Trip to Xiangyang and Covid

I'm in Sabrina's hometown apartment, sitting in the corner of the couch, reading the book Chaos. Sabrina is on my left and on her left are her parents. The TV is on, and I look up when I hear some English dialog. It is a scene from the oval office of the 1950s. Someone who doesn't look much like Eisenhower is asking a naive question about the Soviet / China relationship. The advisor angles towards Eisenhower and the camera and in a knowing way says not to underestimate Mao - that he's in in total control. The flash to another scene with Mao sitting at a desk, reading papers when his daughters come in and share some playful banter before Mao returns to his work.  

With the travel restrictions, it had been 2+ years since we visited Sabrina's parents. Then suddenly, along with everyone getting covid, travel opened up and I had the last week of year off work - so on a day's notice we booked high speed rail and went.

Sabrina's hometown (Xiangyang, Hubei) would be considered a third-tier city - one of about 4 million. There's lots of local street shop charm, fewer chains, and fewer western options (but I did find a Starbucks). This is my 3rd trip there. I did not see another foreigner on this trip.

Sabrina's parents don't get out much since Sabrina's mom had a stroke which preceded our previous trip. Sabrina's dad does the cooking and cares for the mom, whose mobility is limited. In the three days we spent there, the dad prepared all but one of the meals. His approach is admirable. The meal would have a starch (noodle for breakfast, rice for lunch, porridge for dinner) with a few supporting dishes of vegetables, meat, etc. The supporting dishes if not finished would show up at the next meal, sometimes with augmentation (ie, shrimp added to mushrooms). In this way there was no waste and no avoidance.

It seems everyone in China got Covid all at once. This was certainly true in Beijing where in early December a single case could cause your entire apartment complex to be locked down (happened once in three years where we live). By Christmas, 75-80% of Beijingers had contracted Covid in December alone including almost everyone I know. Sabrina's parents also caught it, and were still positive when we visited. They seldom go out, but the dad had run an errand the previous week and apparently caught it then (there are also rumors that it is spreading through the apartment building vents).  There's been a lot of speculation about the sudden opening and sudden spread. I think it's pretty simple - in early December, the authorities knew Omicron was spreading exponentially and the only possible, and maybe unlikely, way to stop it would be a hard lockdown like Shanghai went through for three months. There was no appetite for a hard lockdown of Beijing. My feeling about the spread is from the testing mechanism being overwhelmed. Basically, for about nine months (since Omicron entered China) we needed to get tested every 48-72 hours which test results coming in overnight. To do testing at this scale, they would batch swabs of 10 and if any of the batch tested positive then each person in the batch would be individually tested. This didn't scale and broke down when the number of positive batches reached, say 5%. The practice of test, trace, isolate was abondened.

My experience with Covid wasn't horrible but at the same time worrisome. I woke up on a Saturday morning not feeling well. Hungover? Maybe. But the feeling didn't get better and by Sunday I suspected it was Covid. By Sunday night, I had a 103 fever and I went to bed. I think the fever went up from there since my eyes started burning. Thankfully, by morning fever broke and it's return was much milder that night. Aches and fatigued continued for the week. I didn't feel like working. I wanted to sleep all the time. I felt depressed. This lasted into the second week where I couple times a day I would need to "shut it down" and take a nap. The fatigue was much milder into the third week although I would feel weird in my abdomen and chest, especially after meals. With the new year, I seem ok and head back to work tomorrow.

Official messaging about Covid has changed with the opening. Western media has changed its narrative. It does seems elders are being hit hard. Sometimes, I think I want to distill it all out to make sense of it and other times I think it's just not that complicated.

I finished the book Chaos on the train ride home. The author didn't get to the bottom of the Manson mystery but it sure will be interesting read.