COVID-19 Lockdown in Shanghai
COVID-19 Lockdown in Shanghai
Written by Kathryn Golding
Month 24, 2022
You step outside of your home. You’re encouraged to leave the house as little as possible to minimize your risk of becoming infected with COVID-19. You’ve heard that the hospital conditions, where all who test positive, whether symptomatic or asymptomatic, are forced to stay, are not great. No matter how much you don’t want to contract the virus, you must get food from the low supply the city has if you want to feed your family. The streets that are usually crammed with cars and people in the midst of everyday life are now eerily empty, just as they were when the government first acknowledged the virus. As you walk to your destination, where people in white hazmat suits and masks stand alert, you pass a small robotic dog on the street. A megaphone is taped to its back, repeating messages to stay inside.
As of April of 2022, the COVID-19 pandemic in the US has mostly calmed down. The news speaks less of the virus as people stop wearing their masks and start to resume life as it was before the pandemic. However, this is not the case at all for Shanghai, the most populated city in China, with approximately 26 million residents. The city has recently found itself in the grips of a harsh lockdown after a sharp increase in infections prompted a country with a zero-tolerance COVID-19 policy to put strict measures in place. Residents are turning to social media to complain of the strict rules and harsh conditions they have to put up with, many of which are being called inhumane.
Coming out of the lockdown in Shanghai are videos of a robotic dog with a speaker taped to its back telling people to stay inside. There are videos of drones flying overhead, displaying the same message for all to hear as people scream and cry out of their apartment windows in shared misery of their current living conditions: not enough food for a lockdown that’s lasting longer than the Chinese government had prepared for; parents being separated from their infected children; people forced out of their own apartments so they can be repurposed for housing the infected; alarms placed on doors to keep the infected from leaving their homes if they are not properly hospitalized to begin with. In one district, authorities ordered that all pets whose owners test positive must be killed, though the order was later taken back. Each week that passes brings new, harsher conditions in an attempt to stop the virus in its tracks.
Hospital conditions for those who test positive and must be isolated are not any better. One woman who had to stay in a hospital after testing positive claimed “the lights stayed on all night” and that she was “yet to find a hot shower” (AP, 2022, para. 1). With the large number of cases, many people who test positive with no symptoms are sent to other locations that can host thousands of sick people, such as exhibition centers. Rows of cots are laid out, sometimes in a cubicle fashion, with power strips nearby. Patients spend most of their time watching videos online or even participating in online classes. During their stay, patients are required to record their medical information in an app and must have their temperature checked twice daily.
Without much to do, many people have turned to the internet to share their struggles. China is known for its strict internet restrictions and censorship, with many western social media platforms and websites, such as Youtube, Twitter, and even Google, banned throughout the large country. While China has its own set of websites to match these, many people turn to a VPN to access western media, where they can speak freely with less of a concern of getting caught and imprisoned. Often, those who say anything against the government on Chinese platforms are punished for it.
With the recent lockdown, citizens have tried harder than ever to make sure those in other Chinese cities and throughout the world can at the very least catch a glimpse of Shanghai in its lockdown. Citizens have shown anger, grief, and fear through videos they fight to keep on the internet as internet censors scramble to hide them and maintain a positive view of China online. Anger has only intensified in Shanghai residents as they watch their videos disappear off the internet.
The lockdown has brought many unexpected changes in the lives and way people have acted to contain the spread of the virus. Many residents expressed strong anger over a video that circulated depicting police officers dressed in protective hazmat suits as they dragged residents out of a building and pushed old people onto the ground. In Chinese culture, the elderly receive strong respect and care, so many found the video jarring and hard to believe. In one district of Shanghai, an elderly patient was declared dead and put in a body bag only for the workers transporting the bag to discover the man was still alive. While the city reacted and punished the workers who thought the man was dead, that was not enough to delay the outrage residents expressed.
In the US, COVID no longer bothers us. We may hear of it in the news, but it has little effect on us. Masks are no longer required, and most people choose not to wear them. Talk of the vaccine has gone down considerably, and airports no longer require travelers to wear a mask. Anthony Fauci, the Chief Medical Advisor to the President, claimed that the US is “out of the pandemic phase” (NBC, 2022, para. 1) as those who are immunocompromised start to resume life as it was before the pandemic.
However, as COVID-19 ravages Shanghai and the harsh conditions of lockdown carry on, people remain very upset with the situation. The food situation combined with the tactics the city is using to stop COVID-19 continues to leave people in a dark place and many have struggled to make it through the lockdown that seems to have no end. While COVID-19 may no longer affect us, it continues to spread and affect the lives of many in other countries.
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