 |
| "Temporary beds are added in the emergency department of Beijing Chaoyang Hospital on December 27." Image source. |
Complete list is here: Index of Posts About the March 2022 Shanghai Covid Outbreak
---
Hi everyone, here's this week's update about covid in China.
I still don't have covid, so, that's good. :)
---
The biggest news for immigrants (like me) in China: No more quarantine for international arrivals, starting January 8
SHINE: No quarantine for incoming arrivals from January 8 (December 27)
CNBC: China to scrap quarantine for international travelers in an essential end of zero-Covid (December 26) My favorite quote: "He noted the number of available flights in and out of China has to recover. 'I don’t think the U.S. carriers or the international carriers will immediately go back to normal because those airplanes are already flying other routes,' Hart said. 'It may be different with Chinese airlines, because the airplanes are just sitting on the tarmac doing nothing.'"
Sixth Tone: With Borders Reopening, Many Chinese Are Ready to Travel Again (December 27)
This is great. I cannot even tell you. This is, this is what the international community has wanted, ever since early 2020. It has been so hard to get into China, and the biggest reason was the quarantine. The policy changed a few times- 14 days, 21 days, 14 days, 8 days. It's currently 8 days, but from January 8, 2023, there will be no quarantine at all. This is huge, you guys, this is huge.
(Please note, getting into China these past 3ish years has been difficult for other reasons besides the mandatory quarantine. For a while in 2020, only Chinese citizens could enter China- I know international families where one parent was stuck outside of China for months and months. Also, for a while there was a blood test required, related to covid antibodies, in addition to the PCR test. And there were requirements about you have to fly direct, you have to be in your departure city 7 days before your flight, for testing. And then the requirements relaxed a little and you just had to get PCR-tested twice in the 48 hours before your flight. Then they changed it to one PCR test, and removed requirements about your testing location being in the same country as your flight departure city. And on top of that, the circuit-breaker policy said that airlines had to cancel flights if a plane arrived in China with a number of covid-positive people above some certain threshold- so you have people trying to get into China, traveling to the departure city 7 days in advance, doing all this covid-related testing, and then their flight gets cancelled and they have to start all over. Yeah. I mean, in my opinion the quarantine was the biggest inconvenience, but WOW there have been a lot of different versions of these rules over the past 3 years, with an incredible amount of hoops that people needed to jump through to enter China.)
A bit of personal news from me: Actually, I've bought plane tickets. I'm planning a trip to the US. I bought them before zero-covid ended, actually. I thought "It's been 3 years since I've seen my family. I'm just going to do the 8-day quarantine. Yes, I choose to be stuck in a hotel room for 8 days with a small child." At the time, I thought we'd be doing zero-covid for a lot longer. And now, wow this is great, I can go and come back and I won't even need to quarantine.
When I was planning the trip, I thought "we'll have to really really do our best to not get covid in the US- we've never been in an environment before where there was an actual realistic chance of getting covid." But now I'm like "let's try really really hard not to get covid here in China before the trip."
Well if I had "do a hotel quarantine in zero-covid China" on my bucket list, turns out I'll never actually do it. Which is fine with me, lol. Ya know, though, I really expected I'd end up doing it sooner or later.
Also, hopefully China will start issuing tourist visas again. Recently I've seen some people asking "so my mom/dad/whoever has a 10-year tourist visa for China, issued before the pandemic- does this mean they can now use it to enter China again?" So far seems like the answer is no. But probably soon that will change.
---
Other countries put testing requirements on travelers from China
Well, it seems the other countries have realized that every single plane coming out of China right now is full of covid-positive people.
NPR: U.S. will require travelers from China to show negative COVID test before flight (December 28)
Al Jazeera: Growing list of countries imposing COVID rules on China arrivals (December 29)
This is a good thing. I don't want to be on a plane with covid-positive people.
---
The Chinese government is telling us everything is fine, which is NOT COOL
NPR: China has stopped publishing daily COVID data amid reports of a huge spike in cases (December 25)
(You may remember that last week I mentioned that China is counting covid deaths in a weird way that doesn't seem to make sense- well now they're not counting them at all...)
People still die of covid, but the Chinese government doesn't want you to know that. This is the story they're telling: When covid emerged in 2019/2020, it was very deadly, and China did the right thing having lockdowns and putting the zero-covid policy in place. And during these 3ish years, China has done the right thing, and has saved millions of lives. And now, our scientific experts very carefully analyzed the situation, and they have concluded that covid is not really that bad any more. It's not like it was in 2020. Don't think of it as a pneumonia. It's really more of a flu. So, China has successfully sheltered all of its people until the danger passed, and now the pandemic is over. Good job everyone!
That is, um, how shall I put this, not true.
Like, no rules at all! Everything is fine! No huge push for "flatten the curve" or "now we have to REALLY GET SERIOUS about wearing masks" or "no indoor dining."
Instead it was just "hey everyone, you don't have to scan the codes anymore, you don't have to get tested anymore" and everyone was like "hooray, we don't have to scan the codes anymore, we don't have to get tested anymore!" There should have been a big "AND THEREFORE, covid is going to spread, so everyone should take a serious look at your life habits and decide how to reduce your risk." None of that. It was just "whateverrrr, covid doesn't matter any more! try not to hoard all the medicine!" It was just the same "masks, social distance, don't gather in groups" which we've all heard a million times and we pay no attention to.
(Okay, Shanghai did close the schools, and the Chinese government is once again pushing the elderly population to get vaccinated, and they announced that new fever clinics would be opening everywhere- so, I guess they at least did that...)
And people here are like "covid is basically just a flu, we got it, now we have recovered, so, everything's fine, back to normal!" Chinese people are saying this, and I'm mad about that, but international people have been saying this for even longer ("covid doesn't matter, China needs to open up like the rest of the world"), so I'm mad about that too.
Anyway, I *think* that a lot of elderly unvaccinated people are dying of covid in China. (We don't have data, all we can do is guess.) I think if we all tried to "flatten the curve," less people would die. Why isn't anyone talking about this?
I feel like... this whole time, under zero-covid, I've been like "well, in a lot of ways this sucks, but overall it has saved a lot of lives, so..." and "if they end zero-covid, that doesn't mean just do nothing at all", and feeling like the Chinese government was prioritizing saving lives, and the Chinese people did have a healthy fear of how bad covid could be from a society-wide perspective (honestly a little too much fear, a little unrealistic in certain aspects) and now it's like, everyone just forgot all those things??? Suddenly covid doesn't matter/ it's just the flu/ everyone's going to get it sooner or later.
Maybe I'm overstating this... surely there are a lot of Chinese people who are doing what me and my husband are doing- staying home as much as we can, wearing N95 masks if we ever need to go anywhere in public, etc. I was at work at the office for most of the week, and it was very empty. Malls have also been very empty. Restaurants have been extremely empty recently- just a lot of delivery workers picking up food to go. So most people are staying home- but is that because they already have covid, or is it because they are trying to avoid covid?
But, anyway, the people who are avoiding covid, like us, are not loud about it on social media.
---
No more stigma about getting covid
Here's something good, though: There's no more stigma over having gotten covid. This has been a real issue in China for the past 3 years- people who had covid and recovered from it were discriminated against. Employers didn't want to hire them, their apartment management wouldn't let them return home, etc.
But now that everyone is getting covid, and proudly sharing their experiences on social media, well, no stigma anymore. I have heard a few anecdotes recently about "I met someone who said she had gotten covid in May during the Shanghai lockdown, but never told anyone until now. Now she feels like she can tell people."
Please note, when they say "never told anyone"- the government certainly knew about it, and put those people in hospitals or makeshift quarantine facilities, some of which had terrible conditions. I remember during the lockdown, I saw a lot of posts on social media about how bad it was, and I was also aware that A LOT of those posts were being censored by the government. (My advice: If you don't want people to tell everyone that you sent them to a covid camp with inhumane conditions, then maybe don't send them to a covid camp with inhumane conditions.) But now I'm realizing, there were probably also a lot of people who tested positive and were taken to quarantine and just never told anyone about it, because of the stigma and discrimination around it.
But at least now they feel like they can tell people. Now it doesn't have to be a secret anymore, if you got covid in Shanghai in March-April-May 2022. Because now most of your friends and coworkers and everyone has had covid too.
---
You'll be shocked to hear I'm mad about western media coverage of this
I keep seeing articles predicting some huge number of covid deaths in China, worrying about new variants emerging from China, fretting over the whole situation in China... as if all these other countries didn't just spend the last 3 years letting covid circulate everywhere, having tons of people die, and creating new variants, while China did none of that.
Like, yes, it is bad to add 1.4 billion people to the group of people who have been spreading covid everywhere, yes. Aren't you glad these 1.4 billion people weren't participating in it from the start, like the rest of y'all?
Ughh, seriously! Every time there was an outbreak in some Chinese city- an outbreak of, say, 100 cases, and the whole city locks down- the western news sites would be like "wow, when is China going to get with the program and just let everyone have covid, like all the other countries? why don't they lighten up about this?" and now they're like "tsk, tsk, tsk, look at how many covid cases there are in China." Like WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM US?
Like yes, there are a lot of covid cases in China right now. Because we are catching up with all the other countries. But most people here are vaccinated, so actually, this is not as bad as what all the other countries have gone through.
Tons of people in China get covid, and it's news because before this, basically no one in China got covid. Tons of people in the US get covid, and no one says anything because that's just normal for the US now.
Here are a few of my previous blog posts on that:
WTF, CNN? (April 2022)
Wow, the Anti-China Bias in Western News Media (January 2022)
---
Links
Sixth Tone
As COVID Surges, Chinese Turn to Black Market for Antiviral Drugs (December 28) "Scalpers are reportedly selling Paxlovid for as much as $7,000 per box."
China’s 2022 in Photos (December 29)
As Cities Ride the Surge, How Rural China Can Brace for Covid Impact (December 30)
SHINE
Ambulances and emergency departments coping with rise in patients (December 25)
Peak of critically ill COVID patients arrives in 2-3 weeks (December 29) Good to see that the government is at least aware of this problem...
The US hits over 100 million COVID-19 cases (December 29) LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL, wow this is hilarious! Because, yes, this is a fact, the US has hit 100 million covid cases. You know who else hit 100 million covid cases? You know who blew past 100 million in a matter of days, likely hit 200 million, 250 million, and still going? Wow, somehow SHINE failed to mention that.
China to stop testing chilled, frozen foods for COVID from Jan. 8 (December 30)
Citizens who have recovered from COVID share their experiences (December 31) This video is good, in and of itself... it's interviews with Chinese people on the street who have recovered from covid, and their various opinions about it. But since it's posted by SHINE, I glare at it very suspiciously, like, this is obviously propaganda, but what message are they trying to send exactly?
CNN
Zero-Covid was supposed to prove China’s supremacy. How did it all go so wrong for Xi Jinping? (December 28) The headline and intro to this article are a bit over-the-top, but the rest of it is very good.
No comments:
Post a Comment