Covid Recovery: the Real Story
Less than three weeks ago, China reopened and now they are talking about completely removing barriers to entry on 8th January. I haven’t seen an official report of that, but many people are talking about that day, it seems likely that’s going to happen.
What a ride the last couple of weeks have been. Let’s start at the beginning
We went from just two weeks ago where I could honestly say, I knew no one and I knew of no one who had Covid to a place now where I don’t know anyone who hasn’t had it, or at least had symptoms of it without actually getting a confirmed test result — some reports suggest there are as many as 37 million new cases a day in China, and I’ve actually no reason to believe that’s not true. I’m connected to literally thousands of people on WeChat, Twitter and here on YouTube and, inside of China, everyone I know has either had covid or lives with people who have had covid and all this over the last two to three weeks.
Things are nothing like the reports. there are probably some backlogs in the mortuaries that’s true, and funeral homes are busy but that’s because millions of people are off work sick. I was talking to a friend of mine who runs a restaurant, he’s having trouble keeping up with orders as most people are having food delivered to home because they don’t want to or can’t go outside because they’re sick, that’s another indicator that the numbers of covid cases are high.
My friend has two problems, one is that half his staff are off sick and the other is that there are only about 30% of the delivery drivers currently working, this is borne out by the fact that Ann, my wife, is trying to send some parcels to her parents but there’s been no driver available to pick them up for the last three days and, as most people know, the Christmas holiday doesn’t affect that here, it’s purely because so many of us are or have been sick.
What’s happening with mortuaries and funeral homes then, why ar these things hitting the news?
Well, when a country has 1.4 billion people it’s common for about 10 million to die every year, that’s an average of 27,000 people a day who die under normal conditions that means they all need cremating and that’s not easy to do if you’re running on skeleton staff. I am of the opinion that there’s usually a skerrick of truth in the story but it’s been exaggerated to make China look bad again — exactly what CNN/BBC and others would want you to believe. China is not as bad.
The truth of the matter is that there is definitely a surge in cases and they aren’t exaggerating the numbers, the fact is, most of us are relatively mild — so far, I’ve heard of one friend of a friend who needed hospital and she’s out now after three days. EVERYONE else that I know of has either recovered at home or is recovering although all of us have different stories to tell about the effects of Covid.
Personally, I’ve had two weeks of being uncomfortable, my wife was actually sicker than me but her symptoms were shorter than mine, she was better by day 7. I’ve had good days and I’ve had particularly bad days, the good days are no worse than a heavy cold, the worst day was when I couldn’t get out of bed much before midday because every time I lifted my head, I thought I was going to fall over immediately, with dizziness and nausea.
I’m not an expert in virology or epidemiology so I trust the government to do the right thing and when they opened, I was ok with that — what I wasn’t ok with, and this is one of the few cases of me being critical of China’s government, the speed with which they opened, I honestly thought they had done so in the wrong order.
What actually happened was thins, one day, Covid was killing millions, the next day, we were open again and it was no worse than a flu. I honestly think there should have been some information, some steps in between these two things in media about why that was the case, the information came out a day or two after the opening and but it was a little late to prevent something of a panic.
Streets, in Zhongshan where I live, were deserted, I went to the bank and saw hardly any people but those people I did see were all masked up and scurrying to get their tasks done and get back to the relative safety of home. Restaurants were almost empty, something I hadn’t seen for a very long time and there were lines outside pharmacies waiting for medicines
People were getting medicines, just in case they got sick, no one got more than they needed but, for a few days, such was the speed of opening, that just the sheer volume of people buying things they thought they needed meant there was a rush on anything related to fevers, pain killers or even cold and flu treatments. That’s normal
On Wednesday two weeks ago, in the evening, both my wife and I complained of sore throats. We knew, We went to a pharmacy at 9pm and had to wait in a queue for what we needed. It took 10 or 15 minutes, that’s all.
The following day, we went for a Covid test, my wife got her result and was positive, mine was negative. We weren’t able to get Rapid Antigen Tests for several days, but we did get some about day three and I tested positive on an RAT.
I’d been fully vaccinated including a booster shot and had a very mixed range of symptoms, some mild days but a couple of very, very uncomfortable days. I felt my wife was sicker than I was but for a shorter time, she only had two vaccines, no booster. No idea why, everyone I’ve talked to had different symptoms and different experiences but here’s the important thing.
Every single one of the people I know, and it really is thousands, who have confirmed they have covid, I haven’t heard on one person who hasn’t already recovered. Whatever stories CNN and the like want to put out, here in Guangdong, it’s a pretty wild but mild ride
One other thing that isn’t true are these stories in the media of three years of lockdowns and that’s why we were protesting, I’ve travelled to over 40 cities during these supposed lockdowns, we had over a year without any restrictions at all, no one in China died for over 13 months and this is part of the reason why a lot of people were reluctant to get vaccinated, there wasn’t a mandate to do so and there didn’t appear to be much of a need because China had done such a good job of keeping covid out and keeping everything normal, which is what it was.
It was about 6 months ago, parts of Dongbei, Northeastern China had a couple of outbreaks, then about four months ago we heard of Shanghai having the same problem, two months ago, that spread to places like Guangzhou and Chengdu and that’s when the mass lockdowns started, just in the last few months — for much of the last 3 years, living, working, travelling in China has been relatively normal, we needed tests when we travelled, we needed to scan a code and register our presence but to say these were restrictive is Western media manipulation of the real story. For most of the last three years, huge parts of China had absolutely no barriers to travel, just a few, inconveniences when doing so, nothing more than that.
I hope your Covid experience, especially if you’re in China matches mine, I’m sure there aren’t millions dying, we’d know if it were happening and I’m sure, no matter what happens, western media will report negatively and then, when it turns out they are wrong, they’ll question the statistics and smugly assert that it’s the numbers that are wrong, I disagree.
