Reader Submission: Making money from Covid-19?

In many places in the world people are now familiar with THE phenomenon of 2020 called Covid-19. As long as there is no usable vaccine, the World Health Organization recommends preventing the spread and isolating infected people.

Rigorous measures are currently being taken in Europe to limit infections as much as possible. Schools and catering are closing and in the Netherlands it is recommended to cancel events with more than 100 people.

In Thailand, people are also quarantined preventively and there are also Covid-19 patients. No one has anything to panic about, but to say that Thailand with the many tourists from all kinds of infected countries will completely escape the dance seems to me a bit strong. Danger zones in Bangkok would then include airports, public transport and shopping malls.

As soon as there is some kind of panic or people do not know what to expect, many people start hoarding and purchase nonsensical products. Commerce responds well to this because there is good money to be made while hoarding. People are nice and impressionable and as soon as something even remotely resembles a mouth mask, it is used as a mouth mask without asking yourself whether it makes sense at all.

And what is my surprise? Insurer TQM offers coronavirus insurance policies that pay out as soon as you become infected with the coronavirus. For an annual premium of only 99 baht per year you get 20.000 baht, 299 baht yields 50.000 baht and 499 baht gives 100.000 baht.

There is daily betting on the results of football, biweekly on the (il)legal lotteries and then there are also the other gambling games where you can win and lose money. In addition, there are more than enough households that do not perish in the money they have or earn.

A company that will organize “The 2020st Symposium on TQM-Best Practices in Thailand” in September 21 shows in this way that they are not really socially responsible. If the condition were that TQM pays the healthcare costs directly to the practitioner, then I would still understand such an insurance policy, but paying out the hand-cash can have unpleasant consequences for the rest of the well-intentioned population, because which of the gamblers don't want to catch that 100.000 baht for a premium of only 42 baht per month?

If only another debt could be settled with it and the rest who could be disadvantaged by it, we have nothing to do with it.

Submitted by Johnny BG