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| People take photographs of the flag-raising ceremony in Tiananmen Square during National Day in Beijing, Oct. 1, 2022. Bloomberg/VCG Image and caption source. |
Complete list is here: Index of Posts About the March 2022 Shanghai Covid Outbreak
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Hey so here's another update about how things are going with the pandemic, here in Shanghai.
October 1-7 was the National Day holiday (国庆节). This is the second-biggest holiday in China (the first is Chinese New Year) and typically tons of people are traveling during this time.
The schools in Shanghai have a policy that if a student leaves Shanghai, they can't come to school for 3 days after their return to Shanghai. During those 3 days, the student must get tested twice (nucleic acid testing). (Note: before the holiday, this is the policy that the schools announced, but then later, the government added a rule that anyone who enters Shanghai must be tested 3 times in 3 days. So, 3 times instead of 2.) And then after that there's an additional 7 days of "health monitoring" but you can go to school. So anyway, because of this policy, it seems that most families with school-age kids did not travel during the October holiday this year.
(The policy used to be that the student couldn't come to school for 14 days after arriving in Shanghai. 3 days is much better.)
So, less travel than a typical National Day in the Before Times, but still there were lots of people traveling, and this led to new covid cases in Shanghai.
Here are the stats:
Number of locally-transmitted covid cases in Shanghai (ie, not including "imported", which means international travelers who just entered China):
September 24: 0
September 25: 0
September 26: 0
September 27: 0
September 28: 1
September 29: 6
September 30: 3
October 1: 5
October 2: 4
October 3: 3
October 4: 6
October 5: 11
October 6: 18
October 7: 23
October 8: 21
October 9: 34
October 10: 28
October 11: 38
October 12: 47
October 13: 49
October 14: 42
October 15: 28
So, like, if you're trying to stay at 0, these numbers are scary big.
So because of this, for the past week there's been sort of this fear about getting locked down. I have a bunch of friends who are teachers, and they've been telling me things like "all of my classes have some students who are locked down at home and so I have to set up a video camera so they can watch the class" and "half our teachers are locked down in their homes, and 1 is in central quarantine." I know people whose apartment buildings got locked down for 2 days because of a close contact. And so on.
I'm still going about my life like normal. I get tested every 2ish days, and then just take the subway and go to work like normal, go out to malls and restaurants, hanging out with friends, all of that. Honestly I don't think it's worth it to say "I am not going to go out, because I might get labelled as a close contact depending on where I go, and then forced to quarantine"- I think that doesn't make sense, because you can be forced to quarantine at home just because someone else in your building is a close contact. The reasons you can get stuck in a quarantine are many, so I think it's not worth the trouble to change your behavior and not go out.
Probably I should start wearing a mask at work, if I was really concerned about it. I wear a mask when I go other places, but not at the office, because blah nobody feels like wearing a mask. But I feel like the risk of covid is low enough that I don't need to wear a mask at work (30-40 cases per day, in a city of 25 million people).
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Big meeting in Beijing
20th CPC National Congress to be held from Oct. 16 to 22: spokesperson (October 15)
20th CCP National Congress: Five issues to watch (October 13)
So, this is the big Communist Party meeting. Apparently it's the reason some big entertainment-type events in Shanghai in September were cancelled- they were being more strict about anti-covid policies before the big meeting.
And also, I've heard international people in the WeChat groups make comments, for several months now, about how maybe the zero-covid policy will change after this big meeting. I have no idea why anyone would think that. Like the politicians actually want to end zero-covid but they think it's politically useful to continue it for now, at least until the big meeting? What? That is definitely not true.
I think maybe some details about it would change, like maybe the specific number of days that people need to quarantine, things like that. But anyone who's holding on to hope that "maybe they'll open the border and I can go see my family", no, that's not going to happen. (I mean, yes technically the border is not closed, and I know people who have entered China during these covid times, but it is very hard and very expensive.)
Ah, and SHINE published this (*cough* propaganda): 'Lying flat' not advisable in virus battle: People's Daily (October 12) This term "lying flat" [躺平] basically means giving up and doing nothing. I think this term originated as a reaction to China's work culture of doing tons and tons of unpaid overtime. "Lying flat" means just kind of doing the bare minimum instead of working yourself so hard in a futile effort to get ahead. (My husband says it can also be translated as "quiet quitting".) Anyway, this term, "lying flat", is discussed as an alternative to zero-covid. Honestly, though, I would say there is a big area in between. Ending zero-covid doesn't mean you just give up. You can have policies about masking in public places. You can provide free nucleic acid testing (which Shanghai is doing now). You can make sure that people have paid sick leave if they have covid or if they are a close contact. Like, if zero-covid ends (which, no it's not going to end any time soon, let me tell you) that doesn't mean China has to do what the US did. Like, you can definitely do better than the US.
Anyway... I guess my opinion is, the results of zero-covid are good, but I don't trust the government systems in charge of it. A lot of things about the details of how it's implemented are very nonsensical and bad. Like taking people to quarantine hotels because a week ago they were somewhere near a covid-positive person. A week ago! What good does it do to put them in quarantine 1 week later??? Or, calling people in the middle of the night to tell them they need to be quarantined. Is this some kind of psychological strategy- like, people aren't in a good emotional state to think clearly in the middle of the night, and there's no one else around to witness it if the pandemic workers are doing something shady... yeah, not cool.
(Plus all the shit that went down during the Shanghai lockdown.)
Oh and one more thing about the big meeting: ‘We all saw it’: anti-Xi Jinping protest electrifies Chinese internet (October 14) A protester put a banner on a bridge in Beijing. I heard about this from my husband, interestingly enough. He must have seen it on the internet before it was censored into oblivion. Because, yeah, obviously, you're not going to be able to find any Chinese websites reporting that this happened.
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Remember when I said no one is tracking you down?
Hey so remember how, when I've described the requirements about getting tested, I said the rules are you have to get tested at least once every 7 days (though in reality you have to get tested more often than that, because when you go to a public place they need to see a negative test result from within 72 hours), but I said if you don't, nobody's going to track you down? Well, here's a little bit of an update: I saw a conversation in a WeChat group where someone said she updated her passport number in the health code app [随申办] and now apparently the system thinks she hasn't been getting tested because there aren't recent test results under her old passport number. She said the pandemic workers have been calling her every day to tell her to go get tested.
So, uh, that's immigrant life in China. The systems are designed for people with Chinese names and Chinese ID cards, and there will always be some weird confusing workaround for international people (except when there's not, then it's just like "guess you can't use it, lol"), and it doesn't always work.
But anyway, hey, now we at least know that if you appear to be in Shanghai but aren't getting tested once a week like you're supposed to, someone will call you.
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Feelings
Mostly, I'm just going about my life like normal. But sometimes I feel a sudden fear, about the possibility of getting stuck in a lockdown. Like a fight-or-flight, trauma-based response... that kind of fear. Like, my life is normal now, but we know what we lived through, here in Shanghai.
I remember taking out the trash at night, during the lockdown, and it was so quiet outside- no traffic sounds, no people walking down the street, no music from the old ladies dancing in the park. Just birds. That really happened... And I used to stand outside our building for a few minutes, even when the rules said we weren't allowed out of our building at all (except to pick up deliveries/ take out the trash/ walk dogs), just enjoying the fresh air, and feeling the extreme weirdness of the quiet streets. That really happened.
And today, walking down the street, I saw kids playing in the park, kids riding their bikes... And just thinking how good and right that is. And how that's something we can't take for granted, because during the lockdown, it was taken from us.
I know several people who left China soon after the lockdown ended. One of my friends said, "It's going to happen again, and my mental health can't take it, and this city can't take it, but it's going to happen again. I hope I'm wrong" and then he moved to Canada. I get that. Makes a lot of sense.
So we just... keep going along like normal, but I guess now we all know, on some level, that we don't really have freedom, and we can't really trust the pandemic control system.
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Links
Sixth Tone
National Day 2022: A Mix of Patriotic Fervor and Pandemic Controls (October 4) A bunch of good photos in this article.
SHINE
Shanghai clarifies self-health monitoring measures (October 13) "Residents, who have links to previous confirmed patients, have to do a three-day home quarantine and four-day self-health monitoring. The government information office said in a WeChat post today that individuals can go to school or work during the four-day health-monitoring period but should take nucleic acid tests as required and avoid gatherings."
At least two weekly COVID-19 tests for all until November (October 10)
Yellow health code for travelers without three daily tests (October 10) "All travelers to Shanghai from other provinces must receive a daily nucleic acid test for three days in a row, otherwise their health code will turn yellow, according to the city's big data center."
Pop-up window on health code for Shanghai travelers, returnees (October 9) "People traveling or returning to Shanghai from other provinces will receive a pop-up notification covering their health code, if they fail to undergo a nucleic acid test within 48 hours of their arrival. ... The pop-up window will prevent travelers from displaying their Suishenma health code, banning them from accessing most of Shanghai's public services, transport and places."
Here's what you should do if your health code turns red (October 8) So, suddenly a lot of people found that their health code had turned red. I heard many people saying their health code had turned red for no reason at all- probably that's not true, probably it's because they were in the same general area as someone who was covid-positive- though they might have been a block away and not even there at the same time, so yeah it doesn't make sense, and I understand the anger about this.
Anyway, this article is the official government view on what the red health code means and what you need to do.
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| Red health code. Hey, this is a good idea for a Halloween costume! Very scary to people in Shanghai! Image source. |
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