“This two-step strategy can help lift Hong Kong out of its fathomless coronavirus rut” || My Letter published

 

Click to enlarge. Online version here

With some editorial changes to numbers, but basically the same as what I submitted. Published today in the Lead Letter column, kind of like a mini Op-ed. 

[ADDED: “... most fatalities in Hong Kong were over 70.” [years old], that’s 88% of HK’s Covid deaths, as of today].

I’m just a raindrop in the rainstorm on this Covid stuff, but if the government wants to “dry off” (in the analogy), then it needs to do something, and there’s hints it is, slowly, hesitantly, easing restrictions. 

But not on the mainland. The Communist Party of China remains steadfast (stubborn? obstinate? intransigent? obdurate?).  Committed to the Zero Covid Policy, as the 20th Party Conference takes place, possibly the most boring political meeting anywhere, with Xi Jinping, to be renamed (surprise!) chairman of everything, for life ’n all. So, I doubt I’ll be able to visit the mainland again in my lifetime. I used to visit often. It was easy and convenient. Now it’s between difficult and impossible. 

ADDED: it’s true what I say in my letter about our government Covid site. It’s clunky, messy, overloaded and user-unfriendly. Whereas a private sector site like Our World in Data, run out of Oxford University, is a wonder of user interaction and ease of use. Quite why this government, with the buckets of money it has, can’t do something about its website falls into the “I don’t get it” category. A suspicious person might say they don’t want to make it easy and transparent. And that may well be true, Who knows? Not I.