Gosh, I almost forgot to play my daily Wordle game, but here it is...
Wordle 264 4/6
Ukraine Crisis
Finally, Joe Biden is plucking up the nerve to do embargo of the Russian oil into US, and his administration is even preempting the Chinese with a warning shot of not bypassing the economic sanctions from the West. Though everyone knows full well that that'd be exactly what the CCP will do, taking full advantage of the currently energy market chaos to import Russian oil at steep discount (given the insatiable energy needs of the Chinese), thereby holding Russia captive to supply oil/gas to China. And Xi and his CCP propaganda machine will continue to make grandiose statement, touting how "impartial" and "neutral" the Chinese might be (when in reality, it's anything but). It's a win-win for Xi and China, though there's no doubt that Xi will have second thoughts on attacking Taiwan militarily, knowing that the West can act in unison, in concerted efforts to sanction aggressor(s).
More foreign companies are pulling out of Russia, though the world should be warry of how a mad dog would do the craziest thing when it's backed into a corner. If Russian army is not afraid of even opening fire on a fucking nuclear plant, what's next? It's not likely Putin will use nuclear weapons (since the impacts are far far far more uncontrollable), but it's fathomable for Russia to use chemical weapons on Ukrainian resistance and civilians. (Just look at how readily the Syrian government - a long-time patron of Russia - had used chemical weapons on its citizens.)
Covid
Western countries are all beginning to loosen up. Various cities are removing the face mask mandate, including London, Boston and New York City. After some two years, economy and life are pretty much back to normal, for the most part.
Yes, omicron is still circulating, but it's no longer that scary for those who are fully vaccinated, with the hospitalization and death rate remains low. I'm still vigilant, I still keep my social distance, use face masks when I go indoor (to supermarkets, for example), and I still wash hands every time I get home. Out of curiosity, I tested myself yesterday with the home covid self-test kit. I'm negative. I'll probably request for an antibody test (with blood draw) in my next annual checkup to see if I was ever infected in the past two years. I have also been monitoring myself with oximeter, and other vital signs (eg. resting heart rate) using my fitbit. I still have hand sanitizer in my bag at all times.
I don't see any of these precautions could have caused hardship or tramped on one's freedom. Anyone who's arguing against is doing so at their own peril. Thus, I've totally ignored all the white noise of truckers protesting in Canada, and US. Sure, they can have their freedom, but employers, government and society at large have their freedom too. If these individuals don't want face masks or vaccine, their employers are free to get them fired too. Same goes with government. Society is free to cancel these whiners. Freedom, you see, goes both ways.
At this point, I've tuned out all the infection numbers. As long as the hospitalization rate and death toll of the vaccinated population remains low, I'm happy. Most of the ER hospitalization and death toll were for the unvaccinated population, and after two years and numerous vaccines to choose from (not just the mRNA sort), if they still refuse it, yes that's their choice...to get sick and die. I know I would sound harsh, but I'm mentally tired of coddling these petulant crowds. They know the risks, they want to take the risks, and they get sick and/or die. So, let them. No one should be standing in their fucking way. And government should not subsidize the coddling by paying them to stay home, while others hard at work to pay taxes too. The "I Am Afraid" is no longer an acceptable excuse for not working.
And so, I find the tightening of Hong Kong at this juncture most peculiar, with heavy dose of irony.
Hong Kong has touted its success for beating back covid for the past two years while the rest of the world endured successive waves of covid. It pushes the world to work harder, to research for vaccines, to collect data, while at the same time, general population geared up for the vaccination. I'm sure at this point, probably everyone in Britain has been infected at least once in the past, they survive, and now they have antibody, making the latest variant in omicron much milder. This is as it should be. When the virus mutates, human bodies have to adapt.
Hong Kong, on the other hand, bucks the trend. Everyone is still using face masks and social distancing, but it's no longer enough for the far more infectious omicron. At this point, no one can even tell how omicron passes the infection. (Is it on hard surface? Is it in the food? Is it air-borne or air droplets without certain social distance? Is it something else? No one seems to care anymore since it's impossible to do contact tracing anymore, given how exponential the infection rate goes.)
In a city of 7.5m population that is amongst the most densely populated in the world, it's practically impossible for people to keep the distance at home, no matter how careful they might be when they are outside. It paralyses the Hong Kong government, and its impotence shows glaringly. Instead of being the leader in its fight of SARS, government officials no longer know how to act because - alas! - everything has to be vetted and approved by Beijing. And so, when Beijing insists on Zero-Covid, Zero-Covid it is (even if it doesn't make sense). Carrie Lam doesn't even pretend to understand what the Dynamic Zero is because it's a moving goalpost. This insistence on Zero-Covid is failing miserably in Hong Kong.
In the West, vaccination push starts with the senior community. In Hong Kong, it's the reverse, with seniors vaccination rate in the low 20%. No wonder that hundreds of seniors (like those in their 80s and 90s) are dying of covid like flies. But instead of vaccination push, Hong Kong government instead pushes for neighborhood lockdown as a kneejerk to every single case of reported omicron. Everyone who's tested positive (no matter if it's asymptomatic or not) is ordered to either go to the ER or be sent to quarantine camps. But how could the hospitals and quarantine hotels (then camps) handle sudden spike like this?
To top all these off, Hong Kong government announced mass testing of everyone in the city. First off, what's the point of testing everyone? What would the government do if, let's say, half of the population is tested positive (but no symptoms)? And then there's the timing of testing. You could be tested negative in the morning, and then get infected (by god-knows-what) in the afternoon. Is the government going to mass-test everyone everyday? If not, what does that mass testing which might give you "some" result at only one snapshot in time, but it doesn't serve you any purpose if you can't do anything more for those tested positive.
There's much jokes about how incompetent and ridiculous the Hong Kong government has become. It has forced everyone to use some phone app whenever people want to enter any indoor facility. Though with the very low trust of the government's real intention since the 2019 crackdown of the democratic protests, all that people see is the government trying to track the movement of everyone. There is also no longer any anonymous prepaid SIM cards since they all have to be tied to real person (registration, please, hence more tracking). All of these are not really for covid, but for the bogus "National Security" banner, in pursuit of stamping out all dissenting voices in the city.
Hong Kong used to be one of the most free-wheeling places in the world, but no more.
As to Covid, there have been reported deaths of some 6m:
Most are seniors folks, most have other preconditions. Maybe it's Mother Nature's way to curb our population growth. If there's a silver lining to be had, this could be it.
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