On the Culture and COVID Gap: Two Extremes
There is both an intimidating and honorable collective ideal of personal sacrifice for the greater good in China. This existed in S. Korea too, but even more so here. I never fully appreciated, or was as frustrated with this as I have been over the last week. To put this into perspective, to-date China has less than 5,000 people who have died from COVID-19. The country is at around 4,636 deaths as of January 13, 2022. This is remarkable, and ironic considering that the virus started here. There is a lot of speculation that these numbers are forged as a matter of national pride, but I'm going to push back on that - they want everyone to know exactly who has COVID, and where they have gone. It is public knowledge here, and you can track it with your APP. Also, they shut everything down when there are signs of an outbreak; they test like nobody else. That was what happened this week : China Shuts Down Entire City Over Two Cases of Omicron.
After my initial quarantine, I naively thought that I was done. I have just started to explore this remarkable place, and the entire city shuts down over a handful of cases. Also, 80% of China is vaccinated at this point, so what is everyone really afraid of? The answer is Omicron. That, and the Olympics starts in just a few weeks - then we have Spring Festival, and China has a zero COVID tolerance policy. So, I can understand hitting a temporary pause button. However, coming from a place where half of the people I know have gotten COVID and recovered (they were all vaccinated), this seemed extreme, and frustrating. All the sudden, I can no longer go into the city just when I was learning how to use the transportation system. Also, I had planned on finally going to go grocery shopping for the first time. All I have are snacks. We are told to stay in our community, and only venture out for necessities -- so not as bad as a quarantine, but I need to get food. Next, we are informed that there will be City-Wide testing: City-Wide, in a city with 15.9 million people.
This is to occur on our campus, and later the details come out that it will be between 4-7PM. Okay, I guess I'll go later after the lines calm down, I naively thought. I arrived at about 5:30 PM - the line wrapped around seven of our apartment buildings (you can see how big they are in the above picture) and made an L shape down the parking lot. It took me ten minutes to walk it. It was 27 degrees. I waited for three and a half hours. Some workers in red shirts came by with a QR code to scan for paperwork, and with shaky, frozen fingers I attempted to translate the forms and fill them out. This is madness, I thought. The opposite of the madness of the U.S. approach to this problem. This first video is at the end of this line. They collected throat swabs in groups of about seven people per test tube, to save money and enable mass testing.
After this, I took a long, hot shower - it was one of the top ten showers of my life. A few days later we got the first round of results (our entire district was negative), and another test was scheduled. I was initially pretty pissed at this--because I still needed groceries, and I didn't have any chance of actually being infected with this virus. However, this time the testing was by building, so it only took an hour - but it was even colder. I really started to feel for the workers, because they were out here for 7 hours at a time. The security guards even retreated to their police car, to stay warm.
After this, my favorite admin assistant offered to drive me to the grocery store, because they didn't want us taking a taxi or public transit (which actually makes sense). So, this saved me. I spent 1200 Yuan at the store (divide by 6-ish, if you're wondering) - the most I'd ever spent at a grocery store. I maxed out my carrying capacity, because K had to leave me at the gate of my community, and couldn't drop me off at the actual apartment building or help carry. Luckily, I'd been training my entire life for this moment. I hoisted the five bags and full bookbag home, and happily unloaded.
Two days later - a third round of testing was scheduled. That's right! Nobody in our district tested positive, but a third round of tests is scheduled. This time it only took about 15 minutes. Also, there were tents for the workers. From 3.5 hours, to 15 minutes in less than a week, that's how quickly these guys got their testing game together. The height of my frustration was the second test, but at the third round of testing I started to feel and think differently. On the way back to my building, a little girl playing with her Grandfather kicked a ball away from him, towards me. I kicked it back to her and she shyly turned away. Her grandfather laughed, and I smiled, but felt something change inside me, because it was that moment I realized her grandfather was safe. If he was in the States, this might not be the case. This was the wisdom of Asia, this was the wisdom of this sacrifice.
We have essentially let a plague kill our people because about 30% of Americans don't believe in vaccines or wearing masks to prevent the spread of viruses, and we stopped shutting anything down after our initial closing in April of 2020. New York and California did have some city specific exceptions to this. Also, staying mostly open has saved many businesses from closing their doors, and kept some people out of poverty- so I know there are two sides to this issue. Everyone should be able to see at least two sides, but I never understood the extremes until now. I never understood the yearning for freedom many Americans are afraid of losing, and I never understood the pride of sacrificing it to save people right in front of my face. Now I understand both; I wish I could show you, but I can only tell. Thanks for listening 💗
*Written and edited during the week of events
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