Tell me why the world is weird: April 2022

Tuesday, April 26, 2022

Lockdown Diaries: This is a Human-Made Disaster

Posts about the covid outbreak in Shanghai, China:

Complete list is here: Index of Posts About the March 2022 Shanghai Covid Outbreak

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Perfect Number is still in lockdown!

Here's the updated timeline:

March 16-21: First lockdown. 6 days.

March 23-now: Second lockdown. 35 days and counting.

Nucleic acid tests (conducted by baymax, ie, the workers in white hazmat suits): 18 times (March 16, 17, 19, 20, 23, 26, 28, 30, April 4, 6, 9, 14, 17, 19, 20, 21, 24, 26)

Antigen self-tests: 13 times (April 2, 3, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13 [twice], 15, 16, 22, 23, 25)

(The above info is specific to our apartment complex. Other apartment complexes in Shanghai will have a similar situation but not exactly the same.)

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"Sounds of April" video with English subtitles

Last time I mentioned a video that went viral on WeChat (despite being censored over and over and over), called “四月之声” ["Sounds of April"]. Well, a reader sent me a link to the "Sounds of April" video on YouTube with English subtitles. This is great- I am glad it's been translated and people who don't speak Chinese can hear what's going on here.

(The translation is a bit rough, and there's a delay between the audio and the subtitles, but yeah, this is good.)

Here it is (you might have to turn on YouTube's subtitles, if they are not automatically on):

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Hard lockdown

Sometime around April 23, we started seeing a lot of posts on WeChat about a "hard lockdown"- which means actual physical barriers put up so people literally can't get out of their buildings. Seems like this is happening in some places in Xuhui and Pudong (districts in Shanghai).

It's surprising, and worrying, how many posts I saw on WeChat about this. How many photos and videos. I knew that this kind of thing had happened before, but it was more of an isolated incident- like one security guard who had a bad idea... But now, it's happening in so many places.

(Not in our apartment complex, fortunately. We're not allowed to leave, they've got the gates physically blocked, but there is always a security guard at the main gate who can open it when necessary. That's different from what I'm seeing in these "hard lockdown" photos- it's like they build a fence around the entrance to your building, and just leave you there.)

(And, like, to be clear, this "hard lockdown" is DEFINITELY NOT the case for the majority of Shanghai. Don't get the wrong idea, don't read this and think it means that "most people" are being physically locked in. It's not like that. But it's started to happen often enough that the number of photos on social media is alarming.)

So people are all like, what if there's a fire? What if there's an emergency and we need to get out?

I mean, this has got to be all kinds of illegal. Definitely violates fire safety rules.

And then, on the night of April 23, there was a video shared a lot on WeChat... An apartment building totally on fire, and you can hear people screaming. I have no idea what the actual situation was- it's social media, you don't really know ... can't really fact-check... It was terrifying, though, that video.

So... probably... there was a fire in a "hard lockdown" building, and people were trapped inside. I don't know, I haven't seen anything in the news about it to say what actually happened.

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Other cities in China are preparing for lockdown

Elsewhere in China, they are looking at what's happening here, and getting ready to face it themselves. I have heard about various cities doing mass-testing after discovering a few covid cases.

Beijing, in particular, is maybe possibly going to go into lockdown- in some of the big WeChat groups I'm in, there are people from Shanghai and people from Beijing, and the Shanghai people are giving the Beijing people advice about what to buy before a possible lockdown. (My advice is to buy chocolate and pasta and things like that, which Chinese people don't see as essential and therefore won't be available in the group buys.)

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And more bad news

I saw a WeChat post about a delivery driver who got into an accident, and it took a whole hour for an ambulance to come, and he died. I won't go into more details, I guess, because we don't know how reliable the information is... See, this is the problem, when the powers that be are censoring the news, the only way we can find out about these things is through social media posts which may or may not be embellished. (I believe it though.)

I have also been hearing anecdotes about suicides during lockdown.

Sixth Tone reports that a property manager who was constantly working to help residents during lockdown has died.

Also I have seen WeChat posts from people who work with pet rescue organizations or pet boarding companies- there have been situations where a pet owner tested positive and was taken to quarantine, and pets were left alone at home for weeks and starved to death. These pet rescue groups repost a lot of requests for help- a lot of "owner tested positive, dog is home alone, need to find someone living in the same complex who can go in and feed the dog."

And I have seen videos about elderly disabled people who were taken to the quarantine centers because they tested positive for covid. This is awful- these places are very much NOT set up for disabled people. In the photos I have seen, the toilets are "squat toilets" rather than "western toilets" (though this isn't necessarily the case for all the quarantine centers), ie, it's a toilet basin built into the floor, that you squat over, you don't sit on it- this just DOES NOT WORK for someone who uses a wheelchair. (Many many aspects of the quarantine centers are unworkable for disabled people.) It's terrible.

And all of this, it makes me so mad because it didn't have to be this way. These things should not have happened. This mismanagement and disregard for people's needs, it's just awful.

It didn't have to be this way. This lockdown is a human-made disaster.

(People are saying that probably when all this is done, some of Shanghai's government officials will lose their jobs.)

So people are saying that China needs to end zero-covid. To be honest, I'm not sold on that- omicron is still deadly. People act like omicron is no big deal, but that's just not true. But at least China needs to make it a priority to get elderly people vaccinated.

Anyway... that's what's going on here. I'm fine, I have enough food. But for a lot of people in Shanghai, things are not good.

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From Sixth Tone:

Meet the Grassroots Officials on the Front Lines of COVID Zero (April 24) (This article is about China overall, rather than specifically about Shanghai.)

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Next post: Lockdown Diaries: Exciting New Definition of "Society"

Monday, April 25, 2022

Blogaround

Yes, I am still in lockdown. I'll probably post another update about it tomorrow. Here is the latest link roundup:

1. Holy Saturday (posted April 16) "Seriously, just look around. Does it look like the meek are inheriting the earth? Does it look like those who hunger and thirst for justice are being filled? Does it look like the merciful are being shown mercy?"

2. I’m Asexual & Partners Always Think I’ll Change My Mind About Sex (posted March 28) "It’s always awkward to start a conversation on a dating app with, 'Hi, just as a heads up, I’m not interested in sex so if that’s a problem I don’t want to waste your time.' But that’s literally how I preface these conversations because it saves me the pain of having to break it to them later."

3. A Christian ‘health insurance’ ministry left families with millions in unpaid bills (posted April 20) "So everything is fine… until the moment you need them the most."

4. Hosea was no hero (posted 2021) "You can almost hear Hosea at parties introducing his wife, the harlot. 'AND WHY DID I MARRY SUCH A WHORE, YOU MIGHT ASK? I’M SO GLAD YOU BROUGHT THAT UP!'"

5. If Keeping Wrongly Convicted People In Prison Is Wrong, Ted Cruz And Josh Hawley Don't Want To Be Right! (posted February 17)

Friday, April 22, 2022

Lockdown Diaries: More of the Same

Posts about the covid outbreak in Shanghai, China:

Complete list is here: Index of Posts About the March 2022 Shanghai Covid Outbreak

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Here's the updated timeline:

March 16-21: First lockdown. 6 days.

March 23-now: Second lockdown. 31 days and counting.

Nucleic acid tests (conducted by baymax, ie, the workers in white hazmat suits): 16 times (March 16, 17, 19, 20, 23, 26, 28, 30, April 4, 6, 9, 14, 17, 19, 20, 21)

Antigen self-tests: 11 times (April 2, 3, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13 [twice], 15, 16, 22)

(The above info is specific to our apartment complex. Other apartment complexes in Shanghai will have a similar situation but not exactly the same.)

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Jinshan and Chongming achieve "zero covid"

So, on April 20 it was reported that Jinshan and Chongming (2 districts in Shanghai) have achieved "dynamic zero COVID", whatever that means. (Link is to a SHINE article, please roll your eyes while reading because SHINE is propaganda.) I guess it means that all the new cases are from people who have already been quarantined due to being close contacts of existing covid patients. As opposed to, finding new covid cases in random people in society. I *guess* that's what it means- the article doesn't define it though...

Okay, Jinshan and Chongming? Let's look at a map real quick:

Jinshan:

Map of Shanghai. Jinshan district is in red. Image source.

Chongming:

Map of Shanghai. Chongming Island is in red. Image source.

Jinshan, I have never been there. Probably takes 2 hours on the subway to get from downtown to Jinshan. And Chongming, that's literally an island. I have been there 1 time.

So... I see it as a bit ridiculous, how Jinshan and Chongming reaching "zero covid" is held up as a sign that Shanghai is totally on the right track. Yeah... yeah none of us in Shanghai are fooled.

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"Precautionary areas"

So on April 11, it was announced that all apartment complexes would be sorted into 3 categories, based on how recently there had been a covid case there. I talked about this in a previous post. The 3 categories are "lockdown", "managed and controlled", and "precautionary." And, they said, if you are in a "precautionary area", that means your lockdown is over! Yay!

Well, turns out it's not all it's cracked up to be. Some people are in complexes that are defined as "precautionary areas" (and everyone there has tested negative for covid for weeks), and yet, they haven't been let out of lockdown. And there isn't really an explanation about why.

I have seen people in the WeChat groups asking "so... so then what's the use of being a precautionary area, if we can't get out of lockdown? I guess it just means we don't have to get covid-tested every day, so... that's something."

Yes, apparently there are areas that are out of lockdown. But I guess I don't know anyone who lives there. Probably way out in Jinshan.

(Our complex is still very much in the "locked down" category due to recent covid cases.)

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More covid deaths reported in Shanghai

So the past few days there have been a few more covid deaths in Shanghai- I think the total now is around 36. I'm kind of skeptical the number is really that low, but I don't know, I don't know what to think about that. As I said last time, the government of Shanghai has lost my trust.

The majority of the people who have died in Shanghai are elderly and unvaccinated. One of the big problems right now is that in China, the vaccination rate for elderly people is too low (maybe 40 or 50%, somewhere around there).

The reason for this is that in general, China is very cautious about vaccines. Too cautious, in my opinion. During the initial vaccine rollout, they said only healthy people from ages 18 to 75 could be vaccinated. If you have any sort of health problem, it's often the case that doctors or nurses will advise you to not get any vaccines for now, just to be safe or whatever.

Also, they were initially saying that pregnant and breastfeeding people couldn't get the covid vaccine, but then changed the policy and said breastfeeding people could but pregnant people couldn't. Because there hadn't been studies done on pregnant people specifically. Extremely cautious.

I mean, this is completely backwards, in my opinion- it's the elderly and weak people who need the vaccines the most. (Also, I support conveniently "forgetting" to mention that you're pregnant, when you got to your vaccine appointment.) But anyway, I'm just telling you this so that you don't think "oh it's their own fault for not being vaccinated" because they were discouraged from getting vaccinated, all this time, and it didn't seem very necessary when we had 0 covid cases every single day.

Anyway, seriously, this is something that Shanghai (and China as a whole) needs to prioritize- getting elderly people vaccinated. But, weirdly, it's not really happening now. Like, if they're sending medical teams here every day to do covid tests on all of us, couldn't they also send people here to vaccinate those who need it? Whatever, I am not in charge.

(My blog posts from when I got vaccinated: Sinopharm vaccine, 1st dose and Sinopharm Booster.)

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Today's viral video

Today (April 22) there was a video I saw shared a lot on WeChat, called "四月之声" ["The Sounds of April"]. It contains audio from many different videos that were shared on WeChat during the Shanghai lockdown- audio of many different people in different desperate situations caused by the lockdown. People who need help but can't get through to the emergency hotlines. People yelling from their apartment windows, "发物资" ["Give us food"]. People begging for help because they have no food. Someone arguing with a security guard who won't let them back into their own home because of the lockdown. A community worker on the phone with an old man, telling the old man how helpless he feels because so many people are calling and asking for help, and he can't help. And so on.

It's just this audio [with Chinese subtitles, which is nice because some of the audio is in Shanghainese rather than Mandarin], along with drone footage of the city, and simple captions about where each audio sample came from and the number of covid cases reported on each date.

Yeah... wow. This is powerful.

Anyway, of course it got censored. But then I saw the same video posted again, from a different account. And throughout the whole day, more and more and more of the exact same video popping up from different WeChat accounts- as it gets censored, people just keep posting it again and again.

And then tonight I saw a lot of people sharing a QR code, with the caption "【转】四月之声删不了版" ("[Forward] The Sounds of April, version that can't be deleted"). The QR code will take you to this webpage (it won't open in WeChat, but if I scan the QR code with a different app on my phone, it totally goes to that webpage and plays the video). I see that it's hosted on QQ, which is a Chinese site and probably can also be censored by the powers that be, but hey, I guess it's harder to censor than an ordinary WeChat video channel.

Also I just found a version of "The Sounds of April" on youtube. It's all in Chinese, no English subtitles, so it won't mean anything to you if you don't understand Chinese. But there it is. This is what they don't want the world to hear.

It's amazing to me, to see this same video posted by so many WeChat accounts, and to see it shared by so many of my WeChat friends all through the day, and finally to see somebody came up with this QR code that will make it that much harder to censor.

It feels like, we are taking a stand, that what's happening here is wrong, and it is wrong for the government to censor it from social media.

UPDATE: Here's the link to the "Sounds of April" video on YouTube with English subtitles.

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Overall

Overall, it's just more of the same. We are plugging along, getting our groceries through the group buys with our neighbors, getting covid-tested basically every day. Every day on WeChat we see posts about people who can't get medical care because of the lockdown, or about old people who have run out of food because they aren't familiar with grocery apps, or about people who tested positive and got sent to some crappy quarantine place. Every day I click on things and find that I can't watch them because they've been censored.

It's just more of the same. And based on the numbers of covid cases reported every day, it seems like it's getting better... or rather, the lockdown is effectively bringing the number of cases down, even though there are many other aspects of life which are NOT "getting better." I should say, based on the numbers, we have hope that the lockdown will eventually end.

But... I don't know what the long-term effects will be, because we are definitely seeing a different side of our government. They're not treating us right.

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Links

A lot of good articles from Sixth Tone about what life is like here in Shanghai now:

Lockdown on Aisle 5: From Shanghai Supermarket to Crisis Depot (April 22)

How the Lockdown Is Remaking Shanghai Neighborhoods (April 20)

What it Takes to Organize a Group Buy in Locked Down Shanghai (April 19) This is what's going on here. Definitely worth reading.

The Tech Support Next Door (April 19) About young people reaching out to help their elderly neighbors who don't know how to order food on a phone.

In Locked-Down Shanghai, Neighbors Band Together to Ease Crisis (April 19)

The Out of Towners Helping to Test Shanghai (April 19)

How Much is a Cat’s Love Worth? 3 Oranges. (April 15) Adorable!

And also one from BBC:

Shanghai lockdown: Whole communities relocated in anti-Covid drive (April 21)

From CNN:

Hunger and anger in Shanghai's unending lockdown nightmare (April 19) Yes, this is what it's like here.

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Next post: Lockdown Diaries: This is a Human-Made Disaster

Monday, April 18, 2022

Lockdown Diaries: 3 Covid Deaths Reported in Shanghai

Posts about the covid outbreak in Shanghai, China:

Complete list is here: Index of Posts About the March 2022 Shanghai Covid Outbreak

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Here's the updated timeline:

March 16-21: First lockdown. 6 days.

March 23-now: Second lockdown. 27 days and counting.

Nucleic acid tests (conducted by baymax, ie, the workers in white hazmat suits): 13 times (March 16, 17, 19, 20, 23, 26, 28, 30, April 4, 6, 9, 14, 17)

Antigen self-tests: 10 times (April 2, 3, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13 [twice], 15, 16)

(The above info is specific to our apartment complex. Other apartment complexes in Shanghai will have a similar situation but not exactly the same.)

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British woman's blog about going to a quarantine center

The day I caught covid in China! I've posted a link to this blog before, but the writer has posted a lot of updates since then, so go read it. She is now out of the "covid camp" and back at her home in Shanghai, so that's good news.

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Free groceries

Well the past few days, we have received the following things for free from the government: yogurt, eggs, soy sauce, salt. I feel like whoever is in charge of giving us free stuff has really stepped up their game; I am happy with this free stuff.

People are always posting pictures of their free groceries on WeChat, to compare with friends. Because this is organized by the local governments in each little area of Shanghai, so there is a LOT of variation in what kind of stuff you get and how good it is.

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Covid cases in our complex

Yeah every few days we have a new covid case in our apartment complex, which resets our lockdown- another 14 days!

Good news is, some people who tested positive and were taken to the quarantine centers have now recovered and come back! Seems like typically people are there for 1-2 weeks and then they go back home.

It is illegal to discriminate against people who have had covid- for example, the apartment management can't say "you're not allowed to come back" after the person has already tested negative and gotten out of the quarantine center. But we have heard stories of this happening anyway. Hopefully the people who want to discriminate will stop when you threaten them with legal trouble.

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3 covid deaths reported in Shanghai

CNN article: Shanghai reports first official Covid deaths in weeks-long lockdown

On April 18, Shanghai reported that 3 people died of covid. (All were elderly and unvaccinated.)

Does that seem a bit low? Is the actual death toll higher? I don't know. At some point in the last week, the government lost my trust, so I don't feel like taking an "I believe China's numbers" stand right now. *shrug*

But more people have died from this lockdown than from covid itself. I have heard a lot of anecdotes on WeChat about people who couldn't get medical treatment, or who committed suicide in lockdown. It's social media, so you don't know what's true and what's not, but yeah it must be the true that more than 3 people have died from the lockdown itself.

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People are worried about getting infected from delivery drivers

There was a rumor going around on WeChat a few days ago- a policeman was going around covid-testing the delivery drivers, and within 1 hour he found 20 of them that tested positive. Now, I don't really believe that- it's social media, people can post anything they want- there was no evidence posted along with it. But people are saying it's possible to get infected from food deliveries. I don't know how much it happens in reality, but people are very worried about it.

There are rumors that a lot of delivery drivers have covid and are getting other people to go take the covid test for them, so they will have a negative result. Because delivery drivers are making tons of money right now, and obviously if they test positive, they won't be allowed to continue with their delivery job.

I really have no idea how true it is. Clearly delivery drivers are at greater risk than those of us who are just sitting at home. So sure, some of them are probably getting covid- but I don't know if there's tons of them going rogue and continuing to do their jobs even though they have covid.

Because of this, some apartment complexes are telling residents they are not allowed to receive any deliveries at all. Which is ridiculous. Fortunately our complex isn't like that. We have lots of food deliveries.

Anyway, the security guards at our complex spray all the packages with disinfectant. And I have also been wiping stuff off with alcohol wipes when we bring it into our home.

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Grocery store video on Chinese news

A few days ago, there was a video shared around a lot on WeChat- it showed a news broadcast from CCTV (the official news station in China) about how Shanghai is working hard to fight the pandemic and ensure that everyone is able to get food. The part that made people mad was it shows video footage of people shopping at a grocery store. Just like, very normal, pushing carts around, picking out vegetables (as well as employees in blue PPE stocking the vegetable areas). People were mad because, wtf, we are all in lockdown- we're not going to grocery stores! What is this video??? It's being shown like that's normal life in Shanghai right now.

Fortunately, propaganda machine SHINE published an article to explain to us that, don't worry, this video was not staged, it's real footage of people in an area of Shanghai (Jinshan) where the lockdown has been partly lifted.

Um, okay.

Yes, I believe it's a real video from an area of Shanghai where the lockdown has been partly lifted. But THE PROBLEM is it's portrayed in the news coverage as if that's representative of all of Shanghai. The reality is, no, we can't go to grocery stores. And many many people are having trouble getting food at all.

(This is kind of like how I feel when I read articles from western news sites about some bad thing that happened in China, and they make it sound like that's happening EVERYWHERE and that's just normal life in China.)

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Taking over schools and apartments

So last time I mentioned that people in our apartment complex were protesting because a nearby school is going to be used as a quarantine center for covid-positive people. Well, a few night ago, the whole night we could hear sounds from the school, like construction sounds/ moving equipment around sounds. It kind of scares me...

And the official statement is that after this covid outbreak is done, the government will totally disinfect everything and the school will be all nice again and the students will have a nice school, or whatever, but honestly I don't think they're going to do a good job. I think they're going to do the bare minimum. I think they're going to spray everything with disinfectant, leave a mess everywhere, and call it a day.

Because what we've seen at the quarantine centers is they're doing the bare minimum. They're not even meeting people's basic needs- we've heard that some of these places are dirty, cold, no privacy, the bathrooms are a horror show, in some cases they haven't even provided people with food, water, or medicine... So yeah I have 0 faith that they are going to care about things like "you messed up all our stuff that was at the school."

Also last time I mentioned that there was an apartment complex in Zhangjiang (an area of Shanghai) where people were forced to move out of their homes so they could be used to quarantine covid patients. Well, something similar happened in Beicai [北蔡] (in Shanghai, near the IKEA in Pudong). A few days ago, everyone in a certain apartment complex was told to pack up, don't bring your pets, and leave your doors unlocked so that their homes could all be disinfected, because that area had a lot of covid cases and something something environmental contamination. There were videos shared widely on WeChat that show people being taken away by a row of buses during the night.

This is, just, WTF. Also I would trust the pandemic workers 0% with pets. I hope they are not killing people's pets, but they probably are.

(UPDATE: Good news, they did not kill the pets. For more information about that, see my May 7 post.)

Anyway, a photo of the document that was given to residents to tell them about the procedure for leaving was shared on WeChat (we can't be sure it's genuine, because like I said this is social media so we don't really know- but I think it's real). It said their homes would be disinfected and then they will be allowed to move back in- they don't need to take all their stuff out, they're not moving out, they are just leaving temporarily. (So this is NOT a case of moving people out so they could use those buildings for quarantine sites.) That's what it said, but like I said I'm all out of trust- who knows, they might be lying and actually they're not going to let these people return to their homes.

Yeah so here's one of the photos that was circulating on WeChat:

(UPDATE: My May 1 post has an update about Beicai.)

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And people who are just fed up with it

So I have heard of a few situations where people refused to participate in the mass testing. Someone on WeChat said there were positive cases in their apartment building, and those people hadn't been taken to the quarantine centers yet, but everyone in the building was asked to come out together to get tested, and they all refused. Because they feel it's not safe to all stand in a group during the testing.

Also, I saw a video where a Chinese woman talks about what happened with her family: several of her family members tested positive, and were picked up to get taken to the quarantine centers, but after 5 hours they were brought back home. (I assume this is because there wasn't space available at the quarantine center.) They stayed at home for the next few days and recovered from covid on their own. Then they got a call that said now they are required to go to the quarantine center. (The video that was shared on WeChat includes the audio from this call.) The woman is saying to the person on the phone, [okay I am paraphrasing] "No, we are not going. You should have taken us there last week- now we are testing negative, and we are not going. This makes no sense- do you actually care about people's health, or do you just want us to go because it will look good? Shanghai should be ashamed of this. It makes no sense. No, we are not going."

And the person on the phone is telling her, "if you don't go, your health code will be red forever." (I've talked about the health code before- there's an app that can determine if you are low, medium, or high risk for having covid, and you're only allowed to enter public places if you are low risk, ie, green.) Honestly... I feel like this is an empty threat, and also, right now no one is allowed to go anywhere anyway, so who cares.

And a similar thing shared on WeChat today- it was an audio recording of a phone call between a German man and a translator who was tasked with telling him he would have to go to the quarantine center. The man says, [I am paraphrasing] "No, I am not going. I tested positive 2 weeks ago, and I was picked up to go to the quarantine center, I had to pay 6000 rmb [about 900 USD] to put my cat in a kennel, and then they made us wait outside in the cold for hours and brought us back home anyway. And now, now that I'm testing negative, 12 days later, now you are saying I have to go. No, I am not going. Tell your boss that this policy is f***ing stupid, and this is a disgrace for Shanghai, and for China. Send the CDC here to do a covid test. If they test me and I'm positive, then fine, no problem, I will go to the camp. But I won't be positive, because it has been 12 days. I am not going. If no one comes here to test me, well that is not my f***ing problem. I am not going."

The thing that really gets me, that makes me lose my trust, is all the situations where covid-positive people have been told something about what the procedure is, and it turns out not to be true. Like on the blog I linked to above, written by a British woman- she was told she would be picked up on March 30, so she threw away the extra food from her home, and then they didn't come to get her until March 31. She was told she would be going to a hotel, but it turned out to be some crappy place with no shower, that was freezing cold at night. They were all told that they would be allowed to leave after 2 negative tests, but she met people at the camp who had already had 2 negative tests (or even 3) and still had no idea when they would be taken home. And when she finally was let out and got on the bus to go home, the bus just sat there for 7 hours before finally leaving.

Similar thing with Leona Cheng's story (I posted this link last time): She was told to get ready because someone would come pick her up "immediately", but actually they came 1-2 days later.

And the Chinese family and the German man that I saw on WeChat refusing to go to quarantine because they were no longer covid-positive- in both cases, they had been picked up before to go to quarantine, but then brought back home. And I have heard other anecdotes on WeChat about that happening. That's so ridiculous- like, the very thing you don't want is covid-positive people going places unnecessarily.

It just shows that things are extremely disorganized, and that they don't care how much inconvenience or stress they are causing people. And because of that, I can't trust a lot of things the government says or does anymore.

And this policy of making people go to the quarantine centers even after they've recovered from covid, meanwhile there isn't even enough room in the quarantine centers and they're taking over schools and people are mad about that- this just makes no sense. Surely they will soon realize that this makes no sense, and they will change the policy so that if you've already recovered from covid, you don't have to go to the quarantine center at all. (Maybe I'm still too naive and optimistic.)

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All right that's today's update. I'll post again in a few days.

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Next post: Lockdown Diaries: More of the Same

Sunday, April 17, 2022

Blogaround

The tomb is empty. Image source.

Happy Easter! He is risen!

I didn't make Easter eggs this year because in lockdown there is NO WAY I'll be "wasting" perfectly good eggs on that. So that's kinda sad.

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1. Cracking The Cryptic: The Movie (posted 2020) Here's an hour-and-twenty-eight-minute video of Simon Anthony solving a sudoku puzzle, and WOWWWWW this is INCREDIBLE. This had got to be one of my favorites on that youtube channel. This sudoku is SO HARD it's astounding.

2. Gilbert Gottfried, iconic comedian, dies at 67 after long illness (posted April 13)

3. Concordance-ism means the Golden Rule is never sufficient (posted April 2) "'Preying on the poor is Bad' is not a shared moral premise and won’t be received as one."

(Do take a look at the "Anti-Gambling Sunday" document he links to- it is indeed not very good.)

4. The argument against God from sporadic miracles (posted March 28) "God cherry-picked this person, one disadvantaged person out of perhaps millions or billions, and sort of healed them." YES THIS. This is basically the reason I stopped praying for God to do things, years ago- it's just not right for God to help some people and not others. If it is true that "God answers prayer", that raises a lot of very awkward questions about why God answered this prayer and not that one, and why God allowed those bad things to happen in the first place.

I do believe in God (and uhhh feel a little awkward posting this link on Easter- I do believe in resurrection) but I don't believe that They actively intervene in the world. I don't believe "God answers prayer"... honestly, a God that would do that, that would decide who gets healed and who doesn't according to who followed the guidelines about how to pray correctly- that God is disgusting and not worthy of worship.

I believe God is with us (I believe in incarnation). They feel the same emotions we feel, and the same pain and suffering and trauma. They "rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn." If that sounds useless to you because it doesn't involve actually doing anything tangible, well, yeah, I get that, so you don't have to believe it if you don't want.

5. Were ‘Extinct’ Species Found Alive in ‘Lost City’ in Honduran Rainforest? (posted April 4) This is so cool!

6. Britney Spears announces she's pregnant (posted April 11) Congratulations :)

Friday, April 15, 2022

Lockdown Diaries: Dystopian Madness

Posts about the covid outbreak in Shanghai, China:

Complete list is here: Index of Posts About the March 2022 Shanghai Covid Outbreak

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Here's the updated timeline:

March 16-21: First lockdown. 6 days.

March 23-now: Second lockdown. 24 days and counting.

Nucleic acid tests (conducted by baymax, ie, the workers in white hazmat suits): 12 times (March 16, 17, 19, 20, 23, 26, 28, 30, April 4, 6, 9, 14)

Antigen self-tests: 9 times (April 2, 3, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13 [twice], 15)

(The above info is specific to our apartment complex. Other apartment complexes in Shanghai will have a similar situation but not exactly the same.)

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Read Leona Cheng's account of what it's like in the makeshift hospital

Here's a firsthand account of someone who tested positive for covid in Shanghai and was sent to one of the 方舱 (fāng cāng) which I guess we are translating as "makeshift hospitals" (or, I have been calling them "quarantine centers")- it means places that are not really hospitals but have been repurposed as places to quarantine covid-positive people.

Her facebook post (with a long description of everything that happened, definitely worth reading)

Her twitter post:

I wanna share my experience in temporary hospital for Covid-19 cases in Shanghai. I lived in there for 13 days in total. All of records and photos are true. Hope more people could know what’s happening there.https://t.co/G9F3M9eK7V pic.twitter.com/sZk9QMqRum
— Leona Cheng (@LeonaCheng1608) April 11, 2022

(She also posted it on WeChat, but it has been deleted.)

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[content note: this is hard stuff... our government is failing us]

So. I continue to be okay, in terms of having enough food, but I'm mad now. A lot of us are mad. I scroll through WeChat, and there are so many posts about how the system is failing, how people need help and there is no one to help them. How the government is taking more and more steps to control people's lives, and it's wrong.

Here are some of the things I've seen. It's social media, so you don't really know if they are true or not. For each individual anecdote, it might not be true, but the overall pattern shows that something is very wrong here.

Someone posted audio from a phone call between an old man and a community worker. It's now been removed from WeChat so I can't tell you exactly what it said, but basically it went like this: The old man says he is sick and needs to see a doctor. The worker on the phone first tells him to take some medicine, and other things that aren't really helpful, you kind of get the impression he doesn't really want to help, but then the worker on the phone starts talking about how overwhelmed he is, so many people are calling and asking for help, and he's doing everything he can, but it just feels so hopeless, feels like no one wants to help. He says, "I don't know how this happened, how Shanghai has become like this." I saw this shared a lot on WeChat- it shows how the system is breaking down, and we are not okay.

There was a video of a worker wearing the white (baymax) head-to-toe protective clothing, standing outside at night, yelling "You can't put a quarantine center here! This is illegal! 4000 people live here, how will you guarantee their safety?" (She seems to be yelling at a truck driver- it's not clear.) People who shared the video said she is doing the right thing. She knows what the policies are, and that what is happening now is against the policy.

On April 14, a post titled "上海人的忍耐已经到了极限" ("The people of Shanghai have run out of patience") went viral on WeChat. It's one story after another after another of things that have happened during this lockdown: A child that died because she needed medical treatment but wasn't allowed to enter the hospital until the result from her covid test came back. Rain leaking through the roof the Nanhui and Gaoqiao quarantine centers. A 14-day-old baby that was taken away from his/her parents because the parents tested positive. We've done what they told us- we stayed home, we lined up to get covid-tested day after day, but where is the help we are supposed to be getting from the government? (We need to help each other- now a website has been set up where people in Shanghai can make a post asking for help, and other people can reply and offer help. We help each other- the government isn't doing it.) We are still in lockdown- some have been in lockdown for over a month. Medical services not related to covid have been mostly stopped, and people's lives hang in the balance, while doctors and nurses are sent to care for mild or asymptomatic covid patients. And those of us who trusted the government when they said the lockdown would last 4 days, and only bought 4 days of groceries, are now dealing with the problem of getting food. We are told that we aren't allowed to order groceries because there's a risk of getting covid from deliveries. And on and on and on, the problems that people are having here, the failures of our government.

And another post on WeChat, which said the people of Shanghai have stepped up to help each other, and our government does not deserve us.

[They can censor WeChat, but remember everyone, screenshots are forever.]

I also saw videos that were apparently from the Nanhui quarantine center- it was raining and EVERYWHERE the ceiling was leaking. You see people's beds, and water just pouring in from the ceiling all around. The whole floor is wet.

There was a post about a woman who tested positive for covid and was taken to a quarantine center, but the quarantine center didn't have any space for her, so she was sent back home. But when she got there, her apartment management and neighbors refused to let her back in. There are photos of her sitting outside alone, with a fever, with no one to help.

In an apartment complex in Zhangjiang (in Shanghai), people were forced out of their homes so that their apartments could be used for quarantine centers. Apparently some buildings in the complex were partly empty, so the government wants to move all the residents into a few of the buildings and use the remaining ones for covid patients. Oh good, here's an article from SHINE explaining to us why this is apparently fine and everything is okay. I don't like SHINE; it's a propaganda machine.

Here's a joke I saw on WeChat: There was a big meeting to recognize the workers who fought the pandemic. There were doctors, nurses, grocery store employees, delivery drivers... And then at the far end, there was a group of people wearing sunglasses- who are they? Oh, they're the programmers who censor the internet.

(Honestly it's a bit ridiculous- you see articles or videos getting a lot of shares, and then they get censored, but then people will just post new articles and videos. Do you think you can really stop this? This is the literal reality that thousands of people are living in. This is impossible to censor. Personally, I feel the only way to not have people posting about, for example, how crappy your quarantine sites are, is to not send people to crappy quarantine sites.)

Another joke: "So, I calculated- there are 3000 people in our apartment complex. If we have 1 new covid case every week, we will be in lockdown for 57 years."

Okay this one is not from social media, this one I actually witnessed: A school near our apartment complex is going to be used as a quarantine center. Yes, a public school where, during non-lockdown times, kids go and have classes- this is not like an abandoned building or something, this is a functioning school. (A bunch of schools are being converted to quarantine centers now.) People in our complex and the neighboring ones are mad about it, because, first of all, some of them are students or teachers at the school, and also, there is concern that having a quarantine center so close to residential areas is not safe- the virus could spread to the neighboring apartments. (I am not sure how true that is, but people are worried about it...)

So a few days ago, in the evening, suddenly we heard A LOT of cars honking their horns. Continuously, honking and honking and honking. They are having a protest. Also, people are yelling from their windows, over and over: "拒绝阳性中转，守护家园健康！" ("Refuse the transfer of positive cases, protect our health!") This honking and yelling went on for a while, maybe 15-30 minutes? I don't think it can really change anything, but good to take a stand about it.

And this: "Qian Wenxiong, director of the Information Center of the Health and Health Commission of Shanghai’s Hongkou District, committed suicide in his office on April 12, suspected of being overworked during the new crown epidemic."

(Actually I have heard a lot of anecdotes of people committing suicide during lockdown.)

There's a feeling of "How could this happen in Shanghai?" And yeah, I feel that way too.

---

Some international people are saying "now the Chinese government is showing its true colors" and I don't know what to think about that. I feel like, as an American, before I came to China I always heard so many things about how the Chinese government is evil and you don't have rights or whatever, and I've lived in China for 8 years and it's not like that at all, but now suddenly it is.

I feel like, I want to support "zero covid"- for the past 2 years, I have been able to live a pretty normal life, free from fears about getting covid. It's still true that I don't know anyone personally in China who has had covid- though now that there's an outbreak in Shanghai, there are some people in the WeChat groups I'm in who have tested positive.

But what is all this? Now it's like, the government has decided we need to get back to zero covid as soon as possible, at all costs, and like that's the most important thing. This is so wrong. It doesn't have to be this way- surely we can do zero-covid without all these awful things happening. Right?

And the weird thing is... Okay, now it's reported that 9 covid patients in Shanghai are in serious condition [article from SHINE, please glare while you read it because SHINE is a propaganda machine]. That seems like... a small number? The government keeps insisting we have to stick to "zero covid" [also from SHINE, lotta propaganda in this article], or else tons of people will die. I'm so confused about this- is it true that only 9 people are in serious condition? Then, seems like maybe we can prioritize things like food a little higher than stopping anyone anywhere from getting omicron? Or are there actually way more people seriously ill or dying from covid, but they're covering it up (so far 0 deaths reported in this outbreak in Shanghai)? But then why wouldn't the government be talking about that as a way to support their "we need to stick to zero-covid" argument?

Some people are speculating that the Chinese government doesn't have a way to transition away from "zero covid" without losing face. This also confuses me- can't they do a "wow our vaccines work so well and our traditional Chinese medicine works so well, so now we don't have to be so serious about zero-covid, hooray for China"?

So... don't really know what's going to happen. Personally I am still fine; we have reliable grocery deliveries in our complex. But... Shanghai deserves better.

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Links:

How Canadians in Shanghai are coping with strict COVID-19 lockdown (April 15) This is a good video. My life right now is basically like what you see in the video.

With Food Delivery Paralyzed, ‘Microbusinesses’ Step up to the Plate (April 15)

Neighbors Accidentally Start "Free Supermarket" During Lockdown! (April 14 - WeChat link, so it might have trouble loading if you're not in China) This is a heartwarming story about neighbors helping each other. (But also, howwww have we gotten to this situation where we have to barter with each other to get basic groceries?)

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Next post: Lockdown Diaries: 3 Covid Deaths Reported in Shanghai

Tuesday, April 12, 2022

Lockdown Diaries: Part of Shanghai is Out of Lockdown

This page has a lot of good photos from the Shanghai lockdown. Caption for this one is "A view of empty streets during the second stage of a COVID-19 lockdown in the Yangpu district of Shanghai on April 1"

Posts about the covid outbreak in Shanghai, China:

Complete list is here: Index of Posts About the March 2022 Shanghai Covid Outbreak

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Perfect Number is still in lockdown lol

Here's the updated timeline:

March 16-21: First lockdown. 6 days.

March 23-now: Second lockdown. 21 days and counting.

Nucleic acid tests (conducted by baymax, ie, the workers in white hazmat suits): 11 times (March 16, 17, 19, 20, 23, 26, 28, 30, April 4, 6, 9)

Antigen self-tests: 6 times (April 2, 3, 8, 9, 11, 12)

(The above info is specific to our apartment complex. Other apartment complexes in Shanghai will have a similar situation but not exactly the same.)

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So I found a blog called Austrian China which has 2 recent posts about what's going on in Shanghai:

When the Commissar Came to Shanghai (April 9)

Shanghai Snippets – The Front Line Report on April 10th (April 10)

These are very much worth reading! The writers definitely live in Shanghai and know what's what. Very real, lots of details about what life is really like on the ground here.

The writers very clearly Have Some Opinions about the Chinese government, but I am fine with that kind of "bias" because you can tell it's based in a lot of experience with how things really work here. It's not the kind of one-dimensional "communism is bad" bias that I've complained about before, which I see all the time in western media articles about the pandemic.

The posts from Austrian China talk about the difference in governing styles between Shanghai and Beijing- how Beijing is more about strict centralized government control and Shanghai is more like letting the free market do whatever [okay that is my paraphrase]. I hadn't really thought of it that way before, but it makes sense to me. Shanghai is the financial center of China and because of that, is much more on the capitalism/ free market end of things. And the past 2 years, even when there were some covid cases in Shanghai occasionally, there were never any big lockdowns or mass testing because of it- Shanghai really made it a priority to not affect that many people, to let most of the city carry on with life like normal. (Again, I think this is because of economic reasons- Shanghai is so important to the economy of China, and so they didn't want to shut that down.)

And apparently, according to Austrian China, the national government (Beijing) stepped in (some time around March 27) and took over Shanghai's anti-pandemic efforts. I haven't heard this anywhere except on that blog, so I can't say it's definitely true, but it makes sense to me.

Anyway, people were sharing this blog on WeChat because it mentioned that on April 8, policies were updated to allow foreigners who test positive to stay at home instead of going to the quarantine centers. (Also it says households with children under 2, elderly people over 80, and people with "a special medical situation" would be allowed to stay home.) This blog is the only place I've heard that, so I don't know if it's the actual policy, but I have seen people talking about it in the international groups on WeChat (they also read that blog and are wondering if it's the real policy). People saying "we have foreign neighbors who tested positive and are staying at home, so hmm maybe that is the policy" and "we have elderly neighbors who tested positive and are staying at home."

Honestly, I can see why the government wouldn't want to make an official announcement about this policy (if indeed it is the real policy?). Because, don't you think most people who test positive would rather stay at home than go to a quarantine center with very questionable conditions? (I've seen the word 无人性 [inhumane] in WeChat posts describing the quarantine centers... I don't think all of them are that bad, some are probably okay, but do you really want to try your luck with that?) If Chinese people find out that international people don't have to go there, Chinese people would be MAD. Of course they would!

Also, I have heard about neighbors getting mad when someone tests positive and is allowed to stay at home. There is fear that the covid-positive person will infect their neighbors. If you have covid, your neighbors likely want you removed.

Anyway, I saw this Austrian China blog shared on WeChat, but note that it's hosted on Substack, which is not accessible in China without VPN. (Wordpress and Pillowfort blogs are accessible. Substack, Tumblr, and Blogspot are not. So yeah my blog is blocked in China. *shrug*) So only people with VPN can actually read it.

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Free pandemic supplies from the government

Yesterday every household in our complex received a free package containing masks, medicine to treat covid, and self-test kits. (The medicine is the same lianhua medicine I mentioned here.) So that's nice.

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Lockdown ends in some places

Yesterday (April 11), Shanghai announced that all of the apartment complexes in the city would be categorized thusly:

Locked down areas: These are places where there has been a positive covid case within the past 7 days. Must do another 7 days of lockdown + 7 days of health monitoring. (Though honestly, what counts as "lockdown" and what counts as "health monitoring" is really open to interpretation- in both of them, you can't leave your complex, but maybe your apartment management will put additional rules on you during the "lockdown" phase.) There are 7624 apartment complexes in this category.
Managed and controlled areas: These are places that have had no positive cases in the past 7 days (but did have positive cases in the past 14 days, I think? This is not stated clearly...). Must do 7 days of health monitoring (ie, can't leave the complex). There are 2460 apartment complexes in this category.
Precautionary areas: These are places that have had no positive cases in the past 14 days. They are free from lockdown! (But strongly encouraged not to really go out much anyway.) There are 7565 apartment complexes in this category.

(This is similar to the definitions they published on March 31, but not exactly the same!)

And they said that soon each district will publish their lists of all the complexes and which category they are in. (Though really you can figure it out yourself by just looking at the most recent date when a covid case was reported. I saw a link shared on WeChat where you can type in your address and it will look up the information on when you had covid cases there and make a prediction on when your lockdown would end. None of that is official though- really the lockdown only ends when the government notifies your apartment management that they are allowed to end it.)

Our complex is certainly in the "locked down" category (though Pudong hasn't published their list yet, so it's not official).

Anyway, yesterday (April 11), some places were released from lockdown. Hooray! I saw a few videos on WeChat- people were very happy, going out and standing in the middle of the empty streets... There's nowhere to go though, everything is closed and public transportation isn't running.

Hopefully, with some of the lockdowns ending, it will mean restaurants and grocery stores will be back to normal (for delivery at least, maybe not in-person dining) and then it will be easier for those of us in lockdown to get food delivered.

So what does it mean? It makes me feel like we've turned a corner, and things will get better from here, but I don't know. Then again, maybe not, because they are still setting up more and more quarantine sites... the past few days, there have been about 20,000 new cases reported every day. (And actually, there is a delay between when someone tests positive and when it's counted in the news articles... As far as we can tell, it is published in the news when the person actually arrives at the quarantine site, which could be several days after testing positive. So I feel like we can't get a sense for how the trend is going- is it kind of levelling off, or do they just not have capacity to bring more than 20,000 people to the quarantine sites per day?)

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Anyway, I guess I will reassure you again that I am fine, and my husband and son are fine- we have enough food. I will keep posting more updates as more things happen~

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And some links from Sixth Tone:

For the Takeout-Hungry, Shanghai’s Lockdown Is a Pressure Cooker (April 11)

‘Group-Buying’ Becomes a Lifeline for Hungry Shanghai Residents (April 10)

After Shanghai, Other Cities Brace for Potential Omicron Surge (April 11)

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Next post: Lockdown Diaries: Dystopian Madness

Saturday, April 9, 2022

Lockdown Diaries: I am Okay, Shanghai is Not

Posts about the covid outbreak in Shanghai, China:

Complete list is here: Index of Posts About the March 2022 Shanghai Covid Outbreak

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Lockdown...

Here's the updated timeline:

March 16-21: First lockdown. 6 days.

March 23-now: Second lockdown. 18 days and counting.

Nucleic acid tests (conducted by baymax, ie, the workers in white hazmat suits): 11 times (March 16, 17, 19, 20, 23, 26, 28, 30, April 4, 6, 9)

Antigen self-tests: 4 times (April 2, 3, 8, 9)

(Yes, today [April 9] they had us do the self-test in the morning and the nucleic acid test in the evening. It's a bit much.)

(The above info is specific to our apartment complex. Other apartment complexes in Shanghai will have a similar situation but not exactly the same.)

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Pet dog killed

[trigger warning]

This was all over WeChat this Wednesday (April 6). A pet corgi was beaten to death, after the owner tested positive and the owner was taken to a quarantine center.

(CNN article: A Covid worker beat a dog to death in Shanghai after its owner tested positive)

People here are outraged. This is terrible and there's just no excuse. It is NOT OKAY that the government hasn't issued a clear policy about what happens to pets when people test positive. We've seen similar news stories from other Chinese cities, where pets were killed. I was like "that wouldn't happen in Shanghai" but I was wrong.

I follow some pet boarding companies and vets on WeChat- they have posted A LOT about what you should do if you test positive. Basically the advice is you get a pet boarding company to send someone to come get your pets, and they will keep them while you're in quarantine (which could be up to 30 days maybe). But this is expensive, obviously, and also there could be problems, like if your apartment management is being unreasonable and they won't let you hand off your pets to someone outside the apartment complex.

Yeah, this is wrong.

We have recently seen news that Shenzhen, a city in southern China, is opening a pet care center for pets whose owners are in quarantine. People are saying that Shanghai should do the same... though honestly I have my doubts about the quality of care there for the pets, since it's, ah, how shall I put this, the quarantine centers for people in Shanghai have had problems, how much worse would it get when it's animals...

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Food

So, I continue to be fine. Like I said before, in our apartment complex, we can get plenty of vegetables, meat, and rice. There isn't much choice, you just get whatever random vegetables you get, but at least we aren't worried about not having a meal.

But I have heard from other people who said their apartment management is not allowing anything to be delivered. HOLY CRAP. Apparently, there is concern that you can get infected through receiving deliveries of food. Like, wtf? Even if that's true and there's a risk of getting covid, come on, you can't just not let people have food.

So it really depends where you are. In our apartment complex, our building leader posts in the group every day to say there's meat available to buy, or vegetables or whatever, and that's a reliable way to get food. But other places, where the apartment management people are unreasonable, it's a huge problem.

And yesterday (April 8), I saw a post shared on WeChat- I guess it went viral, because I saw the same post shared by lots of people- it was titled "求救！" which I will translate as "Help!" and it was written by someone in Shanghai who has barely been able to get any food delivered at all. It described the situation, how they know so many people who don't have enough food right now.

It said, maybe one might think we have no problem getting food in Shanghai, because we see pictures on social media of the free vegetables people received from the government. But, if even 1% of the people in Shanghai (population 25 million) are having problems getting food, that's 250,000 people- so even if you see the nice photos of vegetables that some people got, this is still a huge problem affecting a lot of people.

I guess this "250,000" statistic really affected me a lot, kind of made me realize that even though I am fine, things are really really bad here.

Anyway, this post mysteriously disappeared later.

But other posts have popped up with similar problems. People who can't get food. Old people who need to take medicine regularly, and can't get their medicine delivered. They pop up faster than they can be censored.

And other problems related to food: I heard that some deliveries that had meat in them were sitting outside for hours, and then the meat wasn't safe to eat. I saw some videos of trucks full of vegetables, sent from other provinces to help Shanghai, but the trucks were delayed and the vegetables rotted. I guess in any kind of big disaster-relief situation, things are changing too fast and the system breaks down at various points, and things are wasted like that... but how did this become a "big disaster-relief situation"? How did it get this bad?

I hope this food-delivery-situation is starting to turn around- there have been articles in the news (okay, official government news sources, so they spin it like everything is fine) about how the government is now permitting more warehouses to be open and to ship food to people, and how 2000 to 3000 new workers have been hired to deliver the food.

And actually, yesterday and today I received some things I ordered from Jingdong 1-2 weeks ago. Jingdong is an online shopping app, I guess like Amazon, and usually things will be delivered the same day or the next day, but for about 1-2 weeks they weren't delivering anything at all. I had like 10 orders I hadn't received. Well the past few days, I have received about 20% of the things I ordered 1-2 weeks ago, so that's... something? Kind of a good sign?

Still don't know how much help that will be to people whose apartment management doesn't want them to get any deliveries at all.

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Shanghai is doing a bad job of this

I hear A LOT of things on WeChat. Yeah, it's social media, you can't believe everything you read, but there's enough there that you can see the general patterns, how many systems are failing. Some examples of things I've heard or seen in the news or have experienced:

Someone said they know a family that tested positive for covid, and was taken away on a bus, and had to stay on the bus overnight because there wasn't room in the quarantine centers.

Some people have neighbors who tested positive a week ago, and have just stayed at home this whole time- nobody came to take the covid-positive people to the quarantine centers. And actually now they're testing negative. So... if they don't go to the quarantine centers at all, does that mean they won't be counted in the official statistics? (Because we have noticed that there is a delay in when the covid cases are reported in the news- it ends up being the date that the person was admitted to the quarantine centers, rather than the date they tested positive. We know this because in the news articles they also publish the addresses of the apartment complexes where the positive cases were. We knew there was a positive case, but didn't see our address listed in the news until several days later.)

And people have been talking about how unbelievable it is that in Shanghai- Shanghai!- people aren't able to get food. This is Shanghai! China's financial hub! One of the wealthiest cities in China! Sophisticated! World-class! Prosperous! Technologically-advanced! Metropolitan! How could this happen in Shanghai?

Oh also, today they rolled out a new system for registering for the nucleic-acid test, and guess what, it has a lot of problems! Apparently this afternoon the whole system crashed and people weren't able to get on it. (I had already registered and screenshotted my QR code, so that crash didn't affect me.) And it doesn't have an option to register a child who doesn't have a Chinese ID card. Anyway, tonight when we went to do our nucleic acid test, the apartment management was telling everyone to bring your ID cards just in case the new system doesn't work and they need to type in your information manually.

Also apparently the nucleic-acid test tonight was originally supposed to be tomorrow, but they changed it to today... That seems like... what they would do if they found way more positives than expected in the results from the self-tests this morning...

And now 3 Shanghai government officials have lost their jobs because they are doing such a bad job with this covid outbreak. (The linked article gives a good summary of the situation right now in Shanghai.)

Remember a few months ago, when Xi'an had a covid outbreak, and they did a really bad job handling it, and we all judged them? Well now Shanghai is doing that bad too. I really didn't think this would happen- I thought, Shanghai does a good job with logistical things and hasn't had any noteworthy covid outbreaks in the past 2 years, just a case here or there which is contact-traced and 2 weeks later nothing comes of it. Well, turns out I was wrong.

Arrgggh. I mean, I'm fine, but like the viral post said, even if it's only 1% of the population having these problems, that's 250,000 people.

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A few links:

Shanghai Avoided Covid Disaster for Two Years. Now We’re Locked Down. (April 5, New York Times) I like this because I can tell the writer actually lives in Shanghai and knows what's what. Not like the way I see it talked about in most western news sources.

The day I caught covid in China! Wow... This is a blog written by someone who is in one of the quarantine centers, and it's really bad there. The conditions there are awful.

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Next post: Lockdown Diaries: Part of Shanghai is Out of Lockdown

Wednesday, April 6, 2022

Lockdown Diaries: Dressing Up, Free Medicine, Free Rice

A woman dressed up in a qipao (Chinese dress) waits to get covid-tested. Image source.

Posts about the covid outbreak in Shanghai, China:

Complete list is here: Index of Posts About the March 2022 Shanghai Covid Outbreak

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We continue to be in lockdown!

Here's the updated timeline:

March 16-21: First lockdown. 6 days.

March 23-now: Second lockdown. 15 days and counting.

Nucleic acid tests (conducted by baymax, ie, the workers in white hazmat suits): 10 times (March 16, 17, 19, 20, 23, 26, 28, 30, April 4, 6)

Antigen self-tests: 2 times (April 2 and 3)

(The above info is specific to our apartment complex. Other apartment complexes in Shanghai will have a similar situation but not exactly the same.)

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City-wide covid test on April 4

April 4 was the big day, where all 25 million residents of Shanghai were covid-tested.

20,000 medical staff came to Shanghai from other Chinese cities to help us. (I don't think they all arrived on the same day, I think some probably had already come earlier during this outbreak.) There were a lot of posts on WeChat about it, the general feeling is like "It's great that the other cities are coming to help us, just like Shanghai sent doctors to help Wuhan in 2020. We all help each other. Let's show them our Shanghai hospitality."

Also, on April 4, there was a trend where a lot of people dressed up or wore costumes for the covid test. A lot of really fun pictures on WeChat of people dressed all fancy, waiting in line to be tested.

[sources for the following images are here, here, and here]

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Free medicine

Today everyone in our apartment complex received some medicine for free: 连花清瘟胶囊 (lián huā qīng wēn jiāo náng). This is a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) to treat colds and viruses, that sort of thing. In China they use it to treat covid, and they say it works well, though I'm not really sure, because I've googled and I've found some sites saying "yes there are studies that prove this is effective" and some that are just incredibly suspicious of TCM as a concept, implying that it's useless and has no scientific support and there are side-effects you need to watch out for.

I don't really have the time or energy to keep googling and trying to figure out what the actual facts are on this medicine. My feeling for now is "yeah sure I would take it if I had covid."

Anyway, I am just totally baffled on why they are giving this out for free. Our building leader didn't really give any details about it- like are we supposed to take it now as a preventative thing, or only if we are sick, or what? (Seems like the correct answer is only if you're sick- it's not a preventative thing. Based on my googling.) They gave us 2 boxes of medicine per person- including little Square Root, who is a toddler, and I am SURE that this medicine is not approved for children.

Like, what is going on? I am just so confused about this. The past few days, they have been giving this out to people all over Shanghai for free. WHYYYYY

Is it like, in case you test positive, you have medicine you can take right away? But they why couldn't the apartment management just have a stash of it and then only give it out to people who test positive?

It really looks like the sort of thing that a government would do if they are preparing to move away from a "zero covid" strategy, to an "if you have covid, deal with it yourself at home" strategy.

I am just so boggled by this, because the powers-that-be keep saying "yes we are still doing zero-covid." But at the same time, there is talk on the internet/ social media about "it's time to stop doing zero-covid." (I saw somebody on WeChat point out today, it's interesting that those articles remain accessible on the internet and haven't been censored.)

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Update on the policy for children with covid

Last time, I talked about the policy that children who test positive for covid are taken away from their parents to be treated. Well, the past few days, a lot of parents on WeChat have been unhappy about this policy.

Then a new policy was published: If the child and parent both test positive, then the parent can accompany the child to the quarantine center. But if the child tests positive and the parent tests negative, then they will be separated.

So people on WeChat were like, okay, this is a little bit better, but still not good enough. (And posted things like "if my son tests positive, I will lick his face" like any good parent would.) Also, I heard that the French consulate had a talk with the Shanghai government about it.

Anyway, then yesterday, a new policy was announced: A parent can accompany the child, regardless of whether the parent is positive or negative. Hooray! There was a news article about the new "parents with children" area of the quarantine center at the World Expo building. It said so far, it has received 89 children along with their parents. 80% of the parents also tested positive, and the others "were made aware of the risks and still agreed to come" even though they were negative. (Feels kind of ridiculous to me, reading the "made aware of the risks" thing, because if it's your kid, of course you wouldn't want them to be alone- even if you risk getting covid.)

So this is good news. :) I wonder if it changed because people were mad about it on the internet, or because the French consulate advocated for us.

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Food

Our food situation is still pretty much the same as last time. The normal grocery apps are not working (with the exception of "if you place your order within a 2-minute window that only occurs once a day, when everyone else is also trying to place their orders, there's a chance yours might get through, outside of that 2-minute window there's no chance" umm okay). The only way we can get food is through group buying with our neighbors, which at least will be delivered reliably, but the problem is there aren't really enough options. It's just the foods that Chinese people see as essential.

And, funny story, our building leader said there was meat available to buy, but didn't say what kind, so we ordered it and then when it was delivered, it turned out to be pig's feet. Which I don't want to eat, and Hendrix doesn't like them or know how to cook them either. So, okay. (Fortunately, the other group-buys we ordered meat from turned out to be more "normal" meat that we like. So we have plenty of non-pig-feet meat.)

In the international WeChat groups, I have seen several conversations like "my friend who lives in [wherever] has no food, can anyone help?" and then people reply to say "they have to talk to their neighbors and get in on the group buying." But the problem is the person in question doesn't speak Chinese, or maybe they did get food from the group buys but half of it they didn't know how to cook, so it goes to waste. I feel like this is a big problem for international people who can't cook Chinese food, and who don't live near enough other international people to do a group buy of, say, pasta.

I'm lucky that my husband is Chinese and good at cooking Chinese food.

Also, another update about food: We got more free food from the government. So far, we've gotten free veggies from the government twice, also Spam and noodles, and today we got a big bag of rice for free. So I'm happy about that- actually now we have way too many vegetables.

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Quarantine conditions

On WeChat, I've seen some photos and videos shared of the quarantine places that covid-positive people are sent to. Some of them seem okay, like the World Expo center- there are no showers, and they keep the lights on all the time, so that's not great, but at least it looks clean and organized (or rather, this is the impression I get from the government-approved news sources, so take it with a grain of salt).

But also I saw a video from a guy who was told he had to sleep outside because they didn't have anywhere for him to go. And I saw a post about people who were sent to a quarantine place, and for a whole night they weren't even given any water or food or anything. You have to be careful with social media- can't just believe everything you read- but those ones I believe because they had photos and videos. And so I'm mad about that- how could they send people to a quarantine center that didn't even have resources like water for them to drink?

They should let covid-positive people just stay at home if there's no room in the quarantine center for them. That's what's happening anyway- after you test positive, typically you have to wait 1-2 days for the ambulance to come pick you up and take you to the quarantine center. Why not just let those people wait even longer at home, until you can confirm you really do have a place that can accept them?

So yeah, be mad about that, demand better.

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Some overall opinions

At this point, people are saying Shanghai's outbreak is bigger than Wuhan's was. (Wuhan's was about 50,000 cases.) I can't find a statistic that really shows this directly, because Shanghai doesn't include the "asymptomatic" cases in the official count, and something like 90% of the cases in Shanghai have been "asymptomatic". (Though I have recently learned that when Shanghai says "asymptomatic" they mean "doesn't have pneumonia symptoms, but could still have other symptoms" which is apparently different from how other Chinese cities have defined it, also feels very dishonest/misleading... so what's the deal with that?)

Anyway, it makes me worried, what if they really can't turn this around and get us back to zero cases? Can they really find every single person who has covid, in the entire city of Shanghai? But if it doesn't go to zero, the only other option is it spreads out of control, and I would be scared to live in a society like that. I am not worried about me personally getting very sick from covid, but about living in a society where the medical system is overwhelmed, or where I have to worry about if I can send my son to daycare or not, or having to work from home for months and months and months.

There is talk about China maybe transitioning away from zero-covid, but in my opinion, we are not ready.

Personally, I am fine staying in lockdown for a while. I can manage. But I'm worried about the treatment of covid-positive people, and I'm worried about how hard all the medical workers and delivery drivers and neighborhood volunteers have to work. I'm fine, but the people on the front lines of this are having a much worse time than me.

That's all ~ 上海加油！

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Next post: Lockdown Diaries: I am Okay, Shanghai is Not

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Tuesday, April 26, 2022

Lockdown Diaries: This is a Human-Made Disaster

Monday, April 25, 2022

Blogaround

Friday, April 22, 2022

Lockdown Diaries: More of the Same

Monday, April 18, 2022

Lockdown Diaries: 3 Covid Deaths Reported in Shanghai

Sunday, April 17, 2022

Blogaround

Friday, April 15, 2022

Lockdown Diaries: Dystopian Madness

Tuesday, April 12, 2022

Lockdown Diaries: Part of Shanghai is Out of Lockdown

Saturday, April 9, 2022

Lockdown Diaries: I am Okay, Shanghai is Not

Wednesday, April 6, 2022

Lockdown Diaries: Dressing Up, Free Medicine, Free Rice

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