COVID theater and COVID consequences

Dear reader,

COVID is ripping through China’s population, and U.S. requirements for passengers on flights from China to show a negative COVID-19 test went into force yesterday. Australia, the European Union, India, Japan, the U.K., and other countries are also stepping up testing requirements for inbound travelers from China. Morocco completely banned flights from China on January 3.

With COVID still widely circulating all over the world, many observers, including infectious disease experts, are calling these restrictions “performative” and “unjustified” — and I have to agree.

The Chinese government has complained that test requirements are politically motivated. But even the World Health Organization — which refused to issue a word of complaint about Beijing’s behavior in the early days of the pandemic and has tip-toed around the Chinese Communist Party’s concerns for most of the last three years — is urging more transparency about the outbreak. And there has not yet been a proper investigation into the origins of the disease.

Beijing will hate it, but its handling of COVID will be a subject of discussion and a source of criticism around the world for a long time to come.

Our phrase of the week is from the New Year speech by Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 broadcasted on December 31: Out with the old and in with the new (辞旧迎新 cíjiù yíngxīn).