Rollercoaster Ride

[elusivek]

Meh, so just right after the so-called "celebration" of being COVID-19 free, the Macau government has brought back some Macau citizens from Wuhan, China.

We had known there were such plans, what we didn't know was how it was somewhat poorly organized.

There are some (I don't know how many) of them that although have a Macau Resident card, their real home is in Wuhan, so even if they come here, they don't have a place to stay. Probably they just wanted to get away from Wuhan maybe, and cash out on all the perks the government is giving out.

A 16 year old kid was refused from boarding the plane because he had a low-grade fever of 37.5C (Policy is 37.3C)

Anyway, this group of people (some 50-something) will be sent to the quarantine center for 14 days. Those that really are from Macau can go home after that. I have no idea what they plan to do with those that don't have a place to stay in Macau.

Maybe it'll be like that other Wuhan woman that was hospitalized (one of the 11 confirmed cases in Macau), got recovered, and simply said "I have no money", and didn't pay for the hospital stay and the services rendered. And these people plan to book into hotels and then ask the government for funding.

There is a saying in Chinese 送羊入虎口 (sending sheep into the wolf's mouth)... as a kid, my friend and I played around with this phrase and changed it to 送虎入羊竇 (sending a wolf into the sheep pen)... it all flows in Cantonese (dunno how it will sound in Mandarin, I suck at Mandarin...) and I think this second phrase suits our situation quite well. They are bringing in the wolves.

Comments

[spikesgirl58.livejournal.com]

I think you are right.

[kurikuribebi]

Macau left it's people in China through the scare?

[notte0.livejournal.com]

Oh no, the story is, because the scare happened just after the Chinese New Year (24/25-January). For Chinese New Year, it is a custom that people “go home” to visit family. The exodus usually happens the day before (many companies in Macau give a half day off on the day before CNY, this year being 23-Jan).

So the people left Macau to go home, and then we’re stuck because of the travel ban in China. It’s taken this long to get a private charter flight approved to fetch people back,

[kurikuribebi]

Wow, okay. That's quite a bit. A lot of countries brought back their people almost immediately. I guess it's not surprising that Macau was able to kill the virus in the population, then, if the people with the highest risk of infection weren't in the country. Most explosions in other countries didn't start until after they brought their people back.

[notte0.livejournal.com]

yeah, in a way this is good too. They are bringing back the people in a controllable way. Now these people will go on quarantine, and the staff that were dispatched also on quarantine. Hopefully this maintains the 0 infections here.

I heard in China it was total lockdown, so the people even had difficulty going to the airport for the private charter. I guess it’s a good time for the Chinese govt to take the chance and seize control of the people.

[kurikuribebi]

I wonder what really went down in China. I mean, I know things that were said on the news and shared online, but when I'd talk to my friends actually living in China, they'd tell a somewhat different story.

That's true -- I'm curious to see how it plays out. Because other countries also thought they were handling situations carefully and it blew up anyway. We need to really look at small-scale models in order to come up with better models for large-scale, so looking at how Macau keeps things low would really help!