Weird extremes in Covid “strategies”

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk guranatees lockdowns

In Australia the premier of Queensland guarantees she will lockdown if needed. She guarantees it to put people’s minds at ease. Meanwhile, in the UK, Boris guarantees that he will ease the lockdown on July 19. He guarantees it to put people’s minds at ease. 

One promises lockdown, one promises easing. That’s the extremes of handling the pandemic. 

At the Australian “Zero Covid” end, you also have New Zealand and us here in Hong Kong. In fact, if anything, we’re even stricter here in Hong Kong, requiring three weeks of in-hotel isolation for all arrivals, the longest quarantine mandate in the world. The US, meanwhile, has pretty well opened up all its states, Democratic and Republican. We three — the Antipodes and Hong Kong — appear to be the only Zero Covid places in the planet. 

It was weird listening to Australian ABC Radio Canberra yesterday, with the “breaking news” that one case of Covid had been found in Goulburn, an hour’s drive north of Canberra. The news promised more details as they came to hand.…

The thing about these Zero Covid “strategies” is that they’re not really strategies at all. At least not for handling Covid longer term There’s no hint of an exit strategy. Other than continuing to keep the borders closed and locking down at every single new case. Australia has already said it will keep borders closed until late 2022. Here in Hong Kong we used to have 30 million visitors a year. Now that’s a trickle. Apart from “hoping” for a border opening with the mainland, our beloved motherland, there’s not hint of a clue of an idea of when and how we might open up to the rest of the world as “Asia’s World City”.What kind of “strategy” is that?