Tell me why the world is weird: Worried About Another Lockdown

Map showing the 4 "medium risk areas" in Shanghai associated with an "outbreak" (3 covid cases) at a hair salon on June 9. (Shanghai also has other "medium risk areas" besides these.) 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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Well I cannot believe I have to keep blogging about this, but, we are still not okay here in Shanghai.

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We can go out now

So, lockdown is over (Shanghai lockdown officially ended June 1). We are allowed to go out wherever. No restrictions about crossing the Huangpu River or crossing district lines. Malls are open again. The subways are all running. People are slowly transitioning to working at offices rather than working from home. People are very happy to be out in the world again.

But: No indoor dining yet. Middle school and high school students are back in school, but younger students will not be back to in-person classes at all this semester. And my son's daycare is still not open. Also, traveling from Shanghai to other Chinese cities requires jumping through hoops and maybe doing a 14-day quarantine on arrival.

When entering a public place, you're required to use your phone to scan the "location code", which will register your information so there's a record of who was there and when. And you're required to show you have a negative nucleic acid test result from within the past 72 hours. (Both the location code and the nucleic acid result are managed by the "health code" program in Alipay or WeChat.)

Actually, they've slightly changed the rules on this: If you don't have a negative nucleic acid test within the past 72 hours, it is also acceptable if you have a nucleic acid test from the past 24 hours which is still waiting for the result to come out. This change was announced on June 5.

I think it's a good change and makes sense, because sometimes it takes 12 hours or maybe even longer for the result to come out, and it's a bit ridiculous to have to build that into your plans about how often to go get tested. (Fortunately the testing is free- they said it's free until June 30.)

At the same time, it means that people might just go for weeks without going anywhere that has a security guard checking people's covid tests, and then just go get tested real quick right before they want to go somewhere, and the result hasn't even come out yet... I mean honestly I am not that concerned about that though. The test result will come, and then if it's positive you can just contact-trace. It's not really enough of a risk to justify inconveniencing everyone.

(And okay, yeah I know with covid everyone has a different opinion on where the line is for "it's not really enough of a risk to justify inconveniencing everyone." You are welcome to make fun of me for being fine with "you need to get tested every 72 hours or else you can't enter public places" while I also think "and if you got tested but the result is not out yet, that should put huge restrictions on where you're allowed to go" is taking it too far.)

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Scattered lockdowns

Since the citywide lockdown ended, Shanghai has been reporting somewhere around 0 to 5ish "community infections" each day. "Community infections" means people who were not in locked-down areas but tested positive. In other words, in places where there's been enough testing and lockdown already so that there really should be zero covid there, how many positive cases were found.

When a covid case is found, the pandemic control rules are more or less the same as they were before the lockdown: The covid-positive person is taken to quarantine, all their recent close contacts are taken to quarantine, their apartment complex is put into 14-day lockdown, and any places they visited recently are closed and disinfected, and other random people who were there are also required to get tested. And the places that are locked down or closed are classified as "medium risk" or "high risk" areas. (There might be a little bit of variation on this: I have heard of situations where the lockdown would be less than 14 days due to omicron having a shorter incubation period than the original, and also I have heard of situations where only 1 apartment building (where the covid-positive person lives) was put in lockdown, and the rest of the apartment complex is unaffected.)

So every day, there are a few apartment complexes, businesses, etc, which are locked down and designated as "medium risk." There's a list published somewhere of all the "medium risk" areas in Shanghai.

So, this is still happening every day, but it's only affecting a very small proportion of the residents of Shanghai. The vast majority of people here are allowed to go wherever. Also, since it's not the whole city shutting down like before, the people in the locked-down areas should still be able to get normal food deliveries. (I don't know this for sure though because it hasn't happened to me.) Even if you're in lockdown now, it's not like it was when the whole city was in lockdown.

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Rumors

But there have been rumors going around on WeChat, saying the whole city will be locked down again, or whole districts will be locked down, or every area will get locked down for a few days at some point- lots of rumors. The Shanghai government has said that there will definitely not be another citywide lockdown. (See this June 6 post from SHINE.) But, we were all here in March when the Shanghai government reassured us that there would definitely DEFINITELY not be a citywide lockdown, and look how that went.

We all remember that, and then we all lived through 2 months of citywide lockdown.

So umm, not that much trust in the government's reassurances about lockdowns right now.

Anyway, then Pudong New District (the area of Shanghai where I live) announced that on June 11, there will be mandatory nucleic acid testing for all residents. We also received a notice about it in our apartment group chat, which said the testing will be in the morning of June 11, and our apartment complex will be in lockdown for the 3 hours when the testing is taking place. And then after that we are free to go and not in lockdown.

Other districts in Shanghai are also doing mandatory testing now. I am not sure if it's all the districts, and not sure if they are all doing it on June 11, but basically this is the general situation in Shanghai.

So anyway, today (June 10) everyone went to the grocery stores and bought all the vegetables. We did not, because by the time we thought of it, we looked on one of the grocery apps and the vegetables we wanted were gone... Anyway, hopefully tomorrow the groceries are restocked and we won't have any problems getting food.

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Links

SHINE

Massive Shanghai screening after hair salon staff test positive (June 9)

Sixth Tone

A Shanghai District Declares Snap Lockdown for Mass COVID Testing (June 9)

In Locked Down Shanghai, a ‘Shadow Pandemic’ of Domestic Violence (June 9) [content note: descriptions of domestic violence]

What Does it Cost to Test China for COVID-19? (June 9)

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Next post: Trudging Along in Our Post-Lockdown Normal