Lawrence at his Head Office of PT. Bali Affordable Lifestyles International |
Re-coronavirus COVID-19 update:
Dear Bali Luxury Villa Owner,
No doubt you are all concerned about daily negative news on the worldwide pandemic, commonly known as coronavirus recently renamed COVID-19 now affecting most of the world.
As of today 56 countries are infected.
I am more concerned than most, first and foremost for the safety of my family and equally important my staff, our guests and you, the villa owner.
In the first week or two, the confirmed cases in China were rising so fast that there was talk of a pandemic similar to the Spanish flu.
Coronavirus fears caused a huge drop in Bali hotel occupancies:
At a "Skal Bali" hotel managers meeting three weeks ago I heard some pretty disturbing news from many of my fellow hoteliers. They said their occupancies dropped by 40% to 50%.
PT. Bali Luxury Villas Beats the Odds and does Better than last Year:
The good news which I just received today based on our occupancies for this month and no cancellations for tomorrow is that our occupancies for PT. Bali Luxury Villas that we manage and rent through my company enjoyed a 9% increase over last year.
Yes I know it sounds too good to be true. I asked my staff to double-check the numbers and it's true.
One theory is that many families who were visiting here, especially from China, have decided to stay.
Over 600 Chinese Families Extend their stay:
It's also much safer because you do not have to eat from buffet lines that others may have infected as was the case when a large number of Passengers received the virus on the Diamond Princess cruise line recently.
I have been charting the virus on an XL spreadsheet since the first 45 cases were reported on January 16 th.
At first, the number of new cases was very scary and when projected out a couple months would've meant Millions of people infected and hundreds of thousands of deaths.
By mid-March, China took drastic measures to contain the virus by locking everybody up in their high-rise buildings, not allowing anybody on the streets plus refusing new cases coming into the hospitals.
At one point I made a radical prediction that if the percentage of the new cases continues to slow down that we may see the virus peak in February or March.
Last week on Feb 19th that prediction came true. As can be seen on the chart below there was a 0% increase in cases reported around the world.
Many Chinese are starting to go back to work.
Pandemic Breaks Out In Europe and the Americas:
Just when everything was looking positive the rest of the world started reporting cases in places such as Italy, Iran, Middle Esat including Israel and over 10 countries last night alone.
Donald Trump's disastrous press conference:
It became serious enough that Donald Trump held a rare press conference approximately 24 hours ago regarding this subject.
I watched again as this clown pretended that he knew what he was doing and appointed his V.P. Mike Pence who maybe even more incompetent than Donald Trump as the head of the task force to handle the coronavirus in America.
Several times during his own press conference Donald Trump as usual, through his ignorance displayed that he really didn't know what was going on. For example when he said there's only 15 American's infected when The World Health Organization reports 50 infected already.
The 31 wildest lines from Donald Trump's self-congratulatory coronavirus press conference
9. "The vaccine is coming along well. And in speaking to the doctors, we think this is something that we can develop fairly rapidly, a vaccine for the future and coordinate with the support of our partners."
"At the earliest, an efficacy trial would take an additional six to eight months. So although this is the fastest we have ever gone from a sequence of a virus to a trial, it still would not be any applicable to the epidemic unless we really wait about a year to a year and a half." -- Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at NIH, shortly after Trump made his claim.
19. "And again, when you have 15 and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that's a pretty good job we've done."
One wonders whether Trump has injured himself with such aggressive back-patting.
The Facts according to WHO Is that there is 300% more confirmed infections in America than trump stated 24 hours ago
At one point he took a question from Dr. Sanjana ICANN's medical expert.
25. "It's a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for. And we'll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner."
Dr. Sanjana pointed It's not like the flu because the normal flu only kills .1% of the people that get infected whereas coronavirus has already proven to kill 2% to 3% of everyone that gets it.
That is several hundred percent more than the normal flu.
30. "There's a chance that it won't spread, too, and there's a chance that it will." So you're saying there's a chance ...
Americans may have a civil uprising over the flu.
As I pointed out yesterday I'm very concerned that Western countries such as the United States and my home country of Canada may not be as easy to contain as it was in China.
Yesterday I had a thought which I published in my blog as follows.
China may Become Worlds Number one Economy if Coronavirus goes pandemic.
I had one of my "Nostradamus of Bali" premonitions a few hours ago, which I hope is wrong.
I had a vision of Coronavirus spreading like wildfire throughout the United States and America's.
When it goes pandemic would the United States and the Americas be able to lock all their citizens in their homes, deny them any access to hospitals and arrest those that do come out on the streets? Would the citizens of the Americas agree to wait at home during the quarantine period?
The answer is quite simply no way. Trump supporters would be the first to bear arms against the quarantine authorities to prevent that from happening.
China May Become World’s Number 1 Economy:
There's been a lot of negative news about China recently.
I'll tell you what when the Chinese government talks, the Chinese citizens listen.
Had it not been for them listening to their government about staying home and sterile for several weeks there would be tens of thousands of people infected and hundreds dying every day as a result.
It dawned on me that now that China appears to have most of it under control and cases have peaked in mainland China they will start having their citizens go back to work.
This may be simultaneous with the Americas having the disease go pandemic and everybody shutting down.
Therefore, the Chinese would be benefiting from no competition on products such as electronics, produce, meats, cereal crops and everything else that they produce.
The bottom line is China would regain everything they lost during the few weeks while under quarantine and perhaps take over as the number one economy in the world.
God I hope I'm wrong on this one
Indonesia has no reported cases of coronavirus will it continue?
As of the last report from the World Health Organization Indonesia which of course includes Bali has no reported cases of coronavirus.
There have been several patients in the last couple of weeks that were suspected of having the disease and proven to be negative.
Why doesn't Indonesia and Bali have Coronavirus?:
There are many theories on why we have been blessed with no confirmed cases up until.
One that makes a lot of sense is that, as several doctors have stated, coronavirus is like the flu in that it is seasonal. The flu does not like lots of sunlight and high temperatures.
I remember when the SARS broke out 18 years ago. I noticed that although most of Asia was affected dramatically Indonesia had only a few cases.
Yesterday a Hong Kong-based brokerage firm CLSA, Professor Nicholls referenced the 2002–03 SARS outbreak and said environmental conditions – such as temperature, humidity, and sunlight – are a ‘crucial factor’ in a virus’ ability to survive and infect people. ‘Sunlight will cut the virus’ ability to grow in half, so the half-life will be two-and-a-half minutes and in the dark it’s about 13–20 minutes. Sunlight is really good at killing viruses,’ he said.
Editor's comments: This is perhaps why as of this day 2020 – 02 – 28 Indonesia is one of the few countries in the world with no reported cases of coronavirus.
The great thing about Indonesia is we have plenty of sunshine and great weather all year long.
Unfortunately Australia our southern neighbour will soon be entering its fall and winter.
Scott Morrison government declares coronavirus will become a pandemic
2020-02-27 Australian prime minister Scott Morrison announces a health emergency response plan as the government declares coronavirus will become a pandemic. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian
Australia has declared the coronavirus will become a global pandemic, and extended its travel ban on visitors from China, as a surge of new cases of Covid-19 around the world fuel fears containment measures have failed.
What worries me about that is that they may see a significant increase in coronavirus cases when the weather changes.
I pray that this doesn't happen for the sake of my Australian friends and clients.
Indonesians are immune from viruses.
Another theory that I've heard from several people including my personal physician is that Indonesians have high immunity to viruses. This may be why they don't have it as of yet.
The gods will keep the virus away.
And finally, there is, of course, the belief that the Balinese gods will keep the virus away from Bali.
Whatever the reason is for Indonesia and Bali being coronavirus free to date may include the above and many more reasons but let's just pray that it continues.
Indonesia is coronavirus free:
For now, we can advertise that Indonesia is coronavirus free.
This may sway some tourists into changing their travel plans from places such as Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, and even Australia.
Future bookings: We are also very happy to report to villa owners that our bookings for the following months appear to be holding, with only a very few cancellations, which have been made up with new reservations.
This too shall pass.
As I said to my staff recently for the 22 years I've lived here we had to endure the collapse of the national government, the resignation of Suharto and the serious financial times that followed.
We lived through two bombings almost 2 decades ago which caused a significant drop in tourist arrivals.
Not to forget a boxing day's Tsunami on Sumatra quite some time ago that killed over a hundred thousand people over 1,500 kilometers from Bali.
More recently we had severe earthquakes on Neigbour Islands which barely affected Bali.
Then in the last two years Mount Agung volcano who was sleeping for 67 years woke up which appears to have now gone back to sleep.
Finally there last year's election riots and victims in Jakarta almost 1000 km away.
Remember always Bali is still Paradise nothing will change that in the foreseeable future.
The fact that we're one of the few countries in the world with no official reported coronavirus coupled with the fact that we're heading into our best months of the year it may actually be a record year for PT. Bali Luxury Villas.
As always we want thank our villa owners, our thousands of satisfied guests, clients, our staff and our families for all their support in helping to make us one of the oldest and most successful Villa Hotels in Bali.
One that is ranked in the top 2% of hotels by Tripadvisor in the world.
PT. Bali Affordable Lifestyles International who manages over 100 staff including PT. Bali Luxury Villas |
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