It keeps on going…: continual COVID testing, quarantine scares, and today's lockdown

I’ve been meaning to write a “post-lockdown” reflection post for a while now. I had been so diligent making daily posts throughout lockdown from April into June, and then I kind of stopped. I realized that I never got around to it partly because the lockdown mentality never really ended. We still do PCRs almost every other day. We still have periodic lockdowns. We’re still changing our behavior based on what would be least risky - not really in terms of getting infected, but least risky in terms of potentially getting quarantined somewhere undesirable.

Just a couple weeks ago, I had a scare. It was the 29th of October, and a friend and I had an impromptu coffee together, where he told me that he was tired of what was going on in China, and he’d be moving away shortly.

We continued on to the Shan Kang Li development, where there were a lot of families and kids were out and about, this being the Saturday before Halloween.

After this, we continued on to the nearby Aldi supermarket. I had seen feta cheese at a different Aldi several months before (and thankfully I bought a bunch before lockdown), but they didn’t have it here.

I wanted the feta cheese for a Mexican dinner I was hosting Sunday evening, but I just shredded some Cheddar instead.

The following Thursday, right as I was exiting a PCR booth, I got a phone call. “Did you go to ao le qi?” The lady asked. I was like huh?? She repeated herself several times, and then said that it was a supermarket, and gave a very precise time down to the second. When I heard the time stamp down to the second, I had a sinking feeling. Ao le qi is 奥乐齐, the Aldi supermarket. She asked me for my address, which upon reflection is a very sketchy thing. What if this were a scam? Why wouldn’t she know my address already? I’m already registered at the police bureau.

Not thinking clearly then, I gave her my address, and she said that my health code would turn red, and I would need to report this to my neighborhood committee. Soon after, I got a text message saying the same thing.

That evening and into the next day, I had extreme anxiety. Should I even check my health code? What if the act of firing up the app is actually what makes it turn red? If I don’t tell the neighborhood committee, what happens? Does telling them make the health code turn red? Is that the trigger?

I finally consulted with a former HR colleague, who gives both official and unofficial advice, and she told me that I should inform the neighborhood committee. Otherwise, if something happens, I could get in trouble.

So, after their lunch hours, I went into the office looking for the lady who knows me. Well, I was walking in, other people seemed to recognize me too. I explained the situation, and they said, well, we haven’t gotten any reports in. So it’s best if you don’t go outside, but do take a PCR every day. Ok…

As I was going to the PCR station, I passed by this creature. It captured my mood of absurd limbo perfectly.

The line for a PCR was particularly long this afternoon.

After that, I kept checking to see if my code would turn red. If you read the official city press release below, you can really get a sense of how ridiculous the measures are, for just one case. I think I was one of the 104,535 people affected by this, who were neither close contacts nor close close contacts.

What is so non-sensical about this whole situation is:

we were “caught” 6 days after our potential exposure. I’d been testing negative regularly this whole time; why would I be subject to quarantine?
my friend’s code did turn red eventually
he had to quarantine for 7 days. If he had been infected, wouldn’t he have turned positive during the 6 days he was free? Why quarantine until day 13 after exposure?
from what we could tell, people who went to the supermarket on the 31st were bused away to quarantine. So presumably they were close contacts. We went on the 29th. 2 days BEFORE! Did the virus travel back in space and time?

Ironically, the day after my friend was released from quarantine, being a secondary close contact, the national government released new COVID protocols saying that secondary close contacts would no longer be tracked. Immediately my neighborhood committee canceled the community PCR testing, as part of the new policy.

Strangely, I went a block over on Sunday morning to buy breakfast, just crossing the border into another district, and a worker with a megaphone was blasting a recorded message (with a particularly strident voice) to come down for PCR testing because “the doctors have arrived!” I guess they were continuing with the practice there.

Megaphone

I still needed to do a PCR this day anyway, in order to enter my office the next day. And strangely, this was the first time in like half a year that I saw people lining up in a socially distanced way.

The PCR huts in my district are decorated with scenes from the immediate neighborhood.

I think I’ve said before, the government graphic designers have been hard at work throughout the pandemic, making paper passes, posters, etc.

In another twist, just days after the government released the more relaxed COVID policy, our building leader informed us that we were going under lockdown. A “2-day lockdown,” which was previously for secondary close contacts, but since that shouldn’t happen anymore, we speculate that yesterday’s “secondary close contacts” are today’s “close contacts.” In other words, the policy sounds like it should be more relaxed, but in fact the terminology has just changed to effectively be the same policy.

So, as instructed I took a test immediately. The PCR station by my office had people lining up before their opening time at 4pm.

Building leader asked those of us who were at work if we were going to return to our apartments in the evening. I thought long and hard about it, and I decided to return. I didn’t have my toiletries with me (I have certain medical conditions which guides me to use very specific brands and products), nor did I have my medication. I didn’t even have my passport, to check into a hotel!

In the end, I counted about half of us decided to return, while the other half stayed away from their apartments for the time being.

I did go to the gym after work, but then before returning to the apartment, I stopped by the nearby Lawsons to buy drinking water.

I feel like this particular Lawson has figured prominently through the whole ordeal this year. I remember after the first lockdowns before the big city-wide lockdown, I already had problems getting water delivery. So when we got out of the smaller lockdowns, I went to the Lawson and asked if there was some kind of limit in the quantity of water I could bring back. Surprised that there wasn’t a limit, I bought a whole case of four bottles.

Today I just bought two.

When I rounded the corner to my entrance, I saw the people standing guard outside. They were pretty chill, telling me that the building was locked down as if I didn’t know, asking if I’d done the PCR that day, and told me to inform the ayi (entryway leader) that I had come back. So if I wanted to still walk away right then, I could have.

Last night, I prepared a Chinese chive pesto pasta with chicken, artichoke hearts, olives, and roasted eggplant. Funny enough, this was from a little container I froze from the big lockdown, when I found a new way to use up my abundance of Chinese chives!

Before I went to bed, I put rice and red lentils in my Xiaomi pressure pot, to have congee this morning. Another big lockdown habit! I topped this one with olive vegetable, fermented bean curd, pickles, and two hardboiled eggs (also made last night in the Xiaomi).

For lunch, I had chicken enchiladas which I had frozen - my last ration!

I also had papaya after lunch - which I’d had yesterday night and after dinner tonight too.

After lunch, entryway leader told us that we’d do the PCR testing around 3:30pm. Uncharacteristically, we were called down exactly at 3:30pm. I guess because it was just us, they could estimate the time precisely this one time.