I recently returned to Shanghai from Sydney; let me share my experience of being out in Shanghai yesterday grocery shopping.
As I was leaving the apartment complex, I was greeted by the building manager at the gate and handed a pass out. Going outside, I see there’s not a single person without a mask on.
I walked past a cafe and ordered a coffee by scanning a QR code with my phone using a screen outside the café; I then paid for it using the app.
After this, a staff member asked me to stay outside and keep a safe distance from others. Soon I received a message to collect the order and another message to make sure I was wearing a mask and had sanitised my hands at the dispenser located at the store entrance.
After this, I went to the supermarket, where I was greeted at the entrance by someone with an electronic thermometer who checked my temperature.
I showed them my “green” health check QR code and filled in my name and mobile number. Then I scanned another QR code and my name and ID number popped up with the date of my arrival back in Shanghai and a list of all the countries I’d visited in the previous 14 days.
Once I’d sanitised my hands I was allowed entry to the supermarket, where all the employees were wearing gloves and masks. There were markings on the floor at checkout showing us where to stand, 1.5 metres apart.
The supermarket was fully stocked, there was no panic, no fights and plenty of toilet paper. Once I’d bought my groceries, I entered the metro station to return home.
At the entrance, there was another temperature check and an X-ray security check of my bag. Inside the station, I saw cleaners disinfecting all the metal turnstiles.
On my return to the apartment I handed in my pass-out in order to get back in. I had to briefly remove my mask to activate the CCTV facial recognition — this automatically unlocked all doors and gates on approach, removing the need to touch door handles.
Yes, it is the Big Brother approach, but this is how to stop a virus and keep everyone safe. Closing down a beach and shit-fights at supermarkets are laughable.
I’m now my way to the local community centre to pick up my weekly supply of masks.
Danny Du, 52, commutes between Sydney and Shanghai where he is Brand Creative Director at Geely Design Global. In Shanghai, he lives in the heart of the former French Concession.
After Covid-19 has ultimately been contained & a vaccination developed I worry that the experience in Shanghai may be a template for future society (minus the masks, temperature monitoring & sanitiser).
Hats off the authorities in China! And its citizens. If that’s what it takes to manage this pandemic then we’re absolutely stuffed! Can we please outsource management of this crisis to the Chinese government? Might be able to get a bit of decent infrastructure built at the same time, maybe a high speed railway line or two?
Shhhhh! Pete. You might rouse Keane into another bout of ‘Chinese tyranny’ drivel.
What a great idea guys. Let’s make Schmuck Morrison dictator for life and give him unlimited power along with Muttonhead Dutton so he can follow Xi Jinping’s example, like sealing up apartments of suspects for 14 days, regardless of how much food they have. Why not send your suggestion to the Schmuck himself? I’m sure he’d welcome it. I’m going to nominate both of you for the 2020 Darwin Awards.
Crikey permitting here is a link to 68-page handbook which is a complete guide to what Chinese medical authorities have done to deal with the virus:
https://covid-19.alibabacloud.com/
Scroll down to the Read/Download boxes and get it for free.
Al, here’s a few other things they’ve done, not mentioned in the report:
(1) Arrested those who tried to warn of the danger earlier.
(2) Acted 3 weeks later than they should have, which would have reduced the spread of the virus by 95%
(3) Accused Italy and/or the US of being the true source of the Virus
(4) Stopped testing for the virus in Wuhan (and probably elsewhere)
(5) Sealed off apartments of people with suspected virus cases for 14 days, leaving them to die of either the virus or starvation.
What has any of this to do with the global fight to bring the virus under control? You should download and read the manual, for that’s what it is, a procedures manual, not a “report”. Some day we may know exactly what happened. Right now, your kind of over-heated finger-pointing makes no contribution whatsoever.
Regarding other potential sources, Dr. Giuseppe Remuzzi, co-author of a recent paper in The Lancet about the situation in Italy, says he is now hearing information about it from general practitioners. “They remember having seen very strange pneumonia, very severe, particularly in old people in December and even November,” he says. “This means that the virus was circulating, at least in [the northern region of] Lombardy and before we were aware of this outbreak occurring in China……It was impossible to combat something you didn’t know existed”.
Well that’s one version of events Oldie, here’s the World Health Organisations first Summary report that suggests another.
Data as reported by: 20 January 2020
SUMMARY
Event highlights from 31 December 2019 to 20 January 2020:
• On 31 December 2019, the WHO China Country Office was informed of cases of pneumonia unknown etiology (unknown cause) detected in Wuhan City, Hubei Province of China. From 31 December 2019 through 3 January 2020, a total of 44 case-patients with pneumonia of unknown etiology were reported to WHO by the national authorities in China. During this reported period, the causal agent was not identified.
• On 11 and 12 January 2020, WHO received further detailed information from the National Health Commission China that the outbreak is associated with exposures in one seafood market in Wuhan City.
• The Chinese authorities identified a new type of coronavirus, which was isolated on 7 January 2020.
• On 12 January 2020, China shared the genetic sequence of the novel coronavirus for countries to use in developing specific diagnostic kits.
• On 13 January 2020, the Ministry of Public Health, Thailand reported the first imported case of lab-confirmed novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) from Wuhan, Hubei Province, China.
• •
Situation update:
• As of 20 January 2020, 282 confirmed cases of 2019-nCoV have been reported from four countries including China (278 cases), Thailand (2 cases), Japan (1 case) and the Republic of Korea (1 case);
• Cases in Thailand, Japan and Republic of Korea were exported from Wuhan City, China;
• Among the 278 cases confirmed in China, 258 cases were reported from Hubei Province, 14 from Guangdong Province, five from Beijing Municipality and one from Shanghai Municipality;
On 15 January 2020, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan (MHLW) reported an
imported case of laboratory-confirmed 2019-novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) from Wuhan,
Hubei Province, China.
On 20 January 2020, National IHR Focal Point (NFP) for Republic of Korea reported the first
case of novel coronavirus in the Republic of Korea..
John
Here is some extra information from Axios (March 18, 2020) to supplement the WHO summary. I don’t think it contradicts the WHO summary, just supplies a clearer perspective:
Dec. 10: Wei Guixian, one of the earliest known coronavirus patients, starts feeling ill.
Dec. 16: Patient admitted to Wuhan Central Hospital with infection in both lungs but resistant to anti-flu drugs. Staff later learned he worked at a wildlife market connected to the outbreak.
Dec. 27: Wuhan health officials are told that a new coronavirus is causing the illness.
Dec. 30:
Ai Fen, a top director at Wuhan Central Hospital, posts information on WeChat about the new virus. She was reprimanded for doing so and told not to spread information about it.
Wuhan doctor Li Wenliang also shares information on WeChat about the new SARS-like virus. He is called in for questioning shortly afterward.
Wuhan health commission notifies hospitals of a “pneumonia of unclear cause” and orders them to report any related information.
Dec. 31:
Wuhan health officials confirm 27 cases of illness and close a market they think is related to the virus’ spread.
China tells the World Health Organization’s China office about the cases of an unknown illness.
Jan. 1: Wuhan Public Security Bureau brings in for questioning eight doctors who had posted information about the illness on WeChat.
An official at the Hubei Provincial Health Commission orders labs, which had already determined that the novel virus was similar to SARS, to stop testing samples and to destroy existing samples.
Jan. 2: Chinese researchers map the new coronavirus’ complete genetic information. This information is not made public until Jan. 9.
Jan. 7: Xi Jinping becomes involved in the response.
Jan. 9: China announces it has mapped the coronavirus genome.
Jan. 11–17: Important prescheduled CCP meeting held in Wuhan. During that time, the Wuhan Health Commission insists there are no new cases.
Jan. 13: First coronavirus case reported in Thailand, the first known case outside China.
Jan. 14: WHO announces Chinese authorities have seen “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus.”
Jan. 15: The patient who becomes the first confirmed U.S. case leaves Wuhan and arrives in the U.S., carrying the coronavirus.
Jan. 18:
The Wuhan Health Commission announces four new cases.
Annual Wuhan Lunar New Year banquet. Tens of thousands of people gathered for a potluck.
Jan. 19: Beijing sends epidemiologists to Wuhan.
Jan. 20:
The first case announced in South Korea.
Zhong Nanshan, a top Chinese doctor who is helping to coordinate the coronavirus response, announces the virus can be passed between people.
Jan. 21:
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirms the first coronavirus case in the United States.
CCP flagship newspaper People’s Daily mentions the coronavirus epidemic and Xi’s actions to fight it for the first time.
China’s top political commission in charge of law and order warns that “anyone who deliberately delays and hides the reporting of [virus] cases out of his or her own self-interest will be nailed on the pillar of shame for eternity.”
Jan. 23: Wuhan and three other cities are put on lockdown. Right around this time, approximately 5 million people leave the city without being screened for the illness.
Jan. 24–30: China celebrates the Lunar New Year holiday. Hundreds of millions of people are in transit around the country as they visit relatives.
Jan. 24: China extends the lockdown to cover 36 million people and starts to rapidly build a new hospital in Wuhan. From this point, very strict measures continue to be implemented around the country for the rest of the epidemic.
The bottom line: China is now trying to create a narrative that it’s an example of how to handle this crisis when in fact its early actions led to the virus spreading around the globe.
I hadn’t realised that https://www.axios.com/about was a more authoritative source than the WHO who actually had an international team on the ground. You certainly learn something every day.
WHO have issued a dally report and are now up to No 63 so a good reference for anyone curious.
Axios is of the same ilk as Politico and Daily Beast. Sensationalistic trash. Here is a link to an alternative site:
https://asia-review.com/2020/03/20/no-china-didnt-cover-up-the-covid-19-outbreak/
It’s a long piece but ends with the following conclusion:
China’s response to the outbreak of Covid-19 has been exceedingly transparent, swift, effective and lifesaving.
However, the narrative has been hijacked by a few Western media outlets to propagate a cover-up using nitpicked events that were twisted to fit their narrative.
The reason it has been successful is because it aligns with pre-existing Western biases about China’s government being untrustworthy liars.
John, Axios, like any source, is most certainly not authoritative. As I mentioned previously, the info from Axios simply adds more information to provide a different perspective. The trick is to look at various relatively trustworthy sources and compare them, because the most dangerous misinformation comes from both selective highlighting and/or omission of relevant information. WHO itself, or rather its Director General has been accused of misleading the world about the danger of the pandemic in its early stages out of fear of upsetting China.
Al, I will give you the benefit of the doubt and say you are being extremely naive in quoting an anonymous website that has suddenly appeared in the last week and has devoted itself to exonerating the CCP and diverting blame for the pandemic to both the US and Italy.
And I will give you the benefit of the doubt of, without being aware of it, engaging in an ancient phobia, an irrational fear of anything from China. You know, like “Yellow Peril”, “Red Tide”, “Falling Dominoes” etc etc. I shall propose a name for this phobia: “Antisinoism”, and its practitioners as “Antisinoites”.
Regarding the website. I have my views, as you know. And if I come across a source which expresses those views then I will draw attention to it. Lord knows we need alternatives to the avalanche of trash from western media sources.
Al, I am deeply disappointed at your interpretation of my post. Surely you are aware that it is possible to despise a government while admiring its people? I despise Trump, Putin & Xi Jinping but not the people they govern. I refuse to accept Marx’s famous statement that a people gets the government it deserves. Think carefully about what you are doing. By linking criticism of the CCP with sinophobia, you are not only insulting the Chinese people, you are endangering those living abroad, like my good friends here. Anyone with the slightest degree of common sense knows that the CCP and its leader Xi Jinping are primarily responsible for the Corona Virus and denying that is recklessly inflaming Sinophobia. I urge you to reflect on the damage you are doing and to stop your irresponsible blather.
I detect two threads in your comment, Oldie. The first is pure déjà vue. George Bush justifying the upcoming invasion of Iraq in 2003, saying something along the lines of “our argument is not with the people of Iraq, but its government”. Madeleine Albright saying that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children due to American sanctions was “acceptable”. “Tough love” they called it. A bit like your crocodile tears for the Chinese people. Rank with insincerity.
The second thread is a continuation of your usual style. Not being able to debate an issue you engage in unadulterated ad hominem attacks on someone (me in this case) who holds and expresses views contrary to your own. And what a tsunami this time! “Recklessly inflaming Sinophobia”. Really! You’ve outdone yourself this time.
Using QR codes to order and pay plus numerous other tasks has been standard in China for long enough. It is established practice and the next digital step beyond the Contactless payment card most of us use, instead of a card your phone is used. In Taiwan over 50% of payments there are now by QR code once VISA had developed the necessary protocols.
Temperature monitoring and masking are the significant differences between the Asian response and the Western response. Oh and the ready availability of hand sanitizer. Temperature monitoring along with a standard operating procedure for taking care of anyone identifying as having an elevated temperature allows for a less severe lockdown and consequent economic damage. I have no idea has to why it has not been introduced as part of our response to this emergency.