With Coronavirus spreading all over Indonesia, many people panick and causing chaos by panick buying, spreading fake news, etc. The government of Indonesia seems exhausted to manage these situation where cases increase everyday and chaos happening all over the place. Watching all of the crisis happening in Indonesia, a question appeared in my mind, if I was the president of Indonesia, what would I do to fight Coronavirus?
If I was the president of Indonesia, the first thing I would do to fight Coronavirus is to not announced any lockdown to any area of Indonesia. Judging by the panic of most Indonesian citizens, announcing a lockdown will be very dangerous and can cause many chaos happening in Indonesia. You can see that lockdown is definitely ineffective for Indonesia by seeing Indonesian past history.
You can take incident May 1998 as an example. When the citizen of Indonesia is in crisis especially economic crisis, they make riot all over the place and even many raids happen to supermarkets all over Jakarta. You can also take the history from a year ago where a demonstration happened in Jakarta. Even when they are just demonstrating, many minimarket was raid and some of the demonstrator even make riot by burning things and throwing molotov in the street.
Now if we announced lockdown, the chaos that is bound to happen will be a lot worse than the chaos happening a year ago or maybe will be as bad as the incident in may 1998. Many raids will happen in supermarkets and houses. If raids happen in supermarkets, it means that supplies will decrease or even vanished and many citizens will be in a pinch just to live normally. By raids in houses, well I'm sure there will be many deaths happening. That is why I wouldn't announced any lockdown. But I will apply some isolation individually and social distancing like what happening now since social distancing is important to be applied to prevent the increasing cases of coronavirus.
If I was the president of Indonesia, I would also build many emergency hospitals and health facilities since the increasing number of coronavirus cases will need many place to isolate and many tools to take care of the patient who are suffering the coronavirus. Now many hospital are full and have no place to care. I had a acquaintance who was infected with Coronavirus and when he want to get treatment, he can't get any since all of the hospital that handles coronavirus near his place was full.
He didn't get any treatment he should have gotten until he died a few days ago. It was very sad since he was a very kind person. Later I learned that many people experience the same way. That is why I would build as many emergency hospital as I can. I would also give as many medical tools as I can to the doctors and health workers. If we are experiencing lack of medical tools in Indonesia, I will import some medical tools including hand sanitizer and other medical tools from other countries.
Lastly, I would build some corporation with China to study some ways to fight corona. China has solved the coronavirus case and was cured from coronavirus. I would build some corporation by asking China's expert that controls the coronavirus about how to fight the coronavirus. I would ask permission via online from China government to ask China's expert via online about how to fight coronavirus. After receiving the ideas from these China's expert, I would examine them whether it could be use in Indonesia or not. If it could be used in Indonesia, I would communicate with the ministry of health to implement these solutions China offers.