Big Lychee, Various Sectors

The pressing, overriding, number-one, get-on-with-it!!! priority must, surely, be to vaccinate the elderly. Instead, Hong Kong officials roll out the red carpet for a delegation of traditional Chinese medicine experts…

Traditional Chinese medicine will be very effective in reducing severe illness and deaths,” [CE Carrie] Lam said.

…”Elderly patients in Hong Kong have more severe illnesses and a higher death rate,” [Mainland TCM expert Xiaolin] Tong said.

“Chinese medicine has its advantages, especially in treating elderly patients with chronic diseases, because it not only targets the coronavirus but also helps treat their other illnesses.”

Full-blown adulatory press release here. More breathless praise for ceaseless Mainland anti-epidemic supplies. 

You will soon be getting your very own anti-epidemic service bags with free boxes of quack voodoo placebos with mystery herbal ingredients that might damage your liver. Check out the logistics and manpower. (Can we grind up the TMC pills as fertilizer for potted plants? Hate throwing stuff away.) 

More official messaging reflecting government priorities: the latest (in fact, first) Safe Community Newsletter from the Inter-Departmental Counter-Terrorism Unit. The oh-so Civil Service graphic design is itself borderline aesthetic terror.

A few more links, for ambience…

Professor Philip Cowley on how Hong Kong’s zero-Covid mania backfired…

Hong Kong ran out of coffins as well as smugness. 

Bloomberg op-ed on the end of ‘antifragile’ Hong Kong…

…the administration’s public statements have tended to emphasize the city’s inability to cope and dependency on help from mainland China.

(An interesting point: unless you’re past your mid-40s or so, you have no memory of a time when Hong Kong had leaders who displayed pride and confidence in the city.) 

HKFP on people stranded overseas giving up hope (loosely defined) of returning to Hong Kong anytime soon.

The above picture shows:

1. a pizza factory
2. the left-luggage facility at an airport
3. Hong Kong…

…has further expanded its capacity at public mortuaries, as well as for body identification and cremation, to cope with an accumulating number of corpses.

No scientific logic involved, but the Hong Kong government ‘streamlines’ the flight suspensions regime in such a way few will notice much difference. And with impeccable timing, the Airport Authority announces that the third runway will start operations later this year. (As a Mainland-built Covid isolation facility?)

Much of the mental trauma Hong Kong people are undergoing arises not just from the effects of harsh and unscientific Covid policies, but from trying to work out why?

From a (probably paywalled) Economist story on Beijing’s obsession with internal stability ahead of the CCP congress later this year…

If officials relax the [zero-Covid] policy to protect the economy they would risk a surge of cases that could overwhelm China’s fragile public-health system.

Surely the root of the Hong Kong dilemma. If Hong Kong transitions to ‘living with Covid’ ahead of the Mainland, what message does that send the Chinese public about the CCP’s infallibility? We have to drag out absurd flight suspensions so as not to look different.

And then the icing on the cake: an HKFP article points out how omicron has given Beijing an opportunity to reduce barriers between the Mainland and Hong Kong systems via traditional medicine and health workers. (Extra context: a relentless focus on travel-, quarantine- and school-related policies that encourage the middle class and expats to leave.)

As Dr Owens mentions in his latest, the greatest suffering falls on the least well-off. And…

The failure to define a strategy has resulted in an attempt to walk a tight rope, balancing on the one side, science and evidence, and on the other a political constituency seemingly unable to understand the most basic concepts of biology.

And how did this get past the SCMP’s Party Secretary? The patriotism/Nat-Sec-driven dismantling of district civic groups – and official boycotting of remaining pan-dem activists – has undermined the fight against Covid at neighbourhood level…

“It took a few months for the government to break community links that had taken 40 years to build up. We can’t expect anyone to have the ability to rebuild them soon.”

The official explanation for Shanghai’s use of phased lockdowns in handling its latest outbreak: the region’s economic importance to the rest of the world. Sounds like making-it-up-as-we-go bullshit. Probably a sign of tension between zero-Covid ideologues and science-based pragmatists as the city is poised to go the way of Hong Kong.

For chart geeks – HKFP presents highlights of Hong Kong’s omicron saga in graphic form.

And, on non-Covid affairs, how Beijing is enforcing correct thinking on Ukraine among educators.

A telling tale of two cities: Singapore follows science and eases Covid travel restrictions and mask-wearing, while Hong Kong imports Mainland Chinese folk medicine ‘experts’. After consulting some oracle bones, I wonder whether public acclaim for the voodoo stuff is a patriotic face-saving quid-pro-quo for letting Hong Kong deviate from some of Beijing’s more pointless zero-Covid obsessions like compulsory mass-testing. These are quite charitable oracle bones.

Remember when Hong Kong used to laugh at Singapore?

So what are the chances that within one month we will get reports of people being rushed to hospital with liver problems after taking the Traditional Chinese Medicine?

For a hard-hitting account of how Mainland-imposed politics has cost Hongkongers’ lives, see this Bloomberg piece…

Hong Kong’s situation is the product of several specific policy failures, which stem partly from Beijing’s decision to take greater control of the financial hub after 2019’s pro-democracy protests.

More from Vice…

…more than its ferocity, this wave of outbreak has stood out for how preventable it was, experts say.

An HKFP interview with newly released/expelled Samuel Bickett.

Regina Ip is going full tankie these days – the US made Putin slaughter thousands of Ukrainian civilians because evil West something something.

An HKFP op-ed on China’s problem with winning trust.

After hinting that compulsory universal Covid testing is not going to happen, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam again seems to reverse course, suggesting that it might indeed still go ahead. This seems to be a way to pacify pro-government lawmakers who – at officials’ request – dutifully supported the plan, only to be left looking stupid when the government U-turned and announced an easing of anti-Covid measures on Monday.

Not that the authorities’ policies are looking much more coherent. The CE is now saying the moving of school summer holidays to March is to reduce infections, though she first presented the plan as a way to free up space for mass-testing. Enforcement squads are still locking down buildings in pursuit of Covid cases – when maybe half the population has now been infected. Carrie actually seems proud that quarantine regulations for arrivals and airline suspensions are still making travel near-impossible, when other countries are now waving vaccinated passengers through. And she is openly rejecting expert advice on ‘transitioning to endemicity’ on the grounds that it’s based merely on academic models. Not least, we are told opening up cross-border travel must still come before all else.

The local leadership seems to be trapped between Chinese government ideologues insisting that the CCP be seen to vanquish the virus and Mainland experts urging a de-facto abandonment of the hopeless ‘zero-Covid’ goal. But when we look back at this one day, the tragedy of Hong Kong’s post-2019 patriots-only Nat-Sec regime will be very stark. The further the city moves away from open(-ish) government exposed to opposition voices and a critical press and towards a top-down Leninist system of control, the worse the quality of administration gets.

Instead, we get non-stop struggles against mysterious hostile forces. US lawyer Samuel Bickett is unceremoniously kicked out of Hong Kong to join the ranks of foreigners colluding with each other (his statement). And the Nat-Sec Police valiantly/earnestly/without a shred of self-effacing irony uncover a plot by a 60-ish couple to found a ‘Darth Vadar’ army of ‘black knights’ (‘radicalized by fake news’) to launch a revolution to overthrow the CCP with crossbows, a stockpile of foreign currency, and seditious chatter on social media. A Nat-Sec judge refuses the pair bail.

Meanwhile, in a galaxy far, far away, Financial Secretary Paul Chan plans to invite international businessmen to the Rugby Sevens to witness Hong Kong’s vibrancy. Wonderfully fawning Standard editorial here.

The Hong Kong government announces a gradual but nonetheless unmistakable retreat from zero-Covid. Flight suspensions are…

…“no longer timely,” as the pandemic situation in the listed countries [is] often “no worse than Hong Kong.”

Social distancing will be relaxed, schools will go back to normal, and the mass-testing idea looks deader than ever. The authorities are also (separately) putting more effort into getting the elderly vaccinated.

The introduction of common sense will be dragged out in phases over months so it looks like an orderly plan enabled by the astounding success of existing policy, rather than an embarrassing admission that the latter was a disaster. Of course, in theory officials could always do another U-turn. But it looks serious this time (spin-doctors even had the gumption to manage expectations over the last few days). And it is surely not a coincidence that there are more signs of a cautious, tentative, maybe-sort of rethink about zero-Covid in the Mainland.

Every silver lining has a cloud. The parasite lobby looks forward to cramming Hong Kong with millions of tourists by year-end. After the last face-mask has been dumped in the trash, the last children’s playground reopened and the coffin supply restored, Hong Kong will still be left with fumbling government-by-patriots and a NatSec regime obsessed with sedition, fake news and terrorism. 

If Beijing can extricate itself from zero-Covid – a trap created by the leadership’s need to craft a narrative of CCP infallibility – could it also back away from siding with Vladimir Putin? Some mid-week links (I’m ironing the cat tomorrow)…

George Magnus on how Ukraine, Covid and reliance on the private sector could undermine Xi Jinping’s ‘common prosperity’ vision. 

From GMF, the consequences for Beijing of backing Putin…

Walking away from Putin now is unlikely to gain China much credit and would only leave it more exposed. It has stuck by far less useful partners in the past. 

The Daily Beast on the possibility of a Putin assassination…

…poisoning Putin wouldn’t be an easy task. According to a source who works in the upper echelons of a Russian ministry, Putin in February allegedly sacked the some 1,000 people—from cooks to launderers to secretaries to bodyguards—who catered to his daily personal and professional needs, and replaced them with a new group of attendants.

A lengthy Octavian Report interview on what goes on in Putin’s mind.

An LRB review of The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War by Nicholas Mulder.

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?

The Hong Kong government’s latest flip-flopping U-turn offers a glimmer of hope. Chief Executive Carrie Lam ponders the possibility of loosening some of the city’s most absurd and detested anti-Covid measures, including flight bans, lengthy quarantines, face-to-face school classes, and social distancing. 

Although described as a ‘mid-wave’ review, the re-think comes two weeks after the current wave peaked. But let’s not quibble. We should drop to our knees in thanks that this administration can grasp the concept that, if you’re in a hole, the first step is to stop digging. Even if, to save face, the initial plan is to dig less frantically. 

It would be nice to think this means top officials are finally listening to exasperated public opinion – and/or are willing to nag their overseers in Beijing to let Hong Kong use some science and pragmatism in policymaking for a change. More likely, the tipping point has come as a result of a subtle shift towards reality by some Mainland experts, plus discreet but angry complaints from a small number of high-powered financial-sector bosses.

(Prediction: the authorities will not re-open beaches, barbecue sites and children’s playgrounds until the very very end of this process. Say mid-2023 or something – not until the regime finds some replacement post-Covid ways to needlessly hassle and torment the populace, to emphasize the joys of all-patriots government.)

With luck, the local administration can perhaps look forward to seeing less damning coverage in the international press, like the summary by Timothy McClaughlin in Atlantic summarizing Hong Kong’s Covid mistakes in excruciating detail…

…In sum, decision makers ignored public-health expertise, driven instead by politics and overly enthusiastic efforts to show fealty to Beijing. The result has been an embarrassingly shambolic effort that has created a preventable public-health disaster, yet another glaring failure of governance from an administration whose defining characteristic is catastrophic ineptitude.

And, ouch…

The endless, unrestrained flattery [of Beijing by Hong Kong officials] seems akin to the celebration of an arsonist who lights his house on fire, cuts the water hose, and then cheers as the fire brigade arrives to extinguish the flames

A couple of things for the weekend…

Hollywood weans itself off kowtowing to the CCP, and the movies get better.

To put Hong Kong officials’ communication skills in perspective – Arnie addresses the Russian people.

Following panic-buying of facemasks, toilet paper, instant noodles, Panadol, fresh vegetables and frozen meat, Hong Kong experiences its latest shortage – coffins. But at least we have a healthy supply of patriots-only government.

Property tycoon Ronnie Chan becomes the latest shoe-shiner-turned-backstabber with an SCMP op-ed criticizing the Hong Kong administration for its Covid failures. As always with these sudden displays of condemnation, the angle is that local leaders failed to follow Beijing’s instructions – which you may or may not feel is duplicitous crap, though I couldn’t possibly comment. Ronnie (or his ghostwriter) also laboriously pedals the line that we must cut ourselves off from the whole world because we are so reliant on the Mainland – which you may or may not feel is illogical garbage, and it is.

Officials tell Hongkongers they should be grateful that Mainland medical staff have arrived here. Despite being offered HK$30,000 a month – a multiple of a Mainland doctor’s usual salary – the low number of cross-border medics has disappointed officials. A Standard editorial asks…

Could it be due to personal concern because of the risky job nature? Or could it be because the recruits may not actually pocket that much if their hiring is carried out via recruitment or other agencies that charge the workers fees deductible from their earnings?

The editorial also suggests deputizing foreign domestic helpers as quarantine facility carers. Whether it’s a brilliant or dreadful idea, it’s the sort of out-of-the-box thinking that would make our bureaucrats’ brains explode. 

Part 3 of the riveting Shanghai Quarantine Diaries. In today’s episode: a young nurse who pushes the nasal swab too far finds the test kits also measure patients’ IQs; Miss Fang in Unit 64J dies of hiccups after eating the mysterious brown lumpy thing in her lunchbox; owing to confusing instructions, medical staff accidentally perform lobotomies on 20 new arrivals; Aunty May of Unit 71B wins the all-Medical Detention Facility cockroach-stomping competition for the fourth week in a row; and as a special treat, inmates receive Volume 7 of Xi Jinping’s The Governance of China in Romanian. Now read on.

(With apologies to the late great Viv Stanshall.)

Hong Kong enters the ‘Dynamic zero half-the-population’ phase, as HKU experts estimate that 48% of residents have already been infected with Covid. Meanwhile, the government is still banning flights from various countries and locking down individual apartment blocks, in an effort to nip the outbreak in the bud.

A thread from the FT’s stats specialist on the severity of Hong Kong’s Covid situation, including extremely unflattering comparisons with New Zealand. We are currently seeing more deaths per million than pre-vaccine 2020-21 Italy, UK and US. 

Following online complaints from whiny brainwashed losers in Shenzhen, the Hong Kong authorities close beaches. That way, bitter Mainlanders will feel better about their lockdowns – and that’s the most important thing, isn’t it? 

Nikkei Asia presents one of the most acerbic summaries I’ve seen in the last – oh, 48 hours – of Hong Kong’s Covid awfulness…

Even as the health system creaked and supermarket shelves emptied, [Carrie Lam’s] government only urged calm through news releases delivered in the dead of night and a recorded eight-minute video released on Feb. 27, in which the chief had said mandatory testing would be imposed. Otherwise, she was filmed welcoming health officials, food and medical supplies from the mainland and inspecting new isolation facilities built by a Chinese state company.

As a free no-extra-charge bonus, readers get some ideas on how to keep their test results to themselves with a clear conscience…

When Ms. Cheung’s rapid antigen test for COVID-19 turned up positive … [she] could notify the authorities as required, or hunker down at home.

Cheung … chose to self-isolate… She feared that if she came forward, she would be carted off to one of the city’s makeshift isolation facilities…

Memorize this bit in case you need it…

Cheung said she was… “not keen to take away resources from people who had more severe symptoms or had more need for support from the health care system.”

Some news to further encourage such selflessness: inmates at the community isolation facility on the Bridge to Nowhere border control island at the north-east end of the CLK runways are undergoing soothing audio healing – sort of like  vibrational sound therapy at the Oriental Oasis – in the form of fully laden B747 cargo planes taking off and climbing at 800-1,200 feet above them. Around 100 decibels.

(Cue your link to the second installment of the Shanghai quarantine diary.)

Ex-official Fred Ma and other pro-establishment types blast (mildly and politely) the administration for its incompetence. If we had just a trace of a participatory political system, you could interpret this as a ‘dump Carrie’ campaign. But the CCP decides everything: if they want to punish Hong Kong one way, they’ll reappoint Carrie; if they want to punish the city another way, it’ll be John Lee.