More than travel sacrificed in quarantine measures
In reducing quarantine for close contacts at Penny’s Bay to only 14 days but continuing the requirement that all entries from abroad do a 21-day stay, the government is displaying the same questionable logic as in banning dine-in services at restaurants after 6pm.
Confucius wrote, “If you govern with the power of your virtue, you will be like the North Star. It just stays in its place while all the other stars position themselves around it”. Governing by confusion, meanwhile, is creating a meteor shower of panic.
Your correspondent in “We’re a Covid-fearing city, live with it” (January 14) misses the point entirely about what is wrong with the government’s draconian and unjustified quarantine imposition. He states it is “all good as long as you don’t need to travel frequently”. Travel is but one element that Hong Kong has sacrificed, along with jobs, families, financial stability, mental health, and the city’s status as a centre for international trade and commerce.
The cost is far more than a supposed desire to travel; it is a loss of a right to live sans the open prison Hong Kong has effectively become. The world is learning to live with Covid because that is the only viable course to allow people to sustain their lives. Hong Kong must accept this so we can return to the world of normalcy.
