Hong Kong’s ‘Dynamic Zombie’ approach reaches the beginning of the end – or is it the end of the beginning – with authorities desperately trying to maintain the pretense that mass testing and preventative quarantines still make sense in dealing with Covid. Mass-testing in Tung Chung – or did officials put up a sign saying ‘last chance for haircuts and vegetables’? A pro-Beijing party proposes district-by-district testing to ‘flush out all silent carriers’, and a government advisor mulls a modest citywide lockdown (imagine the panic-buying).
Some more or less worthwhile reading for the weekend…
The LARB’s review of Guobin Yang’s The Wuhan Lockdown.
From The Star – a good intro if, like most right-thinking people who ignore the Winter Olympics, you’re wondering what all the Eileen Gu fuss is about (she’s the American-but-Chinese skiing-backwards and money-making champion). A thread on the complicated ‘dual nationality’ of people like Gu.
Remember FECs, checkpoints when entering Shenzhen from the north, foreigners-only compounds and all that? A little nostalgia from Anne Stevenson Yang on China’s 1980s-90s attempts to isolate foreign influences as the country started opening up.
From HK Post – Greater Bay Area stamps, featuring ugly property-ad-style portrayals of regional landmarks and scenes.
CMP on China’s online system for informing on people spreading evil ideas.
Lockdown is somewhat useful to avoid acute outbreaks like plague, but COVID, like its close relatives that cause about 15% of cases of the “common cold” is fairly obviously here to stay, in various different strains. The genie is already out of the bottle — concentrating on building better and stronger bottles is a waste of time and resources.
The best counter argument to people suggesting lockdown and zero covid is the question: “When do you expect COVID to disappear completely?”
Although perhaps the more realistic and incisive question is actually: “Why do you expect COVID to disappear completely?”
Allow me to settle the Gu affair (without having watched even 10 secs of this current genocide O-limp-dicks): Who Fucking Cares? She’s doing what she’s doing because…
1) getting onto the PRC winter olympics team is MUCH easier than if she had to jostle with the kids in the States.
2) the CCP undoubtedly dangled untold riches, free apartments (by Evergrand?), fame, a seat on their rubber stamp legislative body and the opportunity to have her mug plastered on EVERY single ad space available in the PRC. If she won gold. Which she did.
3) is she a scumbag, two faced traitor? NO. She’s an 18 year old kid who loves skiing, fancy clothes and who’s probably micromanaged by her status and money obsessed PRC mother who understands that she needs to get all she can while the getting is good. (don’t forget to pay TAXES, mom!)
You’re welcome.
Re Chinese Netizen; your item 2 omitted the obligatory ‘perk’
Perhaps Eileen should have had a word with a ‘guest’ on the stands re how to trigger a double cork just as some Viagra fueled heavyweight politboro is about to come down in the missionary.
@Mary: No doubt young Ms Gu will be up for a GBM on one of those whirlwind CCP athlete tours to HK to whip up patriotism, pride and obedience to the NatSec law. Carrie will be thrilled to present the medal while Odious Whore will be in the background spanking his little #2 over a young girl he would never in a million years impress.
Perhaps Peng Shuai will even dazzle the little people of HK as well to further emphasize that yes, she’s not in lockdown and is quite happy.
Just waiting for Knownot’s version of ‘Come on Eileen’
In other news, Europe is coming out of COVID19 pandemic… it may have started in PRC but it’s going to last longer there as well.
I have been reading about the concept of a citywide “lock down” in order to bring the pandemic under control. I have no idea how that would work. Help me out please. Would it be that 7 million+ citizens are required to stay at home? Cannot go out for groceries, or anything else? Now, I have lived in Hong Kong all my adult life and I do have a JoyYou Octopus card, so you do the math, Fred. I know a bit about the mindset of the locals, of which I am one. I can imagine a scenario where the citizens of Hong Kong, from Tin Shui Wai to Tai Po to Shampoo Po to Chai Wan, en masse tell Curry Cunt to eff off, walk into the streets of their hoods, smash bottles on the pavement, tip over garbage cans (like we did in 2019) and wait for the undereducated HK Gesta-popo to show up with their 2 Smurf mobiles and a few buses with PTU randos so they can ridicule them to their faces. Then they buy anything they can find inside Wellcome and 7-EleveN and celebrate with a cold brewski together with everyone in the street/hood/city.
Note to Curry Cunt: there were 2 million people in the street, remember?
@Joe Blow
Hear hear! Carrie is a HUGE FUCKING CUNT
‘Come on Eileen’
Oh dear…
@Joe Blow
The resulting civil unrest aside, a citywide lockdown might have police just roaming up and down looking for offenders on the street. Basically, everyone except emergency personnel or delivery services. They could also deputize building managers to enforce lockdowns within buildings, and/or to report offenders to authorities.
Carrie Lam or some other high-level toadie already mentioned that quarantined people need to pay for their own delivery service. They’ll definitely be giving out another round of consumption vouchers in the near future; maybe they’ll say that, with the new funds, everyone should then be able to afford deliveries for an extended time.
What does not seem realistic, however, is an easing of restrictions, or any sort of a “laying flat” attitude toward the outbreak as seen in most other countries. Beijing is unwilling to lose face, and Hong Kong will be closed for business until it defeats Omicron, or dies trying.
‘Come on Eileen’
A song lyric was never in more desperate need of a comma…
I can’t wait for the Olympic Medal Winners Tour cum an Eileen Gu Spectacular!
Thank heavens Henry Litton is no longer a judge but one does wonder why he still has a foreign (presumably British) passport.
I am saving up my empty wine bottles in case there is going to be a lock down. Throwing them from the top of my building down on the streets will sort of express my emotions. That’s all I have to say about that.
Come in Eileen.
@Joe Blow. It’s happening. Time to air drop military “C-Rations” for the population of HK to chew on for a while…
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/13/hong-kong-fears-food-supply-disruption-as-covid-hits-drivers-in-worsening-outbreak