As I write this post from my apartment in Shanghai, the city is undergoing its most intense encounter with COVID since the virus started plaguing the world in early 2020. For reasons we can try to guess at but will likely never truly understand, the government of China decided quite suddenly to end its “Zero Covid” campaign earlier in December. Since then, a “tsunami” of Covid infections has hit the populations of China’s biggest cities. Even small town and village life has been affected, at least in the area I live in neighboring Kunshan.
Among people I know in China, which includes family, friends, colleagues, students, and many others in my life, the initial reaction to the end of “Zero Covid” was one of relief. Having been through a challenging year of lockdowns, restrictions, obstructions, daily tests, QR codes, travel codes, school entry codes, and so forth, we were all ready to move on with our lives. If the price of entry into a more normal state of being was catching the virus, it seems that most people were willing to pay that price.
Over the month of December, almost everyone I know in China caught the virus. Some had a mild reaction to it, while others suffered through several days of fevers, chills, body aches, and other symptoms associated with the virus. Some recovered quickly, while others had persistent coughs and fatigue. It didn’t help that the years of masking and social distancing had probably weakened everyone’s immune systems. Yet I don’t know of anybody in my circles who had to have emergency health care treatment.
While catching Covid was a very scary proposition during the early months of the outbreak back in 2020, over the past year that fear diminished. It seems that the greatest worry for people in China in 2022 was of being sent to a “quarantine camp” or special facility, which was the policy for those who tested positive up until last December. Once that policy ended, I think people were far less concerned about testing positive. In fact, it quickly became a source of amusement and humor with endless references in social media to 小阳 “little positives” a synonym in Chinese with 小羊 “little lambs”.
This doesn’t mean that people aren’t taking precautions. Most people still wear masks outdoors, even though they aren’t mandated anymore. I’ve even seen my neighbors in Kunshan wearing masks inside their own homes. I don’t know if they are being extra cautious and/or if someone in the home caught the virus. I live in a remote area of Kunshan, a relatively rural area of farmlands and fields, and even there, people are acting very cautious. Thus, it would be misleading to state that people in China have given up on protecting themselves from the virus. But the consequences of catching it are quite different to what they were up until a month ago.
In my own case, I decided to play it safe and stay in my home in Kunshan while the virus was raging in Shanghai. By mid-December both my wife and daughter, who live in Shanghai, had the virus, so for me going back to Shanghai would have meant getting exposed to it for certain. I ended up spending my birthday weekend and the following Christmas weekend alone in my house, and for three weeks I saw nobody outside of my immediate neighbors. By late December, my wife and daughter had recovered from the virus, though they still complained of fatigue and had persistent coughs. I decided to return to Shanghai for New Year’s weekend. I still played it safe and stayed home or took lone walks with my dog in and around our neighborhood. I’m trying to avoid this current wave, though I figure it’s only a matter of time before I too am exposed to the virus. Yet life goes on, and I can’t stay in my fortress of solitude forever.
While there has undoubtedly been a huge wave of viral infections since the change in policy was announced in early December, that wave already seems to be receding, at least in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Through most of December, both cities were like ghost towns, with residents either suffering from the virus and/or sheltering in their homes. In the past few days, I’ve heard and seen reports of cities coming back to life and people going out to dine and even to drink in local bars. It should be added that since the change in policy in December, there are no more restrictions on entering these places, so it’s a matter of preference now.
People whom I know in China are now waxing optimistic about the coming year. As soon as this wave diminishes, and as soon as “herd immunity” kicks in, people will be very happy to see their daily lives returning to normal without all the restrictions and the fears of lockdowns, green fences, quarantine camps and so forth. We are also very excited to have the opportunity to travel again both in China and abroad, and already a flood tide of people are leaving the country. Happily, the policy of quarantining incoming people upon their arrival to China is ending soon. On a sour note, other countries have laid on new policies and restrictions against people traveling from China, mainly asking for evidence of negative tests. In some cases, people from China are even banned from entering the country. This is all temporary though and I’m sure it won’t last long.
My prediction is that sometime after the Chinese New Year, people will have largely moved on, as they have already done in most other parts of the world. Yes, there will be casualties, as there were in enormous numbers even in such advanced countries as the USA. Yes, the virus will come and go, and some people will be reinfected. Yet over time, immunity levels will rise and Covid will indeed become something akin to a typical flu virus. I think this is what the government was banking on when they decided to end the “Zero Covid” campaign. Over time, we will have a much better understanding of the causes and consequences of the policy and its sudden ending. For now, I remain cautiously optimistic that our lives in China can be groovy once again.