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That's interesting - people have been telling me that it's fine as long as you don't mingle with others, which (unless you live in the deepest countryside or only go out at 4am) I think would be hard to manage. I find it hard to tell people off as I feel horribly horribly guilty at having escaped the worst of things in both China and Europe (not a single day of quarantine or lockdown, no tests, etc). So I'll just gripe on the internet instead.
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LOL I just read the post you linked to and we are word-for-word matchy matchy on our views of SK. Great minds think alike!
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Then again I'm also shocked that people I know who've just taken an international flight and are in "quarantine" are a) allowed to just wander out from Heathrow Airport with no checks and no ongoing monitoring and b) are now happily enjoying the UK, admittedly not near other people, but how the fuck is it quarantine when you're in the fucking park and not indoors?
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Still, would have been nice if we had a government that could play a bad hand well.
Yep, I'm genuinely shocked at how badly the UK has handled it. Apart from the US, I can't think of a country that's managed it worse. It's embarrassing and I can't keep up with what an onmishambles it is.
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Willing to bet my hat that precisely no Korean will rock up for a test so they can go and see their uncle at the weekend though.
Lots of Koreans will go for a test so they can go and play golf though!
The example of South Korea is really interesting as they REALLY didn't have things under control for a while (superspreaders at mega churches) but they got a handle on it quickly. But while SK has a similar population size to the UK, it's different in almost every other way. For all the kpop etc, it's an extremely traditional society that lives on a war footing. In any case, it's not come out of it unscathed as its economy is fucked (partially self-induced thanks to trade war with Japan). OT ramble over...
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The second wave could be all talk, obvs the government hasn't announced it but I've heard it from a few people, including people who have access to some amounts of information. I'm very sceptical of it having gone away at all here, based on a number of things including a refusal to test anyone with symptoms.
If you need to visit then this is actually one of the best times, although it's pretty tough to get in. Getting a visa is hard (need a letter of invitation), then you need a negative test result issued within 72 hours of your flight, then when you arrive you will be tested again and then spend 14 days in quarantine, and I don't mean UK-style quarantine... it's full on locked-in-your-hotel-room quarantine with temp checks twice a day, plus at least 2 more covid tests. On the plus side, flights aren't GBP 1500 (one way) anymore. -
We (China) have been told that a second wave is coming, and one of the western provinces is "on a war footing". Just in time for a week long public holiday! My company has told us we all have to take our laptops on holiday with us in case we aren't allowed to return to Shanghai. At least we are learning lessons from the last time we had a week long public holiday and got stranded all over the place.
If we do have a second wave, it's going to make that national day of celebration for defeating (LOL) the virus we had back in April seem a bit daft. -
Like everything else in China, "no why"
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This is the reception of the hotel I'm in...
This is probably more for the "I hate" thread but I fucking despise QR codes. Eeeeevrything here involves QR codes. Covid-related, we have to (or used to anyway, not so much now) show green codes to be allowed into buildings, which is fine in your own city where you're all set up. But every province has their own code, and they're not connected or on the same platform. I was flying to another province recently and they asked me for my code, so I showed the code of where I live and was told no, it needs to be the other code - which you can only get by entering tons of details including the subdistrict of the hotel I was staying in (impossible to find, so they just said "put whatever", negating the point of the whole thing). Anyway, as obviously I was still 3 hours flight away from Hainan, I hadn't come into contact with anyone there, sick or otherwise, so I got a green code. Some provinces don't actually allow foreigners to register for codes so everyone just shows a screenshot of a code they got from a mate. It's all really stupid and a charade of "safety".