6/9/22, 10:18 AM Connected by extension - How paying connects old regimes and new isolations - Allegra Lab Myanmar(https://apps.crowdtangle.com/myanmarcovid19/boards/myanmarcovid-19). As we were sitting in an open-air restaurant one night, someone started speculating whether a COVID-19 emergency would lead to a state of emergency. Many I worked with, as well as I, were finding social distancing hard – just as US officials telling people to stop touching their faces had a hard time(https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/03/05/coronavirus-officials-touch-faces/) following their own advice. On 23 March, the Myanmar Ministry of Health(https://web.archive.org/web/20200325200545/http:/mohs.gov.mm/Main/content/new/ covid-19-ရ-ဂ-စ-င-က-ပ-က-ည-ရ-မ-န-င-ပတ-သက-သတင-ထ-တ-ပ-န-ခ-င-23-3-2020-11-45-pm) confirmed the first two COVID-19 cases in Myanmar, returnees from the USA and the UK. I decided I had to leave or risk being stranded. I met with friends on the eve of my flight. When I mentioned that the cases so far had been imported, they hesitantly told me about a meme: a picture of a former military leader roughly reading “See, that is why we were xenophobic”. As Myanmar’s head of state, Than Shwe oversaw two decades of isolationism between 1992 and 2011 while maintaining relations with Myanmar’s immediate neighbours (Egreteau and Jagan 2018). There have been speculative arguments whether disaffection for foreign involvement shows in the 2008 constitution’s section 59(f), barring anyone who has immediate foreign relatives from becoming president (Crouch 2020: 117-8), and in the reluctance to accept relief assistance in the aftermath of cyclone Nargis (Stover & Vinck 2008: 730, Seekins 2009: 727). Now, with cases of COVID-19 infections in Euro-America on the rise, another kind of foreign influence, of viruses from abroad using humans as conduits, needed to be stopped. (https://allegralaboratory.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/memegeneral.jpg) https://allegralaboratory.net/corona-connected-by-extension-how-paying-connects-old-regimes-and-new-isolations/ 4/12