COMMENT | Ever since the federal government decided to open up Malaysia economy (albeit slowly) by calling in effect the conditional movement control order (MCO), there has been a vicious debate where Malaysians have split in half their opinion on whether this is a good move or not.

Of course, the most vocal group is the one that doesn’t support it.

Well, I am going to straight-up be honest and declare that I am in support of the federal government opening up the economy of the country, and I welcome the conditional MCO. Hopefully, it will very rapidly turn into "no more" MCO. I’m sure I’m going to be slaughtered online by Covid-19 pandemic social justice warriors!

Give me a chance and hear me out. My reasoning for wanting the MCO to end fast could just be as legitimate as not wanting it to end so fast. But firstly, let’s be clear and agree that calling for the removal of the MCO should only be done when proper research and study have been done to evaluate and weigh the pros and cons.

When the government announced in March that the whole country was going to be under a semi-lockdown, many people were anxious and nervous, including me. As much as I understood that a deadly virus was spreading, I didn’t know how deadly. We had experienced Sars (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and the likes, but we never had a lockdown.

So obviously, as a person who is self-employed and running my own little boutique media company with a staff of two, my most immediate concern was of work. And I think it was justified because as soon as the MCO was announced, I lost three major projects that were supposed to kick off in March and April.

But then, we also started seeing how the virus was just infecting everyone (and killing many too) at such a terrifying rate...