Shanghai residents running out of food & patience

Under COVID Lockdown, Shanghai's People Are Running Out of Food and Meds While Pets Get Killed in the Streets | Reason | Liz Wolfe: 

April 8, 2022 - "In Shanghai, which is three times the size of New York City, residents have been under strict pandemic lockdown since March 27 in some parts, and since March 31 in others, with no end in sight.... With residents unable to leave their houses, food supplies are dwindling, and government workers attempting to deliver supplies to homes and apartments, frequently failing to do so in a timely or consistent manner. People are running out of the medicines they need.... Some people experiencing medical emergencies, CNN reports, have died after being turned away; they were unable to access care without negative COVID tests. 'We are not killed by Covid, but by the Covid control measures,' read a viral post on social media site Weibo.

"Due to strict containment and isolation measures in place for COVID-positive people, some mothers report being forcibly separated from their COVID-infected children by authorities. Health authorities allege parents will be able to appeal this and seek permission (!) to accompany their COVID-positive children to hospitals and isolation wards. It is unclear how this will actually apply in practice.... 

"'In this country it's not the virus that scares us, but the chaotic anti-Covid measures that have caused risks to the well-being of the elderly, the children and companion animals," Shanghai resident Lily Chen told Bloomberg. "I now realize we can only rely on ourselves — not the government—to protect our own families."

"A video that has gone viral in China shows one family in Shanghai being taken off to COVID quarantine as their pet corgi chased the van in pursuit of its people.... The dog was promptly killed by a COVID prevention worker wielding a spade. (This is not the first time Chinese authorities have come under fire for brutal treatment of pets in pursuit of COVID containment.)

"Those who do violate or attempt to violate state-mandated quarantine or lockdown are subjected to punishment, though it is difficult to know the full extent due to the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) aggressive censorship. In other cities like Shandong, which was also recently forced under lockdown, videos of harsh punishments have circulated....

"All such measures are part of the CCP's 'COVID Zero' strategy, which aims to entirely eliminate COVID spread within China's borders, often through imposition of aggressive regional lockdowns like the one seen in Shanghai, as well as strict border control and frequent testing. Only about half of China's above-80 population is fully vaccinated, with Chinese vaccines proving less effective than their Western counterparts. It's unclear what the death toll looks like as this COVID outbreak takes it course, and CCP-sourced numbers are notoriously unreliable. [According to Worldometers, China has reported just two Covid deaths in 2022 for the whole country. - gd]

"What is clear is the degree to which residents of Shanghai are disturbed by the state of deprivation they've been forced to endure; an unusually high amount of government criticism has emanated from Weibo and other platforms, which are typically heavily censored. 'We don't want to starve to death,' chanted residents of one suburb. 

"'Control your soul's desire for freedom,' one drone told them as it aerially broadcasted COVID control policies throughout the city, emblematic of how seriously CCP authorities take citizens' concerns."

Read more: https://reason.com/2022/04/08/under-covid-lockdown-shanghais-people-are-running-out-of-food-and-meds-while-pets-get-killed-in-the-streets/

Trudeau gov't bigger threat than Freedom Convoy

The Freedom Convoy's Ottawa protest was no threat to Canada's free and democratic system of government, argues Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms president John Carpay. However, the Trudeau  government's response is such a threat.

Trudeau Liberals' claim that truckers want to 'overthrow' government is false and dangerous | Post Millennial - John Carpay:

April 5, 2022 - "Jody Thomas, the Prime Minister's Security and Intelligence Advisor, declared on March 10 that 'there's no doubt' that the people who organized the peaceful protest in Ottawa in February 'came to overthrow the government.' Oddly, Ms. Thomas then goes on to express grave doubt about whether the protesters had the ability to do this, or even knew how to do it. Indeed, the truckers brought neither guns nor tanks, did not storm the Parliament buildings, and made no effort to occupy even one government building. Some individuals called on the prime minister to resign, but nobody used force to try to make that happen.

"Ms. Thomas credits the Emergencies Act with empowering the federal government to freeze bank accounts without a court order or oversight, and to have police horses trample unarmed protesters, 'in a way that we would have not otherwise been able to do.' It appears that, for Ms. Thomas, no measures can be too harsh when suppressing what she describes as 'domestic ideologically motivated violent extremism.'

"Ms. Thomas refers to the February protest as the 'occupation' of downtown Ottawa, although Members of Parliament (and many others) have stated publicly that they had no trouble walking through the city centre each day to get to their place of work. Article 42 of the Hague Convention of 1907 states: 'Territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army. The occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised'.... A large gathering of people in one area does not constitute an 'occupation.' Ms. Thomas also referred to the peaceful protest as a 'blockade,' when in fact the downtown was not in any way sealed off to prevent goods or people from entering or leaving. It was the police, not the protesters, who eventually erected a fence around the downtown core, after the Prime Minister had declared a national emergency. Certainly, some Ottawa residents were inconvenienced by the protests, but this does not turn the protest into a 'blockade.'

"If the protesters had been violent or had committed crimes, the Ottawa Police would have arrested those people, and publicized the arrests. To support the government's narrative.... Yet during the first three weeks of the Ottawa protest, prior to the February 14 declaration of a national emergency, police did not charge any trucker with any crime.... Moreover, if any protester had vandalized, stolen, or burned down property, or had assaulted anyone, or had uttered criminal threats, the CBC and other government-funded media would have gleefully reported on it repeatedly, around the clock, for weeks on end. Why were government-funded media not able to show Canadians footage of protesters committing crimes?...

"The accusations of Ms. Thomas about an 'occupation' and 'blockade' with intent to 'overthrow' Canada's government are as irresponsible and unfounded as the Prime Minister's narrative about unvaccinated Canadians being 'anti-science, racist, misogynist, extremists.'

"There is a dark and very sinister side to accusing peaceful protestors who disagree with certain government policies of wanting to overthrow the government.... A Cambodian court recently convicted 19 political opposition leaders of trying to overthrow the government, a verdict described by Human Rights Watch as bogus.... When Nicaraguan security forces violently put down anti-government protests in 2018, President Daniel Ortega claimed the protests were actually an attempted coup with foreign backing, and that foreign-funded organizations were part of a broader conspiracy to remove him from office.... Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, whose regime murdered an estimated 300,000 Ugandans during his eight-year reign of terror, was very offended when Archbishop Janani Luwum publicly criticized the government's violence. Well, you guessed it: Idi Amin accused this archbishop of seeking to overthrow the government. Archbishop Luwum was arrested in February 1977 and died shortly after....

"Thus far, opponents of Prime Minister Trudeau have not been murdered and have not been jailed for long periods of time. But demonizing the unvaccinated minority, accusing opponents of wanting to overthrow the government, freezing bank accounts without a court order, and commencing criminal prosecutions against peaceful protesters are clear and direct threats to the survival of Canada as a free and democratic society."

John Carpay is president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (jccf.ca), whose clients include truckers who peacefully protested in Ottawa in February.

Read more: https://thepostmillennial.com/trudeau-govt-claim-that-truckers-want-to-overthrow-government-is-false-and-dangerous

Authoritarianism in a time of Covid

 The New Authoritarians | Tablet - Alex Gutentag:

March 29, 2022 - "After Trump’s election, many commentators expressed anxiety that his followers would plunge the country into far-right authoritarianism. Instead, it is the class of college-educated Democrats that now openly argues for the value of blind submission to authority and the elimination of personal freedoms.... It no longer poses a mere threat to democracy — it has become a full-fledged attack on basic democratic principles. Far from upholding civil liberties, the self-proclaimed 'resistance' to Trumpism has itself exhibited many hallmarks of authoritarianism: suppression of dissent, demand for unquestioning obedience, and tight control over the flow of information.... 

"The TV production of Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale premiered on April 26, 2017, and was widely touted in liberal media outlets as a 'prescient' 'mirror' of the country under Trump.... Yet based on the domineering COVID-era behavior of the show’s own target audience, The Handmaid’s Tale appears to have been less of a warning to viewers and more of a handbook. Forced and coercive medical procedures, adoption of mandatory new garbs, censorship, and frozen bank accounts were central to the totalitarian state depicted in the novel and the show. In the end, this program found its real-world parallel not in autocratic moves from the right, but in liberal-approved measures like vaccine mandates, mask requirements of dubious medical value, restrictions on speech, and seizure of protesters’ financial assets—all of which were vocally supported by the affluent laptop class.

"This is not simply a matter of hypocrisy. It is only by painting themselves as victims fighting against their oppressors that college-educated professionals can rationalize their own authoritarianism. The cult of victimhood conjures the specter of fascism, misogyny, or white nationalism in order to justify blatantly repressive measures. This is why, for example, the professional class consistently portrayed unvaccinated people as Trump supporters even though in many major cities vaccine passports mostly excluded Democrat-voting Black residents from indoor establishments. Under the guise of combatting anti-vax extremism, woke liberal politicians embraced segregation and the exact kind of 'systemic racism' they claimed to oppose. While considering themselves to be on the side of righteousness and rationality, commentators called for hospitals to reject unvaccinated patients, and some even celebrated their deaths. This is precisely the type of punitive, regressive tendency that progressives warned would be a consequence of Trump’s election....

Photo: Miles Probyn, Associated Press

"President Biden likewise encouraged Big Tech to deplatform anyone with alternative views about COVID vaccines by presenting the people sharing these views as literal murderers who were 'killing people.' Sweeping censorship that amounted to digital book burning helped create an illusion of consensus even though many of the claims prohibited on social media (such as the fact that the vaccines did not prevent transmission) proved to be true. Far from private companies exercising discretion over how their platforms are used, these tech companies operated in coordination with the executive branch, meaning their clampdown on speech was in violation of the First Amendment. This is exactly the type of orchestrated silencing effort we were once told only happens under dictatorships.

"Moreover, it is not social media but mainstream news outlets that have been the largest purveyors of 'misinformation.' One accusation often made against Trump supporters is that they blindly and unthinkingly believe false claims. But during the pandemic this was consistently true of college-educated Democrats, who still hold the most skewed and erroneous views about COVID. In 2022, 48% of 'very liberal' people still believed that COVID posed a 'great risk' to children’s health despite widely available evidence that the risk COVID poses to children is miniscule. Between January 2021 and September 2021, the CDC reported that 280 children died with COVID (later the CDC would admit that it had inflated its total death numbers by almost 25%). According to the latest available data (from 2015-19), flu and pneumonia killed more children annually. Heart disease, firearms, drowning, and motor vehicles all pose a much greater risk to children than COVID. Believing that COVID is a 'great risk' for kids, justifying child mask mandates and school closures, is exactly the kind of persistent scientific illiteracy of which journalists accuse Trump supporters.

"College-educated Democrats have also expressed growing support for the national security surveillance state.... In 2017, 69% of Democrats said the FBI was doing a 'good' or 'excellent' job, compared to 49% of Republicans (and 44% of Democrats in 2003). Also in 2017, the CIA had a net favorability of 32% for Democrats, compared to a net favorability of just 4% for Republicans. Democratic support for federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies has coincided with increasing cooperation with tech companies and media outlets. This was demonstrated by the suppression of the now 'verified' 2020 Hunter Biden laptop story, which was restricted on Twitter and Facebook while the media and dozens of intelligence experts attempted to discredit it as 'Russian disinformation.' 

"The beneficiaries of a mounting culture of censorship, silence, and exclusion are not just Democrats who see some political gains. More significantly, it is their financial backers. Throughout the COVID era, the party and its affiliated voter base of white-collar workers have solidified their role as ideological enforcers for billionaires and corporations. During lockdowns and vaccine mandates, tech and pharmaceutical companies made astronomical profits and were aided and abetted at every turn by their pajama-class foot soldiers. While lockdowns plunged millions of Americans into conditions of unemployment, despair, and hunger, it gave professionals a luxury: a time to rest at home and be free from stressors like commuting. As billionaires saw their wealth surge, the upper-middle class stayed silent or complicit.... 

"This silencing had serious repercussions. It is now commonly acknowledged, for example, that school closures were a mistake, but those who spoke up early lost friends, jobs, and opportunities. What is dismissed as cancel culture is actually central to the authoritarian project. A new idea ('flatten the curve,' 'save Grandma,' 'two weeks to stop the spread') can be introduced at any moment, and if it’s framed as morally necessary and unquestionable, it will receive resounding support from the most well-educated class.... When new moral panics, rigid rules, and speech codes are constantly being introduced, the main function they serve is to test people’s loyalty to the dominant ideology."

Read more: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/new-authoritarians

Ottawa arsonists not linked to Freedom Convoy

Police charge 2nd man in arson during Ottawa convoy protest | CBC News:

April 6, 2022 - "A second man has been charged after an attempted arson in a downtown Ottawa apartment building during the so-called Freedom Convoy, but police again say they haven't uncovered anything linking the accused with the protest. The incident on Lisgar Street Feb. 6 prompted city politicians and some of the building's residents to link the event to the protest, which occupied streets in front of Parliament Hill and angered downtown residents for more than three weeks.

"On March 21, ... Ottawa police charged a 21-year-old Ottawa man in connection with the incident and said they were hoping to identify a second suspect. On Wednesday, police said a 41-year-old Ottawa man is facing the same set of charges as the 21-year-old: arson with disregard for human life, arson causing property damage, mischief to property, mischief to property endangering life, and possessing incendiary material. In news releases announcing both sets of charges, police said there is 'no information' indicating the men were 'involved in any way' with the protest.... 

"[Ottawa] Mayor Jim Watson included the arson in a list of incidents of harassment against residents and disruptions he blamed on the ongoing protest. Coun. Diane Deans also cited an alleged detail from witnesses — that the front door was duct-taped to prevent those outside from entering the building — which she said showed the escalation of protester tactics knew no bounds."

Read more: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/apartment-building-lisgar-arson-second-man-charged-1.6410506

How the Liberals and NDP pushed the arson hoax about the Freedom Convoy | True North - Cosmin Dzsurdzsa:

April 7, 2022 - "Despite the now undeniable absolution of the Freedom Convoy of an alleged attempt to burn down a building full of entrapped residents, the governing Ottawa establishment seems to have been replaced with crickets.... Throughout February, Liberal and NDP MPs (alongside the legacy media establishment) continued to insinuate that protesters had been involved in the incident, if not actually accuse them of responsibility. The false claims not only litter the Hansard records of debate and committee proceedings in the House of Commons, but they were also repeated on social media and by pundits opining on the evils of the anti-restrictions protesters who had gathered in the capital. 

"NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh was the first to introduce the false accusation to the official record when he pointed to the incident as an 'example' of the so-called commonplace violence at the protests. 'We saw an example of this violence with an attempted arson of a downtown apartment building, where people started a fire and taped the doors closed when they exited. I ask members to take a moment to think what that means. They had the forethought to set a fire and then tape the doors so no one could escape,' said Singh on Feb. 7. 

"The accusation was solidified when the Liberals called for a unanimous consent motion calling on the House to condemn 'the arson attempts … by protesters on the streets of Ottawa.' When the motion failed to pass without the support of the Conservatives, Liberal MP and attack dog Mark Gerretsen used it to beat the official opposition over the brow and accuse them of not wanting the protest to end. 'They knew what they were saying no to. One lone Conservative over there, obviously set up by the whip’s desk, probably with their head down, said no and rejected the unanimous consent motion on behalf of the Leader of the Opposition,' claimed Gerretsen. 'It is clear that she does not want the protest to end for the same reasons the rest of the country does.'

"The examples are too many to include in one article, but the same claims were repeated by MPs Sameer Zuberi (Lib.), Matthew Green (NDP), Arif Virani (Lib.), Francisco Sorbara (Lib.), Alistair MacGregor (NDP), Anita Vandenbeld (Lib.), Laurel Collins (NDP), Ron McKinnon (Lib.), Jennifer O’Connell (Lib.), Ryan Turnbull (Lib.), Parm Bains (Lib.), Jenny Kwan (NDP), Andy Fillmore (Lib.), Peter Schlefke (Lib.) and Gord Johns (NDP).... 

"The push to pin the attempted arson in Ottawa onto the Freedom Convoy betrays how much the government has and continues to rely on shoddy reporting and even social media to leap into action.... [T]he arson was immediately pinned to the convoy by a local resident who clearly had a gripe with the protest movement and its goals....  Without further investigation, politicians took this claim and ran with it.... Looking through the parliamentary debate, it is clear that a hoax played a key role in justifying Trudeau’s first-ever use of the Emergencies Act, potentially setting a precedent for the regular use of government emergency powers to quash protests that are politically inconvenient."

Read more: https://tnc.news/2022/04/07/dzsurdzsa-how-the-liberals-and-ndp-pushed-the-arson-hoax-about-the-freedom-convoy/

Sri Lanka gov't uses lockdown to quash protests

Sri Lanka imposes 36-hour lockdown to quell protests over food, fuel crisis | Hindustan Times - Sharmita Kar:

April 2, 2022 - "Sri Lanka on Saturday declared a 36-hour lockdown as hundreds of lawyers urged President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to revoke the emergency declared after violent clashes that began late Thursday night in Colombo. Protests have since erupted in several other towns as well, as the island nation faces a massive foreign currency debt that has left it unable to pay for fuel and other essential goods, leading to daily 13-hour power cuts and shortage of food and diesel. The emergency declared by Rajapaksa allows the military to arrest people without warrants....

"Rajapaksa declared a public emergency and imposed a nationwide lockdown from Saturday evening till Monday morning to 'protect public order and maintain essential supplies and services'. 'Under the powers given to the president, curfew has been imposed countrywide from 6 pm (1230 GMT) on Saturday to 6 am (0030 GMT) on Monday,' read a statement by the government's information department....

"The 'state of emergency' order raised fears that the Sri Lankan government could resort to a crackdown to quell agitations. Police have arrested 53 people so far and briefly imposed a stringent curfew in and around Colombo to contain other sporadic protests.

"US Ambassador to Sri Lanka Julie Chung extended support to the protesters, saying they had the right to protest peacefully and that it was essential for democratic expression. 'I am watching the situation closely, and hope the coming days bring restraint from all sides, as well as much needed economic stability and relief for those suffering,' she tweeted.

"About 22 million people in Sri Lanka are grappling with rolling blackouts for up to 13 hours a day as the government scrambles to secure foreign exchange to pay for fuel imports. Hundreds of people clashed on Thursday with police and the military outside Rajapaksa's residence as they called for his ouster and torched several police and army vehicles.

"Experts have said that the ongoing crisis is a result of economic mismanagement by successive governments, which was further compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic, frustrating tourism and remittances. It has also caused a dent in the political support for Rajapaksa, who swept to power in 2019 promising stability."

Read more: https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/sri-lanka-news-36-hour-lockdown-to-quell-protests-over-food-fuel-crisis-101648901489680.html

New Covid variant wave met in USA with apathy

Headline, U.S. News & World Report, Apr. 4, 2022

America Is Staring Down Its First So What? Wave | The Atlantic - Katherine J. Wu:

April 5, 2022 - "If the United States has been riding a COVID-19 ’coaster for the past two-plus years, New York and a flush of states in the Northeast have consistently been seated in the train’s front car. And right now, in those parts of the country, coronavirus cases are, once again, going up. The rest of America may soon follow, now that BA.2 — the more annoying, faster-spreading sister of the original Omicron variant, BA.1 — has overtaken its sibling to become the nation’s dominant version of SARS-CoV-2.

"Technologically and immunologically speaking, Americans should be well prepared to duel a new iteration of SARS-CoV-2, with two years of vaccines, testing, treatment, masking, ventilation, and distancing know-how in hand. Our immunity from BA.1 is also relatively fresh, and the weather’s rapidly warming.... But ... the country’s capacity to track the coronavirus is on a decided downswing.... Testing is how individuals, communities, and experts stay on top of where the virus is and whom it’s impacting; it’s also one of the main bases of the CDC’s new guidance on when to mask up again. Without it, the nation’s ability to forecast whatever wave might come around next is bound to be clouded.

"'I keep thinking back to this idea of If we don’t measure it, it won’t happen,' says Shweta Bansal, an infectious-disease modeler at Georgetown University.... In reality, 'it’s very well happening, and we just don’t see it yet.' There is still no guarantee that the next wave is nigh — but if it is, the U.S. is poorly positioned to meet it. Americans’ motivational tanks are near empty.... The next wave may be less a BA.2 wave, and more a so what? wave — one many Americans care little to see, because, after two years of crisis, they care so little to respond.

"Colloquially, epidemiologically, a wave is a pretty squishy term, a 'know it when you see it' notion that gets subjective, fast. 'There is no technical definition,' says C. Brandon Ogbunu, a mathematical modeler studying infectious-disease dynamics at Yale. And with COVID-19, there’s no consensus among experts on exactly when waves begin or end, or how sharp or tall one must be to count.... That makes the start of a wave tough to identify even when testing data abound; no single inflection point guarantees a shift from not a wave to definitely a wave. Technically, the BA.1 wave that reached its zenith in mid-January may not have even ended yet, because experts haven’t decided what threshold it would need to reach to do so.... 

"Watching only the national curve can also be misleading. Country-wide data show only a gargantuan average; these numbers smooth and conceal the case rises that have already been erupting in isolated patchworks. That sort of variability is a product of where humans have carried this new subvariant; of the immune landscape that vaccinations and past versions of the virus have left behind; and of the local defenses, such as masking (or not), that people are leveraging against BA.2....

"And these more regional waves still matter, even if they seem at first easier to ignore. They will, in many cases, mark the places least prepared to weather another surge in infections. Tests, while more abundant, have remained inaccessible to many of those who need them; without tests, treatments, too, will drift out of reach.... Wastewater surveillance, which homes in on virus particles extruded in waste, could help — but these monitoring sides aren’t distributed evenly, either. As things stand, the national map of where the virus is moving is full of blank spots and dark patches. Even unmeasured waves, if they grow big enough, have ways of breaking over us. At worst, the virus could eventually surprise us with a rash of hospitalizations — a sign that the initial bump of cases, one we should have responded to, is already in our rearview mirror.

"Not all case rises have to spell disaster. Since November, when Omicron was first identified, more Americans have been vaccinated for the first time, or boosted, or infected; rapid tests have become more available; and the oral antiviral Paxlovid has hit far more pharmacy shelves. All these factors, plus a springtime flocking into the outdoors, especially in the northern U.S., could help blunt a potential wave’s peak; some may even help uncouple a rise in infections from a secondary surge in hospitalizations and deaths.... It’s certainly a reasonable future to hope for, but not an outcome that can be taken for granted.... 

"Human actions can slow rises in cases. They can also accelerate them. And when infections take off, it’s not always easy to tell who holds the steering wheel — pathogen or host. 'Every outbreak since the beginning of humankind has a behavioral component, an immunological component, and a viral component,' Yale’s Ogbunu told me. 'Where one ends and another begins is never completely clear.' But Americans are too far along in this pandemic, and too familiar with the tools we need to manage it, to shirk culpability entirely."

Read more: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/04/ba2-omicron-variant-covid-surge/629474/

Shanghai's Covid lockdown extended

Shanghai Covid lockdown extended to entire city | BBC News:

April 4, 2022 -"Chinese authorities have extended their lockdown of Shanghai to cover all its 25 million people after a fresh surge in Covid cases. Initially, there had been separate measures for the eastern and western sides, but the whole city is now subject to indefinite restrictions.

"Shanghai is the largest single city to be locked down to date. The important financial hub has battled a new wave of coronavirus infections for more than a month. Reported cases have risen to more than 13,000 a day....

"Residents in some areas of the city said ... no-one was allowed to leave their housing compounds, not even to collect essential provisions. They reported difficulties in ordering food and water online, with restrictions on when customers are able to place their orders, because of a shortage of supplies and delivery staff....

"The city is testing the limits of China's zero-Covid strategy, amid growing public anger over quarantine rules. The policy sets China apart from most other countries which are trying to live with the virus. But the increased transmissibility and milder nature of the Omicron variant has led to questions over whether the current strategy is sustainable in the long run."

Stand News, Street lockdown in Shanghai, 2021. Used with permission.

Analysis by Stephen McDonell, [BBC] China correspondent:

"...  China has done Covid lockdowns before, but not on the scale of its financial megacity. The logistical challenges required to confine 25 million people to their homes, while keeping them fed, are huge.

"Social media here is full of angry residents complaining that they can't order food because the delivery system is clogged up. Centralised isolation facilities – many using only camp beds, with no showers or other facilities – are bursting with infected people squashed in next to one another. One of China's few reliable media outlets, Caixin, has reported that close contacts of infected people will be moved to neighbouring provinces. This could potentially involve hundreds of thousands of Shanghai residents.

"The Chinese government's complete elimination strategy has become something of a mantra, with the government ridiculing other countries for sacrificing their own people on the altar of opening up. Some medical specialists here have tried to get the message through that, for a vaccinated person, catching the Omicron variant of Covid will probably not necessitate going to hospital.... Few people in China seem to be aware of this. Their officials and state media have kept it from them.

"So the lockdowns continue and it's not only Shanghai closed right now. Jilin City (3.6 million people), Changchun (nine million), Xuzhou (nine million), the steel city of Tangshan (7.7 million) and various other towns and villages are keeping their residents indoors."

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-60994022