If you flick through the pages of the Irish media, which was, until recently, obsessed with all things Covid, you will find very little about the unfolding situation in Shanghai.
Here’s the quick run-down, if you need to catch up: In mid march, the Chinese authorities, which still pursue a zero-covid policy, noticed a small flare up of Covid in Shanghai, which is one of China’s (and the world’s) largest cities. Their response? An extreme lockdown. One half of the city was confined to their homes pending mass testing, for five days. Then, the plan was, the other half would be confined to their homes for mass testing. Those testing positive would be taken away to centralised detention for full quarantine, until healthy.
The plan was to identify the infected, remove them from the city, and get back to normal. It did not work.
Weeks later, Shanghai remains under a lockdown which makes Ireland’s level five look like an illegal rave in a warehouse somewhere near Navan. People are confined to their homes. If they go out in public, they must wear a full hazmat suit. They are not permitted even to leave to buy groceries – all food is delivered to their doors. The brief, temporary lockdown has become indefinite. And because everybody is at home, ordering food, the chances of getting a good place in the food queue are slim. People have taken to ordering things like birthday cakes in desperation – because there is less of a queue to get them delivered.
That, unsurprisingly, has led to cases of literal starvation. And the city is now at boiling point. Here are some reports showing the scale of the problem. Something you’ll never have seen before in here – a whole city screaming in frustration into the night. It’s like something from a horror movie.
What the?? This video taken yesterday in Shanghai, China, by the father of a close friend of mine. She verified its authenticity: People screaming out of their windows after a week of total lockdown, no leaving your apartment for any reason. pic.twitter.com/iHGOO8D8Cz
— Patrick Madrid ✌🏼 (@patrickmadrid) April 9, 2022
Another view. People weeping pic.twitter.com/yCtzB8A3qa
— Matthew G. (@gator_phd) April 9, 2022
Shanghai is buckling under a city-wide lockdown with no end in sight.
– Residents confront police: "We are starving!"
– A man vents: "Where is the Communist Party?"
– Pet corgi beaten to death after its owner reportedly taken to quarantine#ZeroCovid brutality and desperation. pic.twitter.com/CEAYN6L8Qs— Kristie Lu Stout✌🏽 (@klustout) April 8, 2022
For me, and my family of four, it has been a struggle
I’m on day 20 of lockdown, and have not been able to leave home during that time
We rely on deliveries exclusively for our food, and around 10 days ago started to notice that deliveries were increasingly difficult
— Jared T Nelson (@JaredTNelson) April 7, 2022
It was puzzling to see those things while at the same time it seemed impossible to get any meat, any rice, or any fruit
We struggled every day, all day, to get those essentials, usually with limited success, although we thankfully were able to get vegetables
— Jared T Nelson (@JaredTNelson) April 7, 2022
https://twitter.com/champ1on6/status/1511683059799707651
In addition to the obvious failure of the policy, there are the usual reports of horrendous Chinese brutality: Chinese authorities whisking people away to detention facilities which are, according to some reports, more like concentration camps than hospitals. In some cases, if the infected person lives alone with a pet, there are reports of police beating dogs and cats to death in case they might be infected. It sounds like hell on earth.
One problem, though this will annoy some readers, is the widespread apparent failure of the Chinese vaccine, Sinovax. The Chinese appear genuinely terrified that if the infection gets out of control, then the relative lack of immunity, compared to in the west, will lead to overflowing hospitals and absolute mayhem.
The biggest culprit, though, is China’s zero covid policy. Two years since their catastrophe at Wuhan set covid on the world, the rest of the world is beginning to recover and move on. In China, though, there remain hundreds of millions of people at risk, because, having suppressed the virus so long, natural immunity is very limited.
The Irish media is not paying attention to any of this. In part, of course, because the war in Ukraine is sucking all the international news oxygen out of the room. But in part, too, you suspect because China is living proof that the zero covid policy championed by many journalists over the past two years is a disaster.
This isn’t just bad pandemic management. It is also at the stage (sadly unsurprising in China) of mass human rights abuses, cruelty, and incompetence. And this is just in one city. What happens when, inevitably, there are more outbreaks, in places like Beijing? Or Hong Kong?
Nothing good, appears to be the answer. Those public health experts in the west who championed Zero Covid should be dragged into television studios and asked to answer for this. After all, China is following their policy to the letter.