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| "Medicine orders on a table at the entrance to a pharmacy in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, Dec. 9, 2022. VCG" Image source. |
Complete list is here: Index of Posts About the March 2022 Shanghai Covid Outbreak
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Hi everyone, here's this week's update about covid in Shanghai, China.
So in my previous update, Zero-Covid is Over, I said:
We live in a different world than we did 1 week ago. Now covid could be anywhere. It's coming. It will come in a huge wave. We're going to see a lot of our friends get infected- and hopefully it's not that bad, but... I mean, gosh, you definitely don't want to catch it during the first wave, when society hasn't really figured out how to handle it in those numbers yet.
Well the "it's coming" phase is over. It's here. Tons and tons of people have covid.
It's actually astonishing to me how fast this spread. It was like "okay the government is no longer requiring people to get covid-tested" and then in a matter of days, suddenly we all started hearing about friends and coworkers and everybody getting covid.
It reminds me of when omicron was first identified, about a year or so ago, and then within a matter of days lots of friends in the US suddenly had it. (The variant in China now is omicron.) Like suddenly, everyone knows several people who have covid.
Last Sunday I heard that someone from work had covid. And then I heard that someone at the event I'd gone to the day before had covid. And then every single day since then, a few more friends, a few more coworkers, a few more social media contacts posting about having covid.
Like wow this got real so fast.
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About the government policies
So in last week's post I said it was still unclear to what extent the government is going to be involved in managing the covid-positive people. (Like, if you have covid you're supposed to do home quarantine for 5 days, but is anyone going to enforce it? That kind of thing.) Well turns out the answer is you're totally on your own! Whatever! Nobody is keeping track of who has covid, you're not required to report it anywhere, no lockdowns are happening, none of that.
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Statistics (?)
December 17 article from SHINE: Chinese mainland reports 2,229 new local confirmed COVID-19 cases
To which I say: LOLOLOLOLOLOL. Two thousand covid cases? Come on. I could scroll through my WeChat right now and probably find 50 covid-positive people. This thing is EVERYWHERE. There are way more than 2000 new cases per day in China.
Ah, but here's the explanation: China no longer publishes number of asymptomatic cases (December 14) So, the idea is that the "asymptomatic" people are staying home and taking care of themselves, so it's impossible to get an accurate count of them, so China isn't going to report any data about that.
To which I say: LOLOLOLOL. I mean, on the one hand, yes it's true that it's impossible to get an accurate count now. But calling them "asymptomatic" just because their covid case isn't bad enough to land them in the hospital... I mean, yeah, for a long time I've been saying the term "asymptomatic" in Shanghai's data on covid cases is meaningless, because it doesn't mean "doesn't have symptoms", it means "doesn't have pneumonia symptoms." So it's a bit ridiculous that now China is saying we just don't need to count them at all when we publish our data on covid cases.
Like, what's actually being reported now, in China's "local confirmed COVID-19 cases" is more along the lines of, people whose covid was so severe that they required hospitalization. This is a completely different thing than just the number of covid cases.
For 3 years, people (outside of China) who don't understand how zero-covid works have been saying "look at China's numbers, does anyone believe these numbers? no!" and I've been saying that I do believe China's numbers (but with the caveat that the distinction they're making between "confirmed" and "asymptomatic" makes no sense). But now, mark down the date, December 14, 2022. This is the date after which we should not believe any of China's reported numbers on the covid case count.
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Working from home
This week I worked from home for part of the week and I was at the office for part of the week. The office was pretty empty- probably more than half of the people at my job were working from home. Some of them were home because they had covid, some were home because they were close contacts (and you're supposed to quarantine if you're a close contact, not that anybody's enforcing it though), some of them were staying home with their kids because students in the same class as a covid-positive student had to stay home from school, etc etc etc.
Less people on the subways than usual. Also, a lot of people I've seen out in public are wearing N95 masks. (As a wild guess, maybe 30% of people are wearing N95's and 70% are wearing surgical masks? It's a wild guess, don't take it too literally.) Before this, very few people wore N95's. I often saw waiters or other kinds of employees who interact with a lot of customers wearing N95's, but it was rare to see any random person on the street wearing one. Because back then, there wasn't really any actual risk of getting covid. Just wear a mask, but it doesn't matter what kind, because you won't get covid regardless. But now it's different. Now it actually matters if you wear an N95.
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Panic-buying and hoarding medicine
Suddenly, everyone is buying up all the ibuprofen, all the cold medicine, all the cough medicine, all the fever medicine, to keep it at home "just in case." This is, uh, not good. It's a good idea to buy a reasonable amount of medicine, maybe estimate how much you would need to take for 5 days if you got covid- but people are buying WAY MORE than that and it's NOT COOL.
Like, every single pharmacy is totally sold out of any medicine related to fevers/colds. If you order medicine online, it won't ship yet; it will ship when they have some in stock.
And I've even seen people asking "where can I buy paxlovid" like they're gonna just buy a bunch and keep it at home "just in case." Argggh. That's something that should be prescribed by a doctor. Not something everyone should just have. (And no, it's not available for random people to just buy, fortunately.)
And then people started saying "vitamin C protects you from covid" so then all the vitamin C sold out, and then everyone was buying all the oranges and canned peaches they could get their hands on... it's just ridiculous here.
All the N95 masks are sold out. All the rapid antigen test kits are sold out.
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US consulates
ALERT: UPDATE FROM U.S. MISSION CHINA CONSULAR SERVICES FOR DECEMBER 15, 2022
Well the US consulates in different cities around China have cancelled almost all visa appointments. Word on the street is a lot of the staff at the consulates got covid.
This is really not cool because people had visa interviews planned, to travel to the US during the holidays, and now it's looking like they won't be able to get visas in time.
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Flights out of China
In the past few days, I've heard several anecdotes about "I just flew from Shanghai to the US. The airport in Shanghai isn't requiring a negative covid test. There were people coughing all throughout the plane. Not wearing masks." Yikes... Used to be, the flight out of China was the safest in terms of covid risk. You could be sure that nobody coming out of China had covid. But now it's the worst flight.
I was kind of surprised... but also, this really shouldn't be surprising. Should have been obvious that this would happen.
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Schools
There was a notification from my son's teacher that said "a student tested positive, but not in our class. Parents can decide if they want to send their kids to school tomorrow or not." We decided to send him to school because it's a pain trying to work from home with a kid running around. The next day when I dropped him off at school, there were way less people than usual. Seems like most kids weren't going to school.
And then on December 17 there was this announcement: Shanghai education facilities shift to online from Monday. Oh great.
But, yeah, Square Root going to school was the biggest area of risk for our family. My husband and I have been wearing masks at work, and not eating with other people, but the kids at school don't wear masks.
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What's the long-term plan?
Okay, maybe a little embarrassing that this is the first time I've had to think about that question. Everyone outside of China has already been grappling with that for several years. But in China, it's been all-or-nothing: Either you're in lockdown and you can't go anywhere at all, or there are zero covid cases and you can go do whatever you want without worrying about it (but still need to follow a lot of tedious rules about testing and wearing masks). But now that zero-covid is over, we all have to figure out where we want to be on that spectrum between "all" and "nothing."
If I have to wear a mask in public, okay, that's fine, I can do that. If I decide I'm not going to restaurants, uh that's annoying because restaurants are fun, and also a key part of my social life with friends, but... okay I guess during the most high-risk times I can stop doing that temporarily. If the schools are closed, uh... no I can't deal with that long-term. How long is this going to last? What's the plan?
The first wave will probably last several weeks. (I've seen some articles predicting when the "peak" would be for all the big Chinese cities.) It seems doable to me to avoid getting covid during this first wave. (I can tell you that so far, me, my husband, and my son do not have covid.) But then what?
And some of my friends who got infected have said "we're all going to get it eventually, it's kinda nice to be getting it out of the way now" but I don't think I agree with that. I really do want to avoid getting covid. But, I need to send my kid to school. This is impossible.
And, yeah, obviously, yes, these are the exact problems that everyone outside of China has been dealing with since early 2020. And yes, I did want zero-covid to end. So... anyway, here we are.
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Links
Sixth Tone
China’s Elderly Care Homes on Guard to Keep COVID Out (December 16)
Life After the End of China’s COVID Restrictions (December 15) "The abrupt policy shift left ordinary Chinese not only feeling a sense of joy from their newfound freedom, but also confusion toward their new life in which they would have to co-exist with COVID." Very good article. Also it has a bunch of photos.
Beijing’s COVID Surge Stretches City’s Delivery Workforce (December 15) It's really bad in Beijing right now. It's not quite this bad in Shanghai, but it's a matter of time.
Fearing Infection, Many Chinese Grab Unproven Items to Prevent COVID (December 14) "Canned peaches and electrolyte water have been flying off the shelves amid unsubstantiated claims that they defend against the coronavirus."
SHINE
Where to make online pharmacy deliveries (December 15)
How to disinfect your home with a positive COVID case (December 14)
How to dispose trash during home quarantine (December 14)
Online panic buying of medicine from other provinces causes shortages (December 14)
Beijing sets up fever clinics in all community health service centers (December 13)
How to protect you and your family against COVID-19 (December 13)
COVID-19 itinerary card to be abolished from Tuesday (December 12) This is the "travel code app" that I've discussed here and here. It no longer works, and everyone is like "good ****ing riddance."
Bye-bye to venue codes, high-risk areas in Shanghai (December 12)
Hospitals run smoothly after city loosens COVID management (December 11) Lol look at this propaganda. Hey, maybe it is true that the hospitals are handling this just fine- but writing an article like this just makes me more suspicious.
CNN
Hong Kong scraps some restrictions for travelers, ends contact tracing (December 13)
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