Originally posted by richardfinegold
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It was that fast. Testing evolved over the years. What became regular checks / swabs, monitoring of people's comings and goings via health / QR codes by 2021 started out with random temperature checks in 2020. You were in 2020 allowed out at certain stages during a week and given a pass so that you could go shopping for essential items - though obviously there had already been a run-on foodstuffs and supplies. Some people had managed to get past the barriers and decided to head for the hills via the nearest airport and so contributed to the spread of the pandemic globally. What I do still remember was the ridicule in which the Chinese held Boris Johnson and the UK's attitude to the virus - i.e. "Keep Calm and Wash Your Hands with Soap and Water."
We lived in Hangzhou at the time - and we spent about 60 days in lockdown during the first wave. We coped quite well - but I know that others had bad experiences with isolation, claustrophobia and the horror in some cases of having guys and gals in full hazmat suits sealing the door of your apartment with Biohazard tape right in front of their eyes.
So China went into Zero tolerance - so if anyone was found to have Covid - every person who had come into close contact (public transport, offices, shops, restaurants etc) were obliged to go into lockdown. Some of these people were lucky enough (if that's the right word) to be confined to their own homes - the less fortunate rounded up by police and officials to be bussed to "quarantine hotels" - basically going concerns like the Holiday Inn which had been requisitioned by the authorities for that purpose - or to hastily, jerry-built facilities that offered little in terms of comfort, dignity or privacy. I suppose that over time it is obvious why so many people, individuals and businesses got fed up with the uncertainty and disruption - especially when last year in 2022 relatively few cases could trigger lockdowns in whole districts of cities like Shanghai and Ningbo for days and weeks.
And just as quickly as the Zero Policy came into being (and I would recommend two cracking documentaries about this - Wang Nanfu's "In the same Breath" and Chen Weixi's "76 days") - the highly successful policy (if you are to believe the Chinese Communist Party's self-assessment...) was reversed - this was December last year - with the result that millions despite having vaccinations earlier in the year ended up getting Covid. This happened to all my family over the Christmas period which was an unpleasant annoyance to put it mildly especially after being in the clear / following the rules for almost 3 years. There have been a number of suggestions posited for Xi Jinping's change of policy - strains on the economy in general, a realisation that eliminating Covid was impossible and a response to growing public disquiet and anger (there was a case where a number of people being bussed against their will to a quarantine centre were killed when the bus they were in crashed...)
The strangest thing for me at any rate is that it all feels like a fairytale. You have to pinch yourself and remember the grim realities that millions died worldwide. Lost time, lost lives, lost opportunities. For me also, a sad anniversary is coming up this month - three years since the comedian Tim Brooke - Taylor died of Covid.
I didn't see that there was a specific reference to it still possibly including it. But if it is a possibility, the wet market would then be (at least) the third point in the chain (lab virus > animal > wet market > humans).
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