“Have you had covid yet?”
The question has become an opening line of conversation — and even a greeting between friends and strangers alike.
For three years, the coronavirus was a specter for most people in China, something we heard about from the news or social media but had not seen up close. Before December, I didn’t know anyone here who had had covid-19 — or at least was willing to say so. Covid sometimes felt like a myth shaped by the government’s stringent “zero covid” measures: widespread lockdowns; travel and mobility restrictions; endless PCR tests conducted by an army of health workers in white hazmat suits; the threat of removal to centralized quarantine facilities; and the various stresses and fears caused by all of this.
The impositions on daily life were such that it was easy to forget the reason these restrictions were imposed: the virus itself. “Is covid real”, my dad asked, always dubious. “Or is it just an excuse for tightening controls?”
Until the government renounced its zero-covid strategy this month, if you caught covid you’d hide it. Now, covid is out in the open — and spreading. The gloom that dominated lockdown and eventually drove protests across China is largely being overtaken by a sense of relief, ironically, as many of us get sick.
Although no one wishes to become infected, the fact that we’re now able to disclose our covid status without fear of being forcibly taken to centralized quarantine is exhilarating.
Last week I had covid for the first time since the start of the pandemic in 2020. I woke up one morning with a fever — and soon discovered that dozens of people I knew were also experiencing sore throats, muscle aches and fatigue. The word “yang”, or “positive”, trended on social media here. People posted photos of antigen self-test results showing two red bars and compared their symptoms as if exchanging anecdotes. It’s striking how many reacted casually to testing positive, as if it is no big deal that we are finally all getting the virus.
Amid the challenges of zero-covid restrictions, it was easy to forget that one day we might live with the virus itself. Over time, it also became hard to believe that zero covid would end. Then the government abruptly abandoned its signature strategy. I went to a shopping mall in downtown Shanghai, where, for the first time in six months, a negative PCR test result was no longer required for entry. The next day, the health code-checking facilities and personnel that had been omnipresent outside the mall gates were gone. PCR testing booths at seemingly every corner of the city became deserted. The loudspeakers amplifying chants of “come out for PCR tests” disappeared, as did the ghostly figures in white hazmat suits.
Covid control measures have vanished, almost as if they had never been there. This sudden change is head-spinning — as is the spread of infections.
Practically overnight, it feels as if we went from “zero covid” to “all covid”. People have rushed to drugstores, only to find all the fever and cold medicines sold out. Many have grabbed any medication remotely related to covid symptoms that they can lay their hands on. The night I was both feverish and shivering with chills, my mum and sister drove an hour from the outskirts of Shanghai to bring me a packet of Tylenol. Two days later, they tested positive. Soon, so did my brother-in-law, then aunts and uncles, cousins, and more and more friends. Each day, I hear of more people falling ill. At least two elderly grandparents of two friends have passed away, as well as a colleague of a cousin in his early 40s, reportedly of an underlying health condition triggered by covid.
Meanwhile, the official narrative about the virus, previously described as a “heavy toll on the health of the Chinese people” and “novel coronavirus pneumonia”, is now merely a “novel coronavirus cold”. As people fight covid without medications, effective vaccines or adequate medical support, the National Health Commission announced that inbound travelers would no longer be required to quarantine after Jan. 8. Despite the spiral of infections, many people have cheered the easing of travel restrictions. On WeChat, friends posted “Time to fly again!”, “Europe I’m coming!”, “We can travel as we like after New Year’s!” and “It’s the best Christmas present!”
When Shanghai’s lockdown ended last summer, people celebrated by drinking and dancing in the streets. Today there is a similar eagerness to move on.
In Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel “Brave New World”, a pill called soma makes people instantly forget their troubles. Shanghai feels like it’s having a soma moment. Just like that, most people are forgetting the locked gates and buildings; lost jobs; how they scrambled for food; the fire and deaths in Xinjiang; unprecedented mass protests; so much wasted time. “It all ended in farce”, one friend wrote on social media.
For many people, the past three years are already bygones. Soon, people will stop talking about being sick with covid too. But the problem with collective amnesia is we also forget that it can all happen again.
Xing Zhao is a writer living in Shanghai.