Drones, PCR testing for fish, Zombie apocalypses — China’s Zero Covid policy limps on
Even fish, swimming around in the sea, minding their own business, aren’t safe from China’s radical “zero Covid” policies. Absurd photos of fish being throat-swabbed for PCR testing have led to widespread mirth on social media. The Chinese government believes a recent outbreak on the southern island of Hainan may have begun in a fishmonger’s shop, so authorities are testing everyone — and everything — including the fish. The country’s bid to stamp out Covid could last for years, experts say, despite the country’s economic woes caused by prolonged, rolling lockdowns and epidemic prevention policies.
As the fish story demonstrates, China’s efforts to curb the virus are increasingly desperate. Last week, China censored DXY, a leading health information platform — which, in the early days of the pandemic, was a go-to resource for tens of millions of people wanting to monitor the spread of the virus. The platform frequently debunks medical misinformation, and is known for being critical of unproven Chinese Traditional Medicine remedies, a key part of the government’s Covid-fighting strategy. The platform has also been targeted in the past by nationalist bloggers, who claim it’s too critical of China’s healthcare system.
Chinese citizens live under constant threat of yet another Covid lockdown. And for those in Shanghai, that prospect is particularly harrowing. Covid is far from a distant memory in the sprawling megalopolis — one district announced it would be deploying drones to inspect neighborhoods and monitor people in the name of “epidemic prevention and control.” If people are seen gathering together, they will be commanded to disperse via a megaphone attached to the drone, while “ground forces will be linked in real time.”No wonder Shanghai residents are edgy. A video did the rounds on Weibo last week of dozens of people running flat out, fleeing a building in Shanghai last week. People joked it looked like a zombie apocalypse — but the real source of everyone’s terror? An alleged abnormal Covid test result.
IN GLOBAL NEWS
Twitter has facilitated the spread of homophobic monkeypox disinformation, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. When the first children in the U.S. were infected, right-wing commentators suggested they must have been infected by sexual interactions with LGBTQ men. The accusations play on homophobic stereotypes about gay men grooming children and take advantage of the fact that monkeypox is disproportionately affecting the gay community. The disinformation was fueled by Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a known QAnon supporter. She set off a wave of so-called ‘just asking tweets’, by disingenuously asking “If monkeypox is a sexually transmitted disease, why are kids getting it?” As early as May, the UN AIDS program flagged that stigmatizing language about the disease could reinforce anti-gay tropes that hark back to the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. That’s now become a reality. “We learn nothing from our history,” Jason Farley, a Johns Hopkins epidemiologist, told NBC this week.