Measures put into place

With the surge of cases and the new outbreak in China, the government is cracking down on the spread. This means mandatory testing, lockdowns, at-home isolation and centralized quarantine. You don’t have any say in the matter. Whether you test positive, are a close contact or a secondary contact, you're whisked away to a hotel or center for centralized quarantine. No warning - just a knock at your door and away you go. 

A friend of mine is an English teacher like many others in Shanghai, and was lucky enough to experience this firsthand. On Friday, Shanghai issued mandatory testing at every school across the city. With a population of 27 million and thousands of schools, it sounds impossible right? Wrong. If China has anything, it’s manpower. They accomplished this and since then, have completed millions of covid tests in just a few days. 

Following this citywide testing, schools shut for the next two weeks. We did the same and were not surprised but definitely relieved to see our test results negative the following days. For my friend, it was a different story. Sunday night there was a knock on his door and he opened it to find a hazmat suited marshmallow instructing him to leave his apartment. (Lately people have been referring to the swarms of hazmat suits as marshmalllows and baymax.) The COVID bus was downstairs and he was to be taken to centralized quarantine. Turns out, a student in his after-school club, her father, tested positive- therefore, my friend was classified as a ‘secondary contact’. Without any choice in the matter, off he went and was quarantined in a hotel room for one week. He tested negative throughout the process but was still required to complete the quarantine for the entire week.

People aren’t even scared of getting the virus anymore. What we are scared of is being forced into any sort of quarantine or isolation at a moment's notice.

Quarantine varies drastically from place to place. In general, it’s not great - the food is awful, the rooms can be old and covered in plastic. Above all, it’s taxing on your mental health, it’s simply not good for anyone to be stuck in one room for extended periods of time. And to have no warning at all? All I know is that people back home would be kicking up a storm. I guess that’s what a democracy gets you. 

• Madeline

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