond our front doors to give those who are suffering a helping hand.
Peter Kammerer is a senior writer at the Post
