Are you kidding?

When the COVID-19 cases in Hong KOng rose to tens of thousand a day and the infection rate doubled in every 2-3 days, apparently people is panic and became a bit of unrational in some behaviour like the buying spree of self-testing kit. 

In my post enough is enough I doubt the effectiveness of self-testing kit when Carrie Lam's administration rolled out the idea of sending the self-testing kit to all Hong Kong people as a measure to detect the stealth infected in the community. The reason of my doubt rests on two premises, ie., mis-administered testing procedure leading to wrong result as well as human nature that some people might choose to remain silent even if on the positive result because they just do not want to disclose it due to quite a numbers of personal consideration like no work thus no pay. 

The recent buying spree on the self-testing kit does not prove my doubt is wrong. The buyers fall into mainly three categories, the first and very big chunk is that they need a positive test result to keep their jobs valid but the public testing capacity falls short in great extent, the second group is concerned on whether they are infected while the last group is just blind sheep under the herd behaviour. The buying spree demonstrates that the society is in panic state so people overreact on whatever seems to be useful. Naturally Lam's bullshit idea might also put fuel on the fire as well.

Lam does not seem to realize her bull shit idea's problem but even put it to an higher level that the government is building a system to accept the citizens' testing result via the self-testing kit. The incapable secretary of food and health bureau, Sophia Chan, said the System can help the government to evaluate the community infection status thus devising the corresponding measures. 

Chan's statement not only is a big joke in light of the drawbacks of Lam's bull shit idea but demonstrate how incapable she is. The result of self-testing kit is highly unreliable which is not the kit per se but due to the uncertainty of people's correct testing procudure like the sampling with swub and the waiting time thus is the result. On the other hand, when any one can tap on the system and input whatever result in it then how trustworthy the findings of this System can be? What reliable insight thus effectiveness measures can be generated when the castle is built on the sand? People should doubt Chan's intelligence in light of her such big joke. Are you kidding, Madam? No wonder Hong Kong fell into such a chao and disastrous situation when the chief responsible official of Hong Kong's health policy is an idiot.

God bless Hong Kong!

Help yourself

When native English speakers say help yourself, it means the guest can just feel free to enjoy whatever offered. To the people in Hong Kong, help yourself carries another totally different meaning now when they are facing the recent spike of CONVID 19. They really need to self helping themselves because the HKSAR government is at the brink of collapse on addressing the current surge of over thousands verified cases a day. Not only the public health system is highly overloaded but all kinds of anti-plague measures like the quarantine facility and testing facility as well as home quarantine support services all fall short to demand in a large extent.

As I mentioned my earlier post enough is enough  the reason is due to the absence of contingence plan arising from the lack of foresight, if not the worse case, malfeasance, of Sophia Chan, Secretary of Food and Health, Caspar Tsui, resigned Secretary of Home Affairs Bureau and of course the Chief Executive, Carrie Lam. They are inevitably the culprits of poor management of this spike of plague. Tsui resigned under the blame of his attendance to a birthday party which is a violation of the social distancing policy. However, the other two are still in their positions but most likely their days is numbered. Anyway, no matter what their political future will be, the fact is that the public is the victim of their wrong doings. When the public services are at the brink of collapse, Hong Kong people can only help themselves but not depend on the government.

Despite of the relatively low fatility rate of Omicron but when the infection cases rose, so was the daily death toll which climbed to a couple of dozen in the recent days. As getting infected is not a low probability event, the number one self-helping is to remain survive after infection. Getting vaccinated is the proven measure. Vaccination cannot prevent infection though but remaining alive after infection is the bottom line.

While the bottom line of stay alive by vaccination is secured, the next self-helping is to avoid getting infected. Naturally wearing face mask is the basic and mandatory step. However, as far as observation reveals that many people do not pay enough attention on their hand hygiene. Many passengers in the public transportation still grab the handrail with their bare hands. Shoppers also pick up merchandise with bare hands as well. No doubt many people carry a bottle of hand sanitizer but the point is that in most of the time they did not clean their hands in time after each and every touching with these objects. Those objects could be contaminated and very likely they would touch their own belongings afterward thus spreaded the virus onto their belongings. When they touched their nose, eyes or mouth unconsciously right after toughing these contaminated belongings thus be infected. Wearing disposable plastic gloves before touching these objects seems to be paramount. This helps avoiding infection in the first place.

For those unfortunately already infected, depending on the level of symptoms, self-helping is also more practical than seeking medical services from the public health system. There are already numerious cases that those verified infected being stranded at home awaiting for hospitalization or quarantine. Those patients with mild symptoms as long as they have already received their jabs do not need to panic because the fatility rate on the vaccinated is quite low. Most likely most patients will get well even if without medical treatment. Sleeping in open area in the chill nights awaiting for hospitalization could bring more risk exposure than can the disease per se be. Let alone the public health system is extremely overloaded so reserving the capacity for those truly endangered not only help ease the overloading but save one self by avoiding possible cross-infection in the hospital.

Naturally despite reducing social contacts, avoid visiting unnecessary premises sounds like platique but are truly practical self-helping measures. When the government fails their job to protect us, self helping yourself seems paramount than ever.

Omicron, OhMyGod!

While the news that the Hong Kong government's talk with its sovereign government sheds some light on the conditional re-openning of the border between the two, people here in Hong Kong is yet to be happy but then in the past week there was a news about a fast spreading  new powerful mutant of the Covid-19 emerged in the Africa and spreading to the rest of the world now. The WTO terms it with the 15th Greek alphabet, Omicron, but I think to most of the people can't help but cry out its nakename Oh-my-god.

It is Oh-my-god because this mutant is not just another one that has been around in the past. This Omicron is far more contagious than its family while whether or not far more deadly is still unknown yet. On the other hand people can't help but cry out OMG because the whole world has rested their hope on the vaccination that as long as the vaccination level is high enough then life can be resumed and economy will be recovered. In fact the living-with-virus (LWV) approach that rest on a higher vaccination level has already been adopted by many countries whose economy were badly hit due to the lockdown in the past or at least strict restriction on the people flow as well as the goods transportation disruption. These countries are desparately in need on the economic resurgence because most of the LWV countries are democratic nations that the current administrations will most likely be voted down if their people still suffer from the poor living due to the economic downturn. The emergence of the Omicron is really Ohmygod to both the administrations as well as the people in these countries.

In my post light-at-end-of-tunnel2 I was skeptical on the LWV approach already. However three months has passed by since then and more and more countries are forced to adopt the LWV approach under the tremendous pressure on economic resurgence. Let alone the downside which I mentioned in the Post but in fact the LWV approach is vulnerable because its assumption of the herd immunity rests on an high level of vaccination among the whole population which unfortunately does not happen in these LWV countries. The key reasonale lies on the protection against infection resulting from vaccination or at least the low fatility rate even if infected so people can generally live a relatively normal life. 

However, the fatal blow to the LWV approach now is that the Omicron is such a mutant that it can effectively escape from the detection mechanism of the existing vaccines making them almost useless. If the Omicron is also a deadly variant that it will just be a death sentence on the LWV approach. The whole world will just fall into the looping of the lockdown and reopen thus the economy is paralysed so is the people's livelihood.

The another risk of the LWV is that it provides a perfect breeding ground for the Virus to evolve and mutate into an highly contagious and deadly mutant. Viruses need a host providing them an habitat so they can live. As long as they live then they keep evolving to combat on the obstacles like antibotics. In fact all creatures live and thrive in this way by overcoming obstacles but the point is that the evolution rate of the micro organisum is much higher that of their hosts as well as the pace of the new vaccine development. The outcome is the viruses always lead the race. LWV provides an environment that there are many vaccinated hosts as well as unvaccinated virus carriers mingling together. Mutated virus can keep infecting the vaccinated hosts to test breaking the effectiveness of vaccines via a fast evolution. The emergence of a highly deadly variant is not the question of whether or not but as a matter of fact just time. The leaders of the LWV governments seem overlook the fact that virus will definitely defeat the existing vaccines in one day and human always lack behind on the new vaccine development.

Omicron may or may not be very deadly but if the leaders in the LWV governments keep the game on then eventually there is one day people is bound to cry out Oh My God.