There was a TVB drama production in 2011 when the line "This city is dying, you know?" went viral, after the social movement in the past few years, many people recalled this line. Amid the Covid latest stage say these weeks, people can't help but recalled this line again, but for another context.
Hong Kong people just puzzle why the SAR health officials always lag behind against the situation and made always mis-timing health policies? When the Covid emerged, the HKSAR government was slow in quarantine the inbound travellers as well as slack in the counter-measures in late November 2020 which was known as the Fourth Wave, a tragic death toll of 9000+, was recorded. Among the many mistakes and errors, in a nutshell, a wrong perception on the pandemic as well as the wrong attitude in the key health official, namely Sophia Chan, is the culprit.
With the sixth term of HKSAR administration inaugurated since this July and new Secretary of Health, Prof. Lo Chung Mau, is in place so people expected new official could bring new insight and not only new but effective as well as timely measures. Unfortunately honey-moon is always short-lived. Lo is again slow in coping with the rapidly changing Covid situation here in HK and comparing to that in the rest of the world as well.
While our neighbour like Singapore, Japan, Korea...have lifted, if not all then most of, the inbound travel restrictions, many countries in the rest of the world also relaxed many of the inbound restrictions in order to resume the people flow in light of the social and economic activities. Hong Kong is still shy in joining the bandwagon though. The former Chief Exective, CY Leung, advocated Hong Kong as a Super-Connector between China and the world. However, as the ressult of the outdated stringent inbound restriction, the world has already abandoned Hong Kong as a partner of the global game. The recent detoured international sports events and exhibitions are just some good evidence. Super-connector became an empty slogan only.
Naturally being the head of the Department of Health which is responsble for policy making, Lo was under fire for the failure of coping with the global trend. Lo played rhetroic on the death rate as an excuse to the failure. Perhaps he is only a scapegoat though. When China still holds tight on the zero-Covid policy, just being a local health official, Lo dares nothing but just sticks closely to the national policy to avoid the blame on rocking the national security through a relaxed inbound control. This is the dilemma perhaps who being an HK official must face as what the advocate puts it that Hong Kong must integrate into the national development setting.
The former Chief Executive, Tung Chee-hwa, once said Hong Kong will see its well-being when the country prospers. Many people believe but most of them do not realize that China places collective well-being above individual as well as national vs regional. While zero-Covid policy works in the mainland does not mean it is also beneficial to a particular city, especailly an interantional city where flows of people is as important as flow of blood. Hong Kong is suffocating. She will soon lose the status of international hubs of travel, transportation, businesses as well as finance. While foreign businesses avoid passing through Hong Kong, the local businessess are also starving to death due to the existing health policy.
This city is dying, you know?
