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 | | The New York Times |
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 | | Residents embraced the end of China's eight-week lockdown on the Bund in Shanghai today.Aly Song/Reuters |
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Shanghai today began easing one of the world's longest, toughest lockdowns since the pandemic began. Many of its 25 million residents basked in their newfound ability to move around freely. |
As the rules took effect overnight, residents honked horns and set off fireworks. As the sun rose, they strolled and cycled through their city like dazed tourists. During the day, people — all wearing masks — reveled in the novelty of previously mundane pleasures like meeting friends and relatives, walking in parks, and driving through streets that had been largely empty for weeks. |
 | | Cyclists on a bridge in Shanghai.Aly Song/Reuters |
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The stringent two-month lockdown sparked public anger over shortages of food and medicine. Some residents with chronic illnesses were denied entry to hospitals, sometimes with deadly consequences. |
"But those problems came to be resolved, and now everyone is feeling good that the restrictions are lifting," said Tang Xianchun, a Shanghai resident. "I'm more eager to catch up with family and friends, chat and meet face to face. That's what I missed most." |
 | | Workers removing barricades that had kept residents from leaving their compounds during Shanghai's lockdown.Alex Plavevski/EPA, via Shutterstock |
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In early April, Shanghai ordered residents to stay home and businesses to shut to try to stifle the spread of the Omicron variant. City leaders had initially said they could contain the outbreak with limited restrictions, but China's leader, Xi Jinping, ordered tougher measures as infections climbed to more than 20,000 each day. New daily infections have now fallen to low double digits. |
Though the lockdown is over, it has brought changes in the relationship between the Chinese government and its people that will not disappear overnight, my colleague Chris Buckley told me. |
"Some people whose family members have fallen ill or died, who have experienced business closures, whose children have been locked in homes for a long time, whose travel plans have been frustrated, are thinking, 'Is this the life I want — where the government can do these things when it chooses without really heeding law or accountability?'" Chris said. |
The Shanghai lockdown set off small-scale protests that unsettled Communist Party officials. Whether such frustration will linger is hard to say, Chris said. He was in Wuhan when the pandemic began, which also angered many people. |
"They were saying that officials had to be held to account and that there had to be some sort of reckoning with the mistakes in the city," Chris said. "Not all of that anger dissipated, but I think among a lot of people, after the lockdown ended, there was this other sense that took hold that was 'We just want to move on with our lives.'" |
 | | Getting tested for Covid in Shanghai is now a part of daily life. Residents need to show negative test results to get on subways and enter public places.Alex Plavevski/EPA, via Shutterstock |
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Even as the broader lockdown eases, some major restrictions remain, such as checkpoints for entering housing compounds. Hundreds of thousands of residents are also still locked in their housing compounds because of recent infections in their areas. Under China's stringent rules, being in the vicinity of a confirmed infection is enough to land someone in a quarantine facility. |
And it is not yet clear whether the government's harsh response was a success. |
"I'm sure the government believes that it was necessary and painful, but ultimately successful," Chris said. "I'm also sure that a good number of Chinese people, especially people outside of Shanghai, believe that as well." |
That said, there are now 25 million people in Shanghai — China's wealthiest city — who have seen firsthand the drawbacks of the country's harsh Covid strategy. "So there are now Chinese business executives, economists, lawyers, generally well-placed people, becoming more vocal about what they see as the downsides of the policy," Chris said. |
 | | Lining up for vegetables at a market after the lockdown was lifted in Shanghai today.Aly Song/Reuters |
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China's economy also slowed sharply in April and May, in large part because of Shanghai's lockdown. |
There's a general desire in the government to avoid anything like this happening again, Chris said. But despite the economic and social pain, the authorities have reiterated time and again that they are sticking to a strategy of trying to eliminate virtually all Covid cases. |
"With the Omicron variant, it has become very difficult for these lockdowns to snap into place quick enough for cities to avoid painful lockdowns that last weeks, or even as we saw in Shanghai, for months," Chris said. "And the question facing Beijing is, what are the options? Going forward those options will depend on how effectively the government can roll out more vaccines — along with more effective vaccines — and boosters as well." |
Omicron's heavy toll on older people |
This winter's wave of deaths in older people belied the Omicron variant's apparent mildness. Despite high levels of vaccination among older people, Covid killed them at vastly higher rates during this winter's wave than it did last year. |
Almost as many Americans 65 and older died in four months of the Omicron surge as did in six months of the Delta wave. |
 | | The New York Times |
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What else we're following |
I got Covid from my 3-year-old. I felt so sick that I wasn't able to care for her in isolation, but Paxlovid helped a lot. Now I am testing positive again with a symptom-free case of post-Paxlovid Covid rebound and back in isolation, once again unable to have a normal routine or hug my husband or my 6-year-old daughter. It was brutal to not be able to hug her the morning after the massacre in Uvalde. I'm really looking forward to all of us being together as a family again, unmasked at home, after nearly a month of this. — Molly Farrell, Columbus, Ohio |
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