Waiting for another Big Announcement

Everyone is waiting to know how much Chief Executive Carrie Lam intends to relax Hong Kong’s Covid restrictions on travel and social gathering. She announces the plans today – though they still won’t take effect for another four weeks.

Realistically, the best we can expect is a reduction in quarantine periods for inbound passengers as a sop to the increasingly angry international business community – and little more. The government seems systematically incapable of not dashing public hopes at every turn. And, after all, there are still some public spaces that haven’t been wrapped up in miles of barrier tape, and isolation camps to build. Better news would be other-worldly. 

At best, it seems the government might abandon U-turns and flip-flopping, and instead embrace determined stopping-and-starting, moving slightly forward and then lurching into reverse. Maybe it will make the populace furious in a different way. Worth a try.

Carrie tells state media that Hong Kong’s experience fighting Covid is an example of the success of ‘One Country, Two Systems’. Who are we to disagree?

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12 Responses to Waiting for another Big Announcement

  1. Chinese Netizen says:

    “Carrie tells state media that Hong Kong’s experience fighting Covid is an example of the success of ‘One Country, Two Systems’. Who are we to disagree?”

    Yesterday I read a most enthralling article (about Putin but could very well be Shit Jumping) called “Vladimir Putin Has Fallen Into The Dictator Trap” by Brian Klaas in The Atlantic analyzing megalomaniac tyrants and how the longer they’re in office and surround themselves with “yes men” sycophants, the more detached from reality they become and the more the “yes men” resort to yet more fantastical bullshit all in order to please their boss and for self self preservation.

    From the article:

    “The ancient Greek philosopher Xenophon wrote of that inescapable paradox of tyranny: “It is never possible for the tyrant to trust that he is loved … and plots against tyrants spring from none more than from those who pretend to love them most.”

    To solve this problem, despots create loyalty tests, ghoulish charades to separate true believers from pretenders. To be trusted, advisers must lie on behalf of the regime. Those who repeat absurd claims without blinking are deemed loyal. Anyone who hesitates is considered suspect.”

    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/putin-dictator-trap-russia-ukraine/627064/

  2. Load Toad says:

    Well, she’s given us another shit sandwich…thanks for nowt Calamity…

  3. Chris Maden says:

    Curry Lamb’s exact words as reported in HKFP were that covid is a “perfect illustration” [HKFP’s quote marks] of the success of 1C2S. I agree. The success has been a dismal failure.`

  4. Mary Melville says:

    Mid Level residents are probably more ready to accept petty bureaucracy. Out in NT locals are liberating their exercise and other recreational facilities. While the police are harassing folk up one end of the road, its man the machines on the other.
    Next move will no doubt be to install spyware at all playgrounds and elderly exercise corners.

  5. Hole-istic Treatment says:

    If Hong Kong’s fight against Covid is a perfect illustration of the success of “One Country, Two Systems”, I’d be very interested to see a perfect illustration of its failure.
    I suspect we’d all be very much better off.

    Also 777 has apparently forgotten both the first and second laws of holes.

  6. Paul says:

    The insistence on repeated vaccination of people at minimal risk from the disease is becoming extremely tiresome, particularly for the ~50% of the population who have already had the disease (regardless of whether, or how many, vaccinations they had had).

    And it will apparently be mid-May before the Vaccine Pass software can be updated to give those of us who have had the disease a few months access to restaurants before we become persona non grata again. But least once that is in place we will have the option of having a cough for a week every six months as the price of renewing it.

  7. reductio says:

    @Mary Melville

    Noticed that too. Where I live there is a surfeit of red flags flying, showing the sons’ of the soil’s fealty to the Emperor; at the same time half the people I see exercising, walking the dogs or just ambling about in the cop-free zones off the main roads have masks around their chins. Also noticed a decline in the number of old biddies (sorry, respected elders) dressed in black ninja-cum-PPE suits.

  8. justsayin says:

    Gotta sing the praises of the CCP from the rooftops and blast it from the loudspeakers literal and figurative to drown out the sound of the pandemic being over in EU and North America.

  9. Low Profile says:

    @Chinese Netizen – also dictators often protect themselves by appointing deputies who are too stupid to be capable of overthrowing them. This becomes a problem when they die and the idiot deputy succeeds them as dictator, as in Venezuela.

  10. Penny says:

    On social-distancing measures, Lam said they will be relaxed starting from April 21 in three stages over three months, provided that infections do not see a rebound.
    In stage one, many types of premises will reopen, and night-time dining will resume in restaurants. The gathering and dine-in limits will be relaxed from two to four people.
    In the second phase, bars, pubs and beaches will be allowed to reopen, and people can exercise outdoors without wearing a mask.
    https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1640053-20220321.htm

    So two of the stupidest, most illogical restrictions – closed beaches and mask wearing during outdoor exercise – still in place for the next two months at least, while after one month four people can sit together in a restaurant without masks.

    A perfect illustration of the complete stupidity and illogicality of the CL system of governance.

  11. Chef Wonton says:

    The down-to-seven days quarantine in hotels (from April 21) will struggle to convince “Hong Kong is back”.

    Travellers lucklessly testing positive within the seven days (likely plenty will pick it up in the airport or on the plane) will be shipped off to internment camp for three weeks – with all the horror stories of grim facilities, gruel and unsympathetic medics. Meanwhile in the UK and US and other sensible countries, everyone travels quarantine free, infected or not.

    Meanwhile, the blessings we have of tropical sun beaches and country parks require masks for two more freaking months.

  12. Mo lan lick says:

    Putrid-rots ruining Hong Kong. 1c2s

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