Tell me why the world is weird: Trudging Along in Our Post-Lockdown Normal

Tuesday, June 21, 2022

Trudging Along in Our Post-Lockdown Normal

Nucleic acid testing booth. 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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Hi readers! Here's another update related to the covid situation in Shanghai. I am not sure if I should keep doing these updates or not, because nothing exciting is happening... We're "back to normal" in a lot of ways, but still there's the tediousness of having to get tested every 2 or 3 days.

My son's daycare still hasn't reopened (don't hold your breath for that) so I am still working from home so I can watch him.

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Mandatory testing every week

So last time I mentioned that we would have mandatory nucleic acid testing on June 11. Well, now the policy is mandatory testing every Saturday morning, at least until the end of July. (See article: Weekly PCR test mandatory for Shanghai citizens. The article says "weekly" but it doesn't say "every Saturday" so maybe it's not necessarily true for everyone in Shanghai that it has to be Saturday. But from what I've seen, it's on Saturdays.)

They're saying that if you don't get tested once a week, your health code will turn yellow. Now, honestly, I don't really see this as much of a threat. I've been getting tested every 2 or 3 days anyway (also taking my kid to get tested) because when you enter public places you have to show you have a negative nucleic acid test from within 72 hours. So... if your health code turns yellow, you're not allowed to enter public places- but if you don't have a negative result from the past 72 hours, you're ALREADY not allowed to enter public places. Like it doesn't seem like "okay it's MANDATORY now, otherwise your health code turns yellow" really makes much of a difference.

I guess it's a little bit more of a pain to change from yellow health code to green, compared to changing from "doesn't have a result from the past 72 hours" to "does", so, there's that? (Yellow to green, you have to get tested and then your code will turn green after 24 hours, I think. Whereas, if your code is green but you don't have a negative result from the past 72 hours, you can go get tested and then even though the result is not out yet, you are immediately allowed to enter public places.)

But anyway, we have to get tested every Saturday.

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Some Chinese words about covid

疫情 [yì qíng] So this is the sort of catch-all word that is used for the pandemic. If you look in the dictionary, maybe you'd find some different words- for example, "COVID19" is 新冠 [xīn guān] (literally "new crown"); you see 新冠 [xīn guān] in news articles for example. But when people are just talking about the pandemic or whatever, they use 疫情 [yì qíng].

It's interesting to me that 疫情 [yì qíng] means the whole pandemic which started in early 2020, but also people use it to mean Shanghai's lockdown specifically. Like people talk about "before 疫情 [yì qíng]" and what they actually means is before the lockdown (so, March 2022). It's probably not technically the right word to use, but people are using it.

I'd say this is because we'd kind of gotten used to the pandemic restrictions we had from February 2020 to March 2022. We had to wear masks everywhere, and traveling to different cities was a pain because of the requirements for testing and/or quarantine, but besides that, we were okay. It didn't really affect us beyond that. We didn't have, like... fear. I don't know anyone at all who actually had covid in China (that's still true, even after the whole Shanghai lockdown). We didn't worry about "oh we shouldn't go out because what if we get covid." We wore masks because we were supposed to, but the risk was basically zero. We lived life pretty much normal.

And then, March 2022 to May 2022, when Shanghai went into lockdown, that was a whole different thing. That was BAD. So I suppose people are calling the lockdown 疫情 [yì qíng] because it's much more, uh, pandemic-y than the way we were living before.

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Links

Sixth Tone

As COVID Lingers: Extract, Test, Seal. Repeat, Repeat, Repeat (June 18)

Henan Bank Depositors Hit With Red Health Codes (June 14)

SHINE

All right if you've been reading my lockdown posts, you know I don't like SHINE much. But anyway, here are some SHINE articles.

Suzhou eases quarantine rules for most travelers from Shanghai (June 19)

Undetected community infections the source of recent resurgence (June 18)

Get used to weekend PCR screening until July-end (June 15)

Disneytown, Disneyland Hotel to reopen on Thursday (June 14) But still no word on when the actual Disneyland park will reopen.

Super spreader mall ordered to close up shop (June 14)