The make up of Maldives population demographics is about to change forever fundamentally. #Thread

#coronavirus #covid19 #covid19mv

Let me explain by what I mean below. Read on!

The population of the country is roughly 400k people, give or take a few thousand. These are Dhivehi speaking mostly brown people born to Dhivehi parents who for the most part are also Muslim.

Then we have the expat population currently in the country. Some are legal and some are illegal immigrants. It doesn't matter. Some of these people are just unskilled laborers. But others are skilled people - professionals and tradespeople as well.

The estimates of this non-Maldivian citizenship that resides in the country is around 150k, but could be as high as 200k out of which about 50k is illegal immigrants. For the purposes of this thread, I will work with a 200k figure as the expat population number.

The bulk of these people are employed in tourism and construction industries. There are many other industries but let's talk about these two industries. It will still get the message across.

Tourism industry is about 70% of all revenue into the country. That's now completely gone. In a few months, we will just be sitting on idle resources that does not generate and revenue. Just dead weight until we have a vaccine.

We can think about pivoting these resources to generate a different revenue, but it won't be possible quickly enough and there will be hold outs who dream of return to normal and those resources would just sit in idle.

Now the revenue generated from the tourism industry was funding all the construction projects in the country. All of those except for essential projects (healthcare etc) will now come to a grinding halt as well.

Now we have roughly 200k people who are not ”Maldivian” that the country needs to consider what happens to. Their welfare and health matters in a public health emergency that afflicts the human species.

If #covid19 breaks out in any of these people, the local population is also infected eventually. Even now all emergency measures account for these people and will continue to account for moving forward. Their best interest is now locked in step with ”our” best interest.

But taking care of an extra 200k people is a nearly impossible financial burden the country cannot take on, absent the tourism industry revenue. This is a huge problem.

We can think about the repatriation of all these people to lessen the burden on the local population. So what does repatriation look like and is it feasible?

Let's do some basic math. For the purposes of this math, we will assume that an airplane carries 300 people per round trip. So that works out to be 666 flights! This truly will be the mark of the beast now! Ironic isn't it?

Now let's look at the global reality of this pandemic. Flights are grounded, borders are closes, airports are shut. It would be logistically impossible to have 666 flights to get these people out of the country.

And you have to consider if it's safe as well given how the virus is spreading globally. We can't just evict these people into harms way as well. And some of these people may not even want to go back given this reality.

Now let's just assume for arguments sake we were able to get half of these people - 100k - out of the country in some magical scenario where everything just worked out. We will have left with 100k.

Now let's have a look at the cultural and religious backgrounds of these people. A lot of these are from our neighbouring countries, and try rest are from all over the world. The diversity in this group would be extremely high.

Sure a lot of these from Bangladesh for example are Muslims. But even then, there are Ahmadis, Shias and all other sects as well. Then we will have some Hindus, Christians, and even Atheists.

Given this new reality, we are now looking at absorbing these people into the Maldives population, some of them quite possibly permanently. This is exactly what we are looking at right now.

If we don't absorb them and make them productive members of society, they will be a burden we cannot undertake. And we can't just put them all into a refugee camp. There will be human rights consideration to think about. Absorption is the only real solution.

If you have followed this thread so far, you all know by now what all this means. The 100% Muslim label is now going to be challenged at scale towards #SecularMaldives, highly accelerating any previous projects I have made, due to new reality.

All of this is going to be extremely painful and we are in for some really trying times ahead. The world as we knew and understood it, no longer exists. Everything has changed. I have said this before and continue reminding again.

All of this shouldn't be so difficult if we look at the history of how Maldivians came to be. We are a national made up of mostly shipwrecked people over 2000 years timeline. What's another 100k or 200k ”shipwrecked” people all at once, right?

I’ll let you all think over the implications of what I have just laid out. This is about to happen, and for the most part you all will be helpless to do anything to stop it from happening. You will just have to accept it as the new reality.

No amount of religion or prayer or government clout or politics can avoid us from addressing this impending problem.

I can only wish everyone good luck!

And with that I end this mindfuck of a thread!

Viva la #SecularMaldives! It will not be denied!

#FikuryInqilab people! Get ready for what's to come!

Fin!

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