Hong Kong residents moving to Singapore, snapping up rental homes - "“Hong Kong was always the fun place to be,” he told CNBC. “Singapore was where you went if you were a bit boring or you had a family.”... To be clear, interest from Hong Kong is not the only reason for rising rents. Rental prices in Singapore were already moving higher during the pandemic due to demand from various sources, including young adults moving out of their parents’ homes and people looking for interim housing because of construction delays... ″[Hong Kong] just feels backwards,” said Benarr, who is group director of real estate at hospitality company The Mandala Group. “What was once a progressive city, just feels like it’s no longer interested in being part of the international conversation”... Singapore-based co-living start-up Hmlet said there was an “exponential” increase in bookings in January 2022, “which we attribute to demand from Hong Kongers anticipating the imminent tightening of public health protocols.” Inquiries from Hong Kong jumped 25% from December 2021 to January 2022... international financial institutions in Hong Kong are seeking flexible workspaces in Singapore... Another Singaporean, who wanted to be known only as Leung, said he bought a one-way ticket to Singapore when Hong Kong announced in February that it planned to test its entire population for Covid three times. He said that at that point, he felt “the government [had] totally lost it, I have to get out of here.”"
COVID: Shanghai starts China's biggest lockdown in 2 years - "China began its most extensive coronavirus lockdown in two years Monday to conduct mass testing and control a growing outbreak in Shanghai as questions are raised about the economic toll of the nation's "zero-COVID" strategy. Shanghai, China's financial capital and largest city with 26 million people, had managed its smaller previous outbreaks with limited lockdowns of housing compounds and workplaces where the virus was spreading. But the citywide lockdown that will be conducted in two phases will be China's most extensive since the central city of Wuhan, where the virus was first detected in late 2019, confined its 11 million people to their homes for 76 days in early 2020. Millions more have been kept in lockdown since then... the International Air Transport Association announced it was moving its annual general meeting from Shanghai to Doha, citing "continuing COVID-19 related restrictions on travel to China."... Although China's vaccination rate is around 87%, it is considerably lower among older people who are more likely to become seriously ill if they contract the virus."
James Melville on Twitter - "Shanghai, China 🇨🇳 Disinfecting the roads. All those people who lick roads will feel safer now."
In Shanghai, residential gates are locked and millions are running low on food - "Mask on and cell phone in hand, I step outside before the volunteers in hazmat suits have time to knock. If you miss the call, they'll keep knocking until someone answers. No one is exempt. This massive city of 25 million people is at the center of China's efforts to stamp out the country's largest ever Covid outbreak. No one is allowed to leave their residential compounds, even to buy food, meaning we rely on the government or private delivery drivers stretched thin by the massive demand. That's creating huge pressure on the system -- and for many people, the restrictions are more distressing than the threat of the virus. Outside my apartment, hazmat-suited community workers lead me and my neighbors in a socially distanced procession past our locked front gate, the only time I'm allowed out of my apartment. But they never lead us out of the gate -- it's been sealed with padlocks and bicycle locks for more than three weeks... I worry about being sent to Shanghai's spartan quarantine system for days or weeks. Images of the facilities suggest I could face cramped, unsanitary conditions with overflowing trashcans, no running water and dirty communal toilets. But I'm more uneasy about what may happen to Chairman, my rescue dog. What happens to your pet if you test positive remains an unsettling gray area with no clear solution. Horror stories circulate online about pets being left behind and one was recently killed with a shovel by a person in a hazmat suit... In late March, before the city was ordered to stay home, panicked buyers left grocery store shelves empty. Now, desperation has set in. Videos show people screaming at community workers, pleading with them for food, saying they're starving. Others show crowds at a quarantine food distribution site fighting over a small delivery of vegetables. In my community, the government delivers food once every few days. Deliveries range from a box of vegetables and eggs, to a vacuum-sealed piece of pork or some Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). The handouts alone are not enough to feed one person, let alone an entire family, beyond a day or so... Many communities have set up group chats with their neighbors on Chinese social media app WeChat. Occasionally there are offers for group food buys, but options are limited. Shops are shuttered, delivery drivers locked down, supply chains disrupted... Some of us have resorted to creating contact-less "drop spots," where we swap food to vary our diets. For example, after walking back home from a community Covid test, one of my neighbors sent me a message: She had left a block of cheese in the shaded spot above her bicycle. When I headed out to my Covid test later, I took her cheese and replaced it with two oranges. She then collected the fruit when she was allowed out for her next Covid test. Authorities seem to be hearing the complaints. Over the weekend, Shanghai vice mayor Zong Ming choked up at a news conference, apologizing to the city's residents for failing to meet expectations. And on Monday, authorities promised to begin easing lockdowns in some areas. From Wuhan onward, I've covered every aspect of this outbreak in China. The early mishandling and alleged cover-up of the initial spread seemed to have been forgotten by the public as the central government forged ahead with its "zero-Covid" policy. For two years, China largely succeeded in keep the virus out, by closing borders and introducing a seemingly sophisticated contact tracing system that uses smartphone technology to track us and our potential exposure to the virus. Officials have perfected mass testing with capabilities to quickly process cities of populations in the tens of millions. And they've relied mostly on targeted, snap lockdowns -- closing down a neighborhood, office or even a shopping mall with a confirmed case or close contact inside -- trying to avoid shutting down entire cities so as to minimize social and economic damage. In recent months, entire cities have gone into lockdown -- including Xi'an, Tianjin, and Shenzhen -- but nothing on the scale of Shanghai, where the adrenaline and communal spirit to contain the virus has been replaced by fatigue, frustration and despair... A modern city of highrises and restaurants, Shanghai once rivaled cosmopolitan centers like Paris and New York. Now millions of residents are scrambling for basic necessities from the confines of their homes... Most expats I know have either already left or are determined to get out. The reason? "This is not sustainable" is a common refrain. Mentally. Emotionally. Physically. It's not."
China censors Shanghai protest videos as Covid-19 lockdown anger grows - "China is struggling to manage growing public unhappiness over tough Covid-Zero measures in Shanghai, one of its wealthiest and most globalised cities, as some residents revolt against lockdown orders which have stretched in some instances to a month... A third video of the compound's residents demonstrating, where the chanting is less clear, and does not include terms such as "freedom", has been allowed to remain online... The ramped-up censorship reflects China's growing dilemma over its zero-tolerance approach to the virus, which is extracting greater economic and social costs while leaving it isolated in a world that has chosen to live with Covid-19... While officials have shown greater flexibility with the Covid-Zero policy in recent months - creating closed loop systems for businesses and factories to keep operating amid lockdowns and in the case of Shanghai, alternating lockdowns between its eastern and western halves - the pushback in China's financial hub underscores the domestic costs of practising the policy indefinitely... A topic on Weibo about an elderly person who died of asthma after ambulances refused to take him to a hospital in Shanghai attracted more than 55 million views and 23,000 posts on Thursday alone, with posts lamenting the state of medical care more than two years into the pandemic. While not citywide like elsewhere in China, the lockdowns in Shanghai have led to desperation among those with chronic conditions such as kidney failure in incidents which evoke the traumatic scenes of early 2020 when the virus first emerged. Before this week's split lockdown, officials had been sealing individual buildings and housing compounds for compulsory testing, to root out suspected virus cases. Shanghai, a city that accounts for 3.8 per cent of China's gross domestic product, is home to many of the country's elite in industries ranging from financial services to luxury fashion. More foreigners live there than anywhere else in China and the quality of health-care is considered the best nationwide... Some 71 million people in China are either in lockdown or facing one imminently, according to Bloomberg calculations. Affected households often find themselves with inadequate access to food, as panic buying and a lack of delivery staff contribute to shortages. Lockdowns are likely costing the country at least US$46 billion (S$62 billion) a month, or 3.1 per cent of GDP, in lost economic output, according to an estimate by scholars at the Chinese University of Hong Kong."
Shanghai: Residents 'running out of food' in Covid lockdown - "public anger is also being stoked by other drastic measures - such as the removal of children from their parents if they test positive. Shanghai officials later responded by allowing parents who were also infected to accompany their children to isolation centres. However, according to a Reuters report, there are still complaints over children separated from parents who were not Covid-positive. The city began another round of mandatory mass testing on Wednesday to identify and isolate every case. Shanghai residents who test positive can't isolate in their homes even if their conditions are mild or asymptomatic. They have to go to mandatory quarantine facilities, which critics say have become crowded and have sub-par conditions... When Omicron first emerged in Shanghai a month ago, the city quarantined only certain compounds. Then as the virus spread officials last week implemented a staggered lockdown where the city was split into two and each half had separate measures. On Monday the lockdown was extended indefinitely to cover the entire city of 25 million people... the lockdown extension has overwhelmed delivery services, grocery shop websites and even the distribution of government supplies. Many delivery personnel are also in locked-down areas, leading to an overall decrease in delivery capacity. Locals in some areas of the city say they've been completely cut off... Another person wrote that it was the "first time in my life that I have gone hungry"... Shanghai's vice mayor added the city would try to re-open some wholesale markets and food stores, and allow more delivery personnel out of locked-down areas... The country has successfully enacted full lockdowns before - endured by millions of people in cities including Xi'an and Wuhan - but Shanghai is its biggest city and the case spread this time is much higher than previous outbreaks. As one of the economic powerhouses of China, Shanghai's shutdown is also fuelling concerns about the impact to China and the world's economy."
Shanghai tweaks lockdown rules amid COVID-19 surge - "Authorities in Shanghai introduced the three-tier disease control system on Monday, allowing residents in areas where no cases have been reported for 14 days to leave their homes so long as they follow health protocols and remain in their sub-district. Those living in areas where no cases have been confirmed for seven days are allowed to collect food deliveries or take a walk at a designated time and location... Of the city’s 17,600 communities, however, some 7,624 remain in the strictest lockdown designation and people there are required to stay at home... the United States said it had ordered all non-essential consulate staff to leave the city, citing the COVID response. The US earlier advised its consulate staff to leave and also urged Americans to reconsider travel to China due to “arbitrary enforcement” of local laws and COVID-19 restrictions, particularly in Hong Kong, Jilin province and Shanghai in an announcement that drew anger from Beijing. China was “strongly dissatisfied with and firmly opposed to the US side’s groundless accusation against China’s epidemic response,” Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian said... Guangzhou, a sprawling metropolis of 18 million people on China’s southern coast, is also battling an outbreak of the disease and is conducting a mass testing campaign"
The covid hystericist fantasy crumbles as it becomes ever clearer that the cost of covid hysteria is more than that of covid
Why Shanghai has abandoned its ‘relaxed’ approach to Covid - "Even when case numbers rose to nearly 1,800 in March 2021, Shanghai did not impose a full lockdown... Prof Martin Hibberd at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine thinks that Shanghai's previous approach was not suited to the Omicron variant, which is far more transmissible. "Localised lockdowns of complexes are unlikely to restrict social interactions sufficiently, with such a large amount of asymptomatic transmission"... Why was Shanghai's previous approach different to the rest of China? The main reason is its importance for the Chinese economy. Shanghai is responsible for more than 3% of China's GDP, and more than 10% of China's total trade since 2018. Airports in Shanghai have also been responsible for bringing in nearly half of the protective equipment and medicine that China needed in the early days of the pandemic... In 2020, cargo flights into Shanghai Pudong International Airport accounted for 3.4 million tonnes of goods - a million more than the airports in the cities of Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen combined. Studies from the Chinese University of Hong Kong show a two-week lockdown in megacities like Beijing or Shanghai could cost China 2% of its monthly GDP... Prof Hibberd suggests that these tough measures in Shanghai still may not be enough to tackle the Omicron outbreak... China has given more than 11 billion doses of Covid vaccines and vaccinated over 86% of its entire population. But vaccine rates among people over the age of 80 - who are among the most vulnerable - remain a lot lower than other age groups. The Chinese National Health Commission now says that vaccinating elderly people should be the priority task for local authorities. It has also approved clinical trials of two Covid-19 vaccines that use mRNA technology. Until now, the country has heavily relied on domestically-produced vaccines which have struggled against the latest variant. The Health Commission stated that "the current vaccines are still effective in tackling Omicron", but did not specify whether it was including Chinese vaccines."
Coronavirus: Shanghai backs away from easing lockdowns in ‘low-risk’ areas, even as Covid-19 cases end 10-day record streak - "A residential compound classified as a “precautionary zone” in the Xuhui district in Puxi, west of the Huangpu River, issues one ticket daily for each household, allowing only one person to venture out to the streets every day... No fatality had been recorded in Shanghai from Covid-19 since March... Shanghai’s citywide lockdown, officially starting on April 5, has disrupted vital supply chains and upended the lives of the city’s residents with limited access to medical and food supply. Tens of thousands of businesses from local stores to multinational companies have halted their production. Nio, a Shanghai-based assembler of electric cars, was the latest manufacturer to suspend its output. While its factory is in the eastern Anhui provincial capital of Hefei, lockdowns in Shanghai and bordering provinces of Jilin and Jiangsu had gummed up its supply chain and disabled the transport of vital components. Nowhere is the suspension more critical than in Pudong, the area east of the Huangpu River with 5.7 million residents and home to the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the treasury operations of almost every bank in China. It has been transformed from paddy fields into China’s financial and manufacturing heart in four decades of economic boom... the US Department of State ordered the departure of non-emergency employees and their family members from its consulate in Shanghai amid concerns about their safety and welfare. It came two days after the US “authorised” the employees at the consulate to leave voluntarily on Saturday. The department had last week warned Americans thinking of travelling to China that they may be subject to “arbitrary” local law enforcement and coronavirus-related restrictions. “The movement from ‘authorised” to ‘ordered’ departure means that we are now mandating that certain employees depart Shanghai rather than making this decision voluntary”"
Chinese Stockpile Food as Covid-19 Concerns Ripple Out From Shanghai - WSJ - "As Shanghai battles the country’s worst Covid-19 outbreak in two years, people across the rest of China are stockpiling necessities as they brace for the prospect of similar lockdowns."
Shanghai lockdown: residents in fear of false-positive Covid-19 tests after couple who tested negative hauled off to quarantine - "The couple’s latest nucleic acid test results on the government’s official platform were negative, however, they were forcibly taken to a temporary hospital after a police officer arrived at their door and declared they had tested positive without providing any proof, according to a 19-minute audio clip that’s been widely circulated online since Sunday. Their daughter also was told she had tested positive and taken away, which was later found to be a mistake by the testing organisation, according to the recording. The couple’s request to undergo another test to confirm the result of their tests was refused. “You are [positive] if I say so,” they were told by the police officer in the recording of the conversation that has shocked China after it emerged online... more people are questioning the accuracy of their test results after an increasing number of cases of inconsistency between the results they received on the official app and what disease control workers claimed. They’re also increasingly reluctant to go to fangcangs as videos about poor conditions and mismanagement have repeatedly circulated on social media despite China’s internet censors efforts to remove them."
Some in Shanghai leave home for first time in 2 weeks as COVID-19 curbs ease - "One Shanghai resident said she briefly left home for a scooter ride on Tuesday morning after receiving permission from her compound, but she was notified later in the day that she would no longer be allowed to do so. “You know how it all changes very fast … if you can go out you better do so quickly because you won’t know if it could change in the next hour"... Nomura estimates that as many as 45 cities in China are now implementing either full or partial lockdowns, making up 26.4 per cent of the country's population and 40.3 per cent of its GDP. The figure of 45 cities may even underestimate the full impact of China's current "zero COVID" policies, with mobility disrupted elsewhere too"
Shanghai lockdown: Whole communities relocated in anti-Covid drive - "An official notice from local Communist Party officials in an area in the north of the city details orders to transfer residents to quarantine facilities more than 100 miles (160km) away... It comes just days after authorities moved people out of their homes and evacuated much of the population in another area of Shanghai... The notice from the town's Epidemic Prevention Office also included this order: "You cannot bring your pets with you during this evacuation, but we will arrange for them to be taken care of."... This is not the first time that authorities in China have moved the entire population of a town to try to stop the virus spreading. Earlier this year around 9,000 residents of two compounds in nearby Hangzhou were moved out en masse to what was described as "centralised isolation sites" after an outbreak of the Omicron variant. In January last year around 20,000 people living in more than a dozen towns in Hebei - a province near Beijing - were transferred in an effort to contain the virus."
Shanghai Sees Number of Severe Covid Cases Triple in 24 Hours - "Nevertheless, China’s official number of Covid deaths per capita overall remains one of the lowest in the world, a topic that’s the subject of growing debate because it appears to best nations with higher vaccination rates like New Zealand and South Korea."
COVID: Low Shanghai death count spurs questions - "Lu Muying died on April 1 in a government quarantine facility in Shanghai, with her family on the phone as doctors tried to resuscitate her. She had tested positive for COVID-19 in late March and was moved there in line with government policy that all coronavirus cases be centrally isolated. But the 99-year-old, who was just two weeks shy of her 100th birthday, was not counted as a COVID-19 death in Shanghai's official tally. In fact, the city of more than 25 million has only reported 25 coronavirus deaths despite an outbreak that has spanned nearly two months and infected hundreds of thousands of people in the world's third-largest city. Lu's death underscores how the true extent of the virus toll in Shanghai has been obscured by Chinese authorities. Doctors told Lu's relatives she died because COVID-19 exacerbated her underlying heart disease and high blood pressure, yet she still was not counted. Interviews with family members of patients who have tested positive, a publicly released phone call with a government health official and an internet archive compiled by families of the dead all raise issues with how the city is counting its cases and deaths, almost certainly resulting in a marked undercount... An Associated Press examination of the death toll sheds light on how the numbers have been clouded by the way Chinese health authorities tally COVID-19 statistics, applying a much narrower, less transparent, and at times inconsistent standard than the rest of the world... "If the deaths could be ascribed to underlying disease, they will always report it as such and will not count it as a COVID-related death, that's their pattern for many years," said Jin Dong-yan, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong's medical school. That narrower criteria means China's COVID-19 death toll will always be significantly lower than those of many other nations. Both Jin and Zhang said this has been China's practice since the beginning of the pandemic and is not proof of a deliberate attempt to underreport the death count. However, Shanghai authorities have quietly changed other standards behind the scenes, in ways that have violated China's own regulations and muddied the virus' true toll. During this outbreak, Shanghai health authorities have only considered virus cases where lung scans show a patient with evidence of pneumonia as "symptomatic," three people, including a Chinese public health official, told the AP. All other patients are considered "asymptomatic" even if they test positive and have other typical COVID-19 symptoms like sneezing, coughing or headaches. This way of classifying asymptomatic cases conflicts with China's past national guidelines. It's also a sharp change from January, when Wu Fan, a member of Shanghai's epidemic prevention expert group, said that those with even the slightest symptoms, like fatigue or a sore throat, would be "strictly" classified as a symptomatic case... Chinese media reports on the unrecorded COVID-19 deaths have been swiftly censored, and many criticisms of Shanghai's stringent measures expunged online. Instead, state media has continued to uphold China's zero-COVID approach as proof of the success of its political system, especially as the world's official death toll climbs past 6.2 million... Others skeptical of the data include relatives of Zong Shan, an 86-year-old former Russian translator who died March 29. Despite testing positive and being moved to a government quarantine facility, online test results showed Zong supposedly was negative for COVID-19 on the day of her death... Jin, the Hong Kong virologist, noted the potential political benefits of Shanghai's low official COVID-19 death toll. "They might claim this is their achievement, and this is their victory""
Coronavirus: China’s top expert writes of eventual return to normal, but article deleted at home - "China’s top Covid-19 expert Zhong Nanshan has said the country cannot pursue “dynamic zero-Covid” in the long term and should reopen to bring social and economic development back to normal, and adapt to global reopening. The editorial titled “Strategies for reopening in the forthcoming Covid-19 era in China” was published in the English-language National Science Review journal on April 6. A Chinese translated copy of the article was published on mainland news sites on Monday but has since been deleted."
China Censors National Anthem Lyrics Used as Lockdown Protest - "China's national anthem, "March of the Volunteers," seemingly offered clear instructions to Shanghai residents frustrated with the government's oppressive COVID-containment lockdown: "Rise up, people who don't want to be slaves." But when the inhabitants of the Chinese Communist Party's birthplace began posting that stirring first line on Weibo, China's version of Twitter, censors blocked it, along with another commanding line: "Arise! Arise! Arise!"... Chinese authorities blocked the anthem's first line because it contained "radical current politics or ideology""
Beijing begins district lockdowns amid new COVID-19 outbreak
Beijing Closes Schools as It Tries to Contain an Outbreak - The New York Times - "Separately, Changchun and Jilin, two cities in the northeastern province of Jilin, began easing lockdown rules on Thursday. They had been under lockdown for nearly two months."
Beijing Escalates Restrictions After Covid Outbreak, but No Full Lockdown - The New York Times - "As the five-day May Day holiday began on Saturday, local officials announced a ban on dining in restaurants until Wednesday. They also said that as of Thursday, proof of a negative test within the last week would be required to enter public spaces, including public transportation. And they ordered the closure of Universal Beijing Resort, one of the city’s major tourist attractions. Those new restrictions followed three rounds of mandatory testing for nearly all of the city’s 22 million residents, and a decision on Thursday to close Beijing’s schools, without specifying when they would reopen... Beijing, as the seat of the government, has enormous symbolic importance, and for the past two years it has largely avoided major Covid flare-ups. But a full-scale lockdown would require enormous manpower and planning to execute smoothly. Otherwise, the authorities would risk stoking public discontent of the kind that has erupted in Shanghai over the past month, where a lockdown has led to food and medicine shortages. And like Shanghai, Beijing is home to many well-educated, affluent residents who would likely not hesitate to air their complaints. “They are facing a dilemma here,” Yanzhong Huang, director of the Center for Global Health Studies at Seton Hall University, said of Beijing officials. “Any decision you make has more profound political implications compared with other cities.”... The closure of the Universal theme park also pointed to how quickly policies were shifting. Just days earlier, the park had reassured customers that it would stay open throughout the holiday, though they would have to provide proof of a negative test taken within the past 24 hours. The park did not say when it would reopen."
Beijing, Shanghai Outbreaks Renew Debate Over China’s Covid-19 Strategy - WSJ - "With Beijing and Shanghai struggling to control Covid-19 outbreaks, China’s pandemic strategy faces a moment of truth. The highly infectious Omicron variant of the coronavirus has shut down Shanghai for more than a month. Its threat to do the same to the country’s capital is fueling debate over whether China needs to shift its zero-tolerance approach. Most of Shanghai’s 25 million residents remain confined to their homes, with little expectation of a quick return to normal life. Daily new infections have fallen in recent days, but public-health experts say any loosening of control measures could prompt a resurgence, overwhelming the healthcare system and exacting an unacceptably high toll on the elderly and unvaccinated... Public-health officials have been told to regard Shanghai’s struggles as a warning against looser controls and that the leadership, at least for now, plans to continue the current approach until at least the Communist Party Congress in the fall when Mr. Xi is expected to secure a third term as China’s leader, according to people working at China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention... The people working at China’s CDC said employees have been told by superiors to refrain from publicly criticizing or raising alternatives to China’s Covid-19 strategy to avoid undermining the morale of officials and ordinary Chinese in fighting Covid-19. Behind closed doors, however, some top-level public health experts in China have argued that the current zero-tolerance approach is unsustainable... China’s economy is already paying the price, and many economists are now skeptical the country will be able to achieve its 5.5% growth target this year if it sticks to its strict Covid-19 approach, even as Mr. Xi pushes for China to top the U.S. in gross domestic product growth this year."
Beijing teeters on edge of Covid lockdown | Financial Times - "On Sunday, a viral video that caused outrage on Chinese social media hinted at the chaos behind the scenes at the city’s hospitals. The clip shows a yellow body bag being wheeled to a black car before two staff members unzip the bag and roll it back into the Shanghai hospital. Local officials on Monday confirmed that someone had mistakenly been put in a body bag while still alive... Economists have warned that the economic shock from the latest lockdowns could be worse than the aftermath of the Wuhan outbreak two years ago. This is because many high-tech and automotive manufacturers are located near Shanghai, which has faced restrictions for several weeks during an ordinarily busy period for the country’s factories. Wang Zhe, a senior economist at Caixin Insight Group, also noted rising distress in China’s labour market and inflation, exacerbating problems for economic planners in Beijing. “Some companies indicated that demand was weak due to Covid outbreaks, and some said the main problem was the difficulty of getting workers back on the job,” Wang said. “Employment has declined in eight of the last nine months, including April.”"
Covid-19: The flaws in the 'Chinese model' - "The essential difference with Wuhan is that the virus is becoming less frightening than the way authorities are managing it. Faced with these criticisms, the party is deploying its usual panoply, modifying its most contested practices – a center for sick children and their parents has been opened – and seeking to silence dissenting voices. When residents complain a little too loudly from their balconies, the police go so far as to send drones to urge them to "control [their] souls' desire for freedom.” When the virus was very deadly and vaccines did not yet exist, the zero-covid policy, based on the "test, trace, isolate" motto, was justifiable. Today, though, the lockdowns in Shanghai and other Chinese cities, including Changchun in the Jilin province, reveal two deficiencies in China’s covid policy: the relative ineffectiveness of the vaccines on offer and a low vaccination rate. Less than 20% of Chinese citizens over the age of 80 are fully vaccinated. Chinese authorities can be blamed for having blocked more effective western mRNA vaccines for purely political reasons. As much as it might deny it, China is now paying the price for its nationalist public health policies."
Hong Kong faces hard questions over pain of pandemic restrictions - "For me, there is no better way to characterise the price we have paid than the phrase “stunted growth”. Our children’s education has been stunted between February 2020 and now by the stop-start nature of their in-person schooling. The most fortunate children have had the opportunity to partake in at most six months of face-to-face, full-day education on school premises. The least fortunate have not had a single day experiencing that format for some 24 months. Over the course of the pandemic, the consensus of educators and researchers makes clear that much has been lost. We have paid an incalculable cost that weighs on the development of students’ social skills, mental aptitude and resilience... With all these areas of stunted growth so visible in the daily lives of many, questions arise over costs and benefits. At what cost is Hong Kong doing what it is to fight Covid-19? What price has Hong Kong already paid and for what gain? How much higher a price is it willing to pay? When all is said and done, will it have been worth it?... When will we as a city – and, more broadly, as a country – understand what the end game will look like and where it will take us? How much more of this stunted growth can we be expected to endure before our collective economic, social and mental backs break?"
Why China’s ‘dynamic zero’ battle against Omicron will be a Pyrrhic victory for Shanghai - "It is astonishing for many to watch what is happening in Shanghai, a metropolis of 25 million, at a time when most countries in the world are trying to put Covid-19 behind them. It seems that Chinese authorities are determined to view Omicron as deadly as previous variants, even though the medical data – including China’s own official data – says otherwise... In one extreme case in the Nanhe district of Xingtai, an area with 3 million residents, local authorities imposed a lockdown as a “drill” when there were actually no infections... Economic losses from the lockdown of Shanghai, the commercial and financial capital of China, could be much greater than from the lockdowns of Wuhan or Xi’an. Even if Shanghai can resume normal economic and social life within a short period of time – let’s say before April 11 – the damage could be huge... Health costs from the Shanghai lockdown are set to grow, along with the extension of the lockdown itself. While the city has not reported any direct deaths from Omicron, there are several anecdotes of people who died due to lack of access to medical services amid the restrictions. As the lockdown extends and widens, the health cost will only increase. As such, any success in Shanghai will be a Pyrrhic victory."
