 |
| Medical workers wear head-to-toe PPE at a nucleic acid testing station. There are giant blocks of ice on the ground around them. Image source. |
Complete list is here: Index of Posts About the March 2022 Shanghai Covid Outbreak
---
Heyyy everyone, here's another update about covid in Shanghai. Basically, I feel like things are pretty much the same as what I said last week. We're hearing about a few dozen covid cases found each day, we see people posting on WeChat about getting locked down, we're doing mandatory testing every 2 days, all of that.
---
Working from home
As I said last week, the office building where I work got locked down. We still don't know the exact reason- but at least we know that there wasn't a covid-positive person in our company's office. Must have been elsewhere in the building. So our office was not sterilized, which is good, because we don't want chemicals sprayed all over our stuff.
So I've been working from home all week. But Monday we are allowed to go back to the office, so I will.
---
Mandatory testing
So, to recap, here is how the policies on mandatory testing have changed:
(I might not have the dates exactly right, btw)
During lockdown (ended June 1): We were required to do nucleic acid testing every 2 days, and rapid antigen self-tests on the other days.
Policy that was announced when lockdown ended: If you're entering a public place, then you need to have a negative nucleic acid test from within the past 72 hours. (If you're not entering a public place, then no requirements for testing.)
June 11: Pudong New District (where I live) had mandatory nucleic acid testing. (ie, testers came to our apartment complex to test us.) It was announced that everyone is required to get tested at least once every 7 days, otherwise your health code will turn yellow. In practical terms, this means our apartment complex will conduct mandatory testing every Saturday morning. (Other districts in Shanghai are doing similar things, though not exactly the same.)
July 6 to now: Our apartment complex is doing mandatory nucleic acid testing every 2 days.
So it's "mandatory" but really, how mandatory is it? This isn't like lockdown, when everyone was at home with presumably nothing to do except come outside and get tested on command. Now you have all sorts of valid reasons that one might not show up to the mandatory testing: Maybe they got tested already at a different location that day. Maybe they're not even in Shanghai now. Maybe they're staying overnight somewhere other than their apartment. And I don't see our apartment management actually keeping track of everyone closely enough to make sure everyone is getting tested every 2 days like we're supposed to. During lockdown, they had somebody sitting there checking off names on a list as people passed through the line, but I haven't seen anyone doing that recently either.
They're been doing the testing from 5:30 to 7:30 in the evening. So if you're at work and you're not even home before 7:30, you're supposed to find a different location to get tested at some point during the day. (There is a 24-hour location a few blocks from where we live.) But what if you don't? Is anybody going to come find you and make you do it? Seems not.
Maybe it's more of a way to remind people that they *should* be getting tested every 2 days, rather than a way to actually *make* them get tested every 2 days. Because hey, we're all busy, it's easy to forget about getting tested and then realize, crap, it's been more than 72 hours since my previous test. (Especially if you're working from home and aren't going anywhere that is asking to see your negative result.) Maybe it helps to see the apartment building volunteers posting about it in the group chat every 2 days.
---
Lockdowns here and there
Everyone knows someone whose apartment complex or building is locked down now.
Every time there is a positive covid case, the pandemic control workers identify close contacts and secondary close contacts, and impose lockdowns on buildings or complexes where the positive person, close contacts, and secondary close contacts live. The lockdowns vary- for example, if you live in the same building as a positive covid person, you will have a longer lockdown than if you lived in the same building as a close contact. I don't know the exact details though (and the guidelines often change anyway).
---
The text message
A lot of people have been getting a text message from the pandemic control system that says "you might have come in contact with a covid-positive person or a close contact, so you must notify your apartment management and your workplace that you got this text message, you have to get tested twice in the next 3 days, and if you have a fever then when you go to the hospital you have to tell them that you're doing health observation due to the risk of having gotten covid" [my paraphrase].
My husband also got this text message.
But... wow, SO MANY people have gotten this text, does it even matter? It doesn't really say anything you have to do differently than all the mandatory testing we're already doing. Just that you need to notify your apartment management and your job. My husband has no idea where he might have gone which prompted the powers-that-be to send him this text. It didn't mention anything specific. (I guess that's good, it means they're not freely spreading around everyone's personal information. Like, yes, they were very closely tracking everyone, but they don't share that information unless necessary... uh, hopefully?)
So anyway, he told our apartment management, and then later someone called him from the apartment management office and asked where he had been in the past few days. He said the person on the phone also doesn't know what specific circumstance prompted them to send this text message.
So, uh, okay...? I'm not sure how this system is supposed to work. I think if you actually have covid, they question you a little more closely.
---
Rumors about a big lockdown
Official account debunks massive Shanghai lockdown rumors (July 11)
So there were rumors that after the gaokao (college entrance exam) and zhongkao (high school entrance exam) were finished (July 12, I think), there would be huge lockdowns. I didn't believe it, because it's not China's style to set a date for a lockdown in advance- they're more the spring-it-on-you-with-zero-notice type.
But anyway, as you see in the SHINE article linked above, the Shanghai government-approved media has assured us that this rumor is not true. To which everyone replied, yeah we remember when you said that in March, and look what happened.
Yeah, not too much trust in the government right now...
Personally... ugh I can't even bring myself to think about the possibility of another city-wide lockdown. Some people are like "we bought a second fridge" which is a good idea if you're preparing for a lockdown, but I can't even make myself think about that. It's like I'm blocking it out. I don't want to give serious consideration to the question, "What should we do to prepare, in case we get locked down again?" Because, ahh geez, it was bad. I can't imagine having to go through that again. Which is maybe not a practical perspective on my part- just because I "can't imagine" it doesn't mean it's not going to happen.
Or rather, let me clarify: If it was just our complex being locked down, for a fixed period of time like 7 days, with food deliveries from all the normal restaurants and grocery stores still available (but with the small inconvenience of having to walk to the main gate to pick them up), I could handle that. But if it's the entire city in lockdown... and you can't get food... and you need to become a social media wizard just to get basic necessities... and if you need help, there's no one to help you because the outside world is also in lockdown... and you have no idea when it's going to end, because they keep making up new rules... That was awful, and I never want to go through that trauma again.
Sometimes I think about our vegetable peeler... a few months ago, we couldn't find our vegetable peeler, and I looked all around the kitchen for it, couldn't find it, and decided not to waste time looking for it because maybe someone accidentally threw it away, and so I ordered a new one online, and we received it the next day. And then, about 2-3 weeks later, the lockdown started. And I just keep thinking about... what if I had clung to this hope of "surely our potato peeler is around here somewhere, let's keep looking, I don't want to spend money on a new one"...
Man, can you imagine, being in lockdown, with our only access to vegetables being these big mystery bags of extremely raw veggies, with dirt still on them and everything- can you imagine having to deal with that, if you didn't even have a vegetable peeler?
And that happened to some people. There are a lot of people in Shanghai who are living the young, single, spend-all-my-time-at-the-office life, and therefore they just don't have basic cooking equipment at home. I read stories during lockdown of people who couldn't cook anything, so they ate instant noodles, for weeks. I read about someone who didn't even have a pot, and then several weeks into it, their neighbors found out and gave them an old one. In our building, about a month and a half into the lockdown, someone posted in the group chat that they needed a big bowl for washing vegetables.
During lockdown, there was no way to buy things like that. All you could do was ask neighbors if they had an extra.
And I think about, wow, we dodged a bullet there, when I ordered a new vegetable peeler 1 day after realizing ours was missing. That's kind of out-of-character for me; usually I'm like "oh but I don't want to spend money" but for some reason, this time, I said "well if I can't find it in any of the obvious places, the most likely explanation is that someone threw it away accidentally, so I won't waste any more time on this, I'll just buy a new one."
Turns out it was the right decision.
I am so not ready to have to live through that again.
---
It's HOT here
It's been in the 90's every single day. (But China uses Celsius, so everyone is walking around saying "it's 40 degrees" and I don't really have a sense of how hot that is, WOW HOLY CRAP I just googled it, and 40 C is 104 F. Wow no wonder I always feel unbearably hot outside.)
It's hot, it's humid, and people don't want to wear masks, obviously. For people who have to be outside the entire day, rushing from one place to another, like delivery drivers, a lot of them don't wear masks (or they have it pulled down so it's under their chin). The rules are that they're required to wear masks, but ... yeah I get it. It's hot, and they're just carrying deliveries alone, not in crowded places.
I think most people are still wearing masks, even outside. If I'm outside and there are very few people around, I usually pull my mask down under my chin.
But here's a question: What about the medical teams who come to our complex to do the mass testing every 2 days? The testers have to wear that big white PPE outfit (people who wear it are called 大白 as a slang term in Chinese, and I have been calling them baymax). And to wear it *correctly*, they need to put the whole outfit on at their base, then get in a car and travel to the location where they are testing people, and then throughout that whole time, they are not allowed to take it off, not allowed to eat or drink or use the bathroom. And this covers their whole entire body. No skin is exposed at all.
(That's if they wear it *correctly*. During lockdown, a lot more people than usual had access to the white PPE outfit, and I saw LOTS who were not wearing it correctly.)
During lockdown I occasionally heard about someone in the baymax outfit passing out from dehydration. And wow, now that it's so incredibly hot, and they have to wear that, and can't drink water, wow that is not good. The human body should not be subjected to that.
At the mass testing in our apartment complex, they now have giant blocks of ice, sitting in open coolers under the tables where the testers sit. They also have big fans pointing at the testers, with a tube of water built into the fan so it's constantly spraying a mist of water at them.
Also, a few days ago, when I was in line to get tested, I saw someone putting on the baymax outfit. I guess they changed the rules, so now the testers are allowed to put it on when they get to the testing site, instead of having to put it on beforehand. Also I saw her drink some water, right before she put on her mask. And I saw a volunteer from our complex handing out water bottles to all the testers- maybe the rules have changed, and they're allowed to drink water. (Or maybe the testers at our complex are breaking the rules.)
Obviously, though, those rules are there because if you take off your mask to drink water, you're unprotected for a moment and there's a risk of getting infected with covid. But realistically, it's just unbearably hot here. Have to change some rules.
---
Links:
Sixth Tone:
China’s Lockdowns Are Fueling Record Growth — in Inequality (July 13)
How China’s COVID Quarantine Rules Have Evolved (July 11)
SHINE:
Shanghai cracking down on entertainment venues flouting COVID-19 rules (July 14)
Shanghai vows no discrimination against recovered COVID-19 job candidates (July 11)
First Omicron BA.5 community case detected in Shanghai (July 10) Well that's worrisome.
No comments:
Post a Comment