Welcome to your jail Covid quarantine facility.
Penny’s Bay Hong Kong

Alex Lo used to be pro Zero Covid policy. Now sees its downsides. As do many others. I’ve been speaking about the downsides of ZCP for a long time. Even if it “crept up on me”. Pretty much since he beginning of the pandemic and hearing an expert epidemiologist say that “zero covid” won’t work. At the time everyone agreed. Then somehow got on that train anyway. Now they’re jumping off. David Dodwell is another.

Why would anyone self-test when the punishment for positive is 21 days in the horrid Penny’s Bay for you and all those you were in close contact with? Why?

Thanks to SCMP here’s  the text of Alex Lo’s piece:

A close family friend recently spent 21 days in quarantine because she took a kung fu sword class in which the instructor contracted Covid-19.

Her daughter and husband, thankfully, only had to isolate themselves for a week. All three tested negative from the beginning.

A friendly reader wrote about his own fear of not being able to take care of his elderly mother and an old dog.

“I am definitely more afraid of being locked up at Penny’s Bay than getting Covid!” he wrote.

“I have had ALL my jabs including the booster. It’s like being sent to prison for something not our fault. I am petrified as I have an old mother and an old dog and it would be disastrous if I am sent to a dirty facility for 21 days. Both might die.”

Many pet owners we know have expressed similar worries.

According to the news, about 50 elderly people were sent to a temporary quarantine centre at AsiaWorld-Expo, after a nurse at their care home tested positive. At least one family has complained they have had trouble contacting their mother.

All of them will be kept in quarantine for two weeks, though no one turned up positive.

The authorities have promised to take care of them. But there won’t be baths or showers during the quarantine period “due to infection control measures and limitations at the location”, they were told.

Instead, they would be wiped down by nursing staff.

They will have to trust their government that their elderly parents or grandparents are in good hands. Fingers crossed.

Hong Kong’s zero-Covid policy and quarantine requirements now threaten to turn into a reign of terror for its residents.

People are living in fear – not of catching the virus, which probably won’t kill them or wreak havoc in their lives, but of the government’s policy.

The same reader continues: “Does it not make sense to isolate at home and do my civic duty and I promise not to escape?”

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I can see how all these draconian measures made sense when dealing with a deadlier but less contagious variant such as Delta. But it looks increasingly clear the same measures won’t work with Omicron.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor now warns of “an exponential increase in cases” and promises more quarantine and isolation facilities!

Isn’t it time to revise strategies rather than doubling down on ones that have failed?