Everyone in Hong Kong can see that our valiant and visionary local leaders are floundering and dithering. But what are they floundering and dithering about exactly? A chance encounter with one of our city’s Great and Good reveals that officials do have a major concern on their minds: Shenzhen.
It seems that migrants from Hubei form a large proportion of the Pearl River Bay-Area-Opportunities Delta workforce. Guangdong has reported quite a few WuFlu cases and cities up there are worried. Specifically, Shenzhen is home to several hundred thousand (yup) young tech grads from Wuhan who do code-writing, computer-engineering and so on. I gather that these are spotty hoi-polloi from riffraff colleges in China’s heartland, not the classy cosmopolitan Beijing or Shanghai gentry we get in our financial-services sector. (I hate to say it, but I think we are supposed to infer hygiene issues.) Words like ‘reservoir’, ‘virus’ and ‘possible explosion’ are muttered.
So next time you see Carrie and her hapless colleagues babbling, flapping their arms and wetting themselves – that’s why. Maybe it’s even a legitimate worry. I’ve no idea why they can’t just tell us. (Well, apart from fear of presenting the Mainland as a danger, portraying Mainland people negatively, tarnishing the glamorous Bay Area branding, raising more questions about the Great Border-Closure Prevarication, further distressing Hong Kong’s child-like populace, or upsetting our precious expat community. Anything I’ve missed?)
I expected the masseuses would be more likely to become superspreaders than some geeks
In Hong Kong, I suspect a lot of C-level Suite executives are going to be superspreaders.
Aside from their invariably inflated egos, these “Masters of the Universe” typically demand face-to-face meetings / lunches / dinners, and are surrounded by their own personal coterie of direct reports, hangers on, secretaries, assistants, chauffeurs, nannies, and more. Having a puritanical work ethic, they tend to work themselves to the bone, and typically expect the aformentioned groups to do the same, too. These are the groups to which the executive will spread their disease.
Moreover, having enjoyed such success for so long during times that are otherwise normal, it is extremely difficult for them to imagine, let alone adapt to, a major change in the status quo such as we’ve seen in Mainland China for the past 6 weeks, and which we are only beginning to see in Hong Kong. They will continue in their habits, regardless of how dire the situation becomes.
It will be like pulling teeth to get these executives to cancel their overseas travel, business engagements, and social meetings. In the lucky event that they do cancel their travel and social arrangements (which most likely will be cancelled for them as the rest of the world realises the severity of what’s going on), they will undoubtedly continue to meet with other individuals like themselves, who are equally likely to have an unflagged propensity to travel, attend high-level meetings, etc. Good luck getting them to abide by a 14-day voluntary quarantine.
If/when they begin to display symptoms of the disease, they will be flabbergasted to learn that testing and treatment are only available at designated public clinics and hospitals, given that private clinics and hospitalits are not equipped with the necessary infectious disease wards necessary to combat something as contagious as this disease. In the event that their condition worsens such that they require hospitalization, unless they have their own personal ventilators and oxygen tanks together with the necessary medical staff, they will be forced into the public healthcare system, just like the rest of the plebs.
And, unfortunately for them, they tend to be older, male, and suffer from either hypertension or some other underlying illness, all three of increase the risk of hospitalisation and mortality by quite a lot.
Cathay Pacific/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens rescheduled to October 2020.
I have never seen so many tearful tarts.