Foreigners also facing restrictions to enter Beijing

Over the weekend, panic among expats with the “rumors” of the mandatory 14 days quarantine for anybody returning to Beijing. And yes, also applies to foreigners returning from Europe. See what started the “rumor”:

Finally I got the official document (click to open): 200216 BJFA
That means 14 days quarantine for people coming in Beijing. If unluckily you have someone in your plane/train showing symptoms you are good to stay at a “designated public quarantined area” for observation instead of “home quarantine”, whatever that means.
As a result my wife is not coming and stays in Brussels.

Way to go…

That also means: there is no point for businesspeople to come here, they will be locked up in their hotel (who pays?). And Beijing residents returning home might reconsider.
Beijing, more and more isolated.

Evacuation of foreigners

More and more foreign countries have, are or will evacuate their citizens from Wuhan. In other cities, such as in Beijing, there is still a way to leave. Where one can go is another problem. A majority of airlines has cancelled all flights with China. Most Chinese airlines still operate but with reduced frequencies.
But many countries restrict access, see here the present list from IATA:
https://www.iatatravelcentre.com/international-travel-document-news/1580226297.htm

To Tame Coronavirus, Mao-Style Social Control Blankets China

See: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/15/business/china-coronavirus-lockdown.html
Extract from this rather chilling article:

Residential lockdowns of varying strictness — from checkpoints at building entrances to hard limits on going outdoors — now cover at least 760 million people in China, or more than half the country’s population, according to a New York Times analysis of government announcements in provinces and major cities.
Throughout China, neighborhoods and localities have issued their own rules about residents’ comings and goings, which means the total number of affected people may be even higher. Policies vary widely, leaving some places in a virtual freeze and others with few strictures.
China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, has called for an all-out “people’s war” to tame the outbreak. But the restrictions have prevented workers from returning to factories and businesses, straining China’s giant economy. And with local officials exercising such direct authority over people’s movements, it is no surprise that some have taken enforcement to extremes.

The bureaucrats failed to listen to the president

As per SCMP and other media:
President Xi Jinping told the Communist Party’s top echelon to tackle an outbreak of a previously unknown coronavirus almost two weeks before Chinese authorities announced that there had been human-to-human transmission of the disease, according to an internal speech released on Saturday.
In the speech to the party’s most powerful body, the Politburo Standing Committee, Xi outlined a contingency plan to respond to a crisis that he said could not only hamper the health of people in China, but also jeopardize the country’s economic and social stability – even its open-door policy.
The speech was delivered on February 3 and published in the party’s bimonthly journal Qiushi on Saturday. It was also featured on state television and other official mouthpieces.

Postal services stopped

Bpost, Belgian Post, is stopping mail and packages to China s they claim “there are no flights available”. Not correct as Hainan Airlines still operates. Post from China is still OK…
Deutsche Post also informed it will not send packages to China.

The vulnerable

The impact of Covid-19 on China’s small businesses remains unclear in terms of magnitude, but the vulnerable ones are already closing shop. I already mentioned this topic in earlier posts.
The King of Party, a KTV club in Beijing, said it would terminate employment for all 200 staff (I think one of their major karaoke is in my street gongti xi lu); Xinchao Media, an advertising agency that runs commercials in elevators, said it would cut 500 jobs on Monday; and Xibei Restaurant, a chain with more than 300 stores outlets across the country, said it would be unable to survive for three months without revenue. Those are some of the many only…

China’s private economy contributes more than 60% of the country’s economic output, and creates more than 90% of new jobs. Its health is critical to China’s overall economic performance.

Many shopping malls have reduced their business hours or closed completely, while massages, spa, gyms, karaoke bars and movie theaters have closed to help contain the spread of the virus. Blockbuster movie premieres have been postponed and many performance venues have cancelled shows.

Workers remain productive on home front

As per China Daily on 11 February.
Deserted roads, near-empty subway cars and offices without workers are normally the last scenes you would expect to see in Beijing, especially after the weeklong Spring Festival holiday.
Amid the Covid-19 outbreak, people have been encouraged to stay indoors and many companies have asked their employees to work from home to reduce the risk of being infected.

According to a report from Ding-Talk, internet giant Alibaba’s business collaboration and communication platform, some 200 million people are working from home due to the outbreak. More than 10 million companies in China are using DingTalk to contact such employees. As far as I know Morel’s Restaurant is a happy user of DingTalk to connect with the employees.

The report also said that over 200 education bureaus in more than 20 provinces, including Guangdong, Henan and Shanxi, are using Ding-Talk to launch online courses for over 12 million students from some 20,000 middle and primary schools. To support this unprecedented demand, the company has added more cloud servers to facilitate videoconferences and live group broadcasts.

The coronavirus test

Here a look at a Belgian website: you can do on online test about the coronavirus, set up by VUB (Vrije Universiteit Brussel):
www.coronavirustest.be or http://huis.vub.ac.be/corona/

You can chose between Dutch, French, English, German and Spanish.

After submitting your replies you will get an assessment.

Questions:

What is your gender? Man    Woman
What is your year of birth?
In which country do you live?
Do you have a fever (38.5 degrees or more)?           Yes  No
Do you have pain when you breathe?           Yes  No
Are you short of breath?         Yes     No
Do you have to cough?          Yes     No
Are you coughing up mucus? Yes     No
Do you have a sore throat?    Yes     No
Do you have a runny nose?   Yes     No
Do you have muscle pain?     Yes     No
Do you take medication that reduces your immunity?           Yes     No
Have you been in China during the 14 days that preceded your complaints?          Yes   No
Did you have close physical contact with someone with a proven corona infection during the 14 days preceding your symptoms?        Yes    No

Tip: runny nose and mucus are not indication of the virus.

Most recent news: while the median incubation time is said to be three days, it could be as long as 24 days and it is making detection much more difficult.

China’s health authorities have decided to no longer count as confirmed cases those patients who test positive but don’t show symptoms. Experts were skeptical, and it was another factor that made it harder to determine the true scale of the epidemic. As reported by NYT and many other media.
The death toll is also said to be seriously underreported as medical staff are not allowed to list coronavirus as a cause of death when cases had not been confirmed. Instructions even bans them from listing “pneumonia”. Instead they have to write the immediate cause of a patient’s death, such as diabetes or organ failure. Another known issue is with the difficulty in getting some patients to hospital in time. Some pass away at home because they could not reach the hospitals in time. In all those cases it’s “not the coronavirus”…

Humor is alive

As one friend said, 1 April arrived early. I was also (happily) misled with the “news”.

One Wechat post explained that according to NASA 11 February was the only day of the year when a broom can stand up because of earth’s gravity. Many Chinese friends were posting pics of their brooms standing up, I thought (as a “clever engineer”) that it was not possible.

Then I tried myself and became all excited. A friend said, the brooms would fall down after 59 minutes. I went to check regularly and the brooms remained upright.

The next morning they were still in place.

Then a clever French Rotaractor broke the news:
The truth is, you can make a broom stand upright today… and tomorrow and the day after… and the day after that. It has nothing to do with the earth’s gravitational pull on a certain day. It also has nothing to do with the vernal equinox (another day of the year when this “magic” supposedly happens).
Instead, it has everything to do with balance. The center of gravity is low on a broom, and rests directly over the bristles. Which means, if you can get the bristles positioned like a tripod, your broom will stand upright any day of the year.
Hey! It was fun!

There are also some pretty hilarious video clips going around of people singing about the virus.
This one is my favorite:

mylittleWuhanone

(click to play)

RIP NCP

The WHO has given the devil has a new name, Covid-19; formerly known as NCP, 2019-nCoV or the Wuhan Virus.

At the opening of the conference, the head of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that the Covid-19 epidemic is a very serious threat for the rest of the world.

Mounting fears

According to news from Yahoo, scientists say at least 500,000 people may become infected with the coronavirus in Wuhan before it peaks in the coming weeks.
Researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine put together a mathematical model to determine the spread of the disease in Wuhan, and they said it was likely to peak in mid-to-late-February.
Based on their estimates, at least one out of every 20 people in Wuhan — or about 500,000 people — could be infected by the time the virus peaks.

The WHO warned that the spread of the virus through people who never visited China might be “the tip of the iceberg”.
Gabriel Leung from the University of Hongkong tried to estimate “size of the iceberg”. He estimates that 60% of the world population could be infected by Covid-19. He is said to be a world expert on corona virus and joined some 400 specialists at the WHO conference in Geneva.

Maybe that’s all a bit overblown…

Mobility in most cities worse

Beijing and Shanghai impose new controls on residents as China battles to contain coronavirus, read:
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3049891/beijing-and-shanghai-impose-new-controls-residents-china-battles

China’s two biggest cities have announced fresh restrictions on residential communities to prevent the spread of the deadly new coronavirus, joining dozens of mainland cities that have gone into partial lockdown since the epidemic began last month.
Measures unveiled by the authorities in Beijing and Shanghai on Monday include stricter controls on the movement of residents and vehicles, compulsory mask-wearing and shutting down leisure and other non-essential community services.

Beijing would step up efforts to further restrict access to residential communities and compounds and introduce a citywide registration system for entries into Beijing. Cultural and recreational facilities will be closed while couriers and other delivery services will have limited access to housing estates and compounds.

See how deliveries are piling up at the main entrance of our compound and how compounds in Tianjin and Beijing monitor access.

As some said, with restrictions in place for the past two weeks, it felt like “living in a prison”. “I hope the period of lockdown will not last long because I want my normal life back.”

Containment “must not harm business”

As reported by SCMP, there is a conflict between the central government that wants many of the economic activities to restart and the infamous Chinese bureaucrats.
As millions of people in China prepared to return to work, Beijing has said the reopening of businesses should not be hampered by “crude and oversimplified” restrictions.
Up to 160 million people were expected to be returning to their cities of employment over the coming week, according to a Chinese ministry of transport official.

Some local governments have required companies to register and gain approval before resuming production, with business owners being detained for resuming without permission. However Beijing indicated on Tuesday that this went further than the central authorities had intended.
“Such a tendency must be stopped,” a delegate of the NDRC said. “We will strictly stop restricting resumption of production in this oversimplified and crude way.”
But local bureaucrats and alike just decide what they feel is OK, making it all a complete mess. And that happens all the time in Beijing, through the hygiene and other zillion departments. Their goal seems to be to harass small business, preferably run by foreigners.

And Reuters reports:
After reviewing reports on the outbreak from the NDRC and other economic departments, Xi Jinping told local officials during a Feb 3 meeting of the Politburo’s Standing Committee that some of the actions taken to contain the virus are harming the economy.
He urged them to refrain from “more restrictive measures”, it was said.
Local authorities outside Wuhan – where the virus is thought to have first taken hold – have shut down schools and factories, sealed off roads and railways, banned public events and even locked down residential compounds. Xi said some of those steps have not been practical and have sown fear among the public, they said.

But it seems many officials ignore the words of the President…