PANDEMIC PANTO

Peter Wood talks Sai Kung

Honestly, sometimes I think we Hongkongers are living in a Covid pantomime. “Oh yes, they will!” yells the Beta variant from the stage.

“Oh no they won’t!” prompts the Delta variant from the wings.

These travel bubbles open and close faster than a…well, you get the idea.

I keep pinching myself. After the grinding lockdowns of the last 18 months, things seemed, for a fleeting moment, to be on the up. Everyone I know is double-jabbed, they’re all desperate to travel. Like so many of us immigrants (I hate the word “expat”— thanks Nicole) this pandemic has prevented me from visiting my family for nearly 2 years. My mum is 84, so for her it’s tick tock. Now I recently heard that prominent microbiologist Yuen Kwok-yung said Hong Kong should maintain its zero-Covid strategy for the time being, while suggesting herd immunity is no longer achievable with the emergence of the Delta variant.

I never know what to believe these days. I mean, we’ve been told that herd immunity could be achieved if 70 percent of a population were vaccinated with BioNTech jabs which have an efficacy rate of 95 percent.

But the researchers now say the threshold had increased to 97.4 percent.

RTHK worked out that taking into account the use of Sinovac jabs which have a lower efficacy rate, the vaccination rate needed for herd immunity would be an—err—unachievable 142.9 percent. Grrr…

Whilst I’m on the topic of herd immunity and Sinovac, my family, most of whom live in Zimbabwe, a country that’ll remain in the red zone for some time yet, have all been double vaxxed with Sinovac or Sinopharm. It was the only choice (other than Ivermectin which is not FDA approved, but will keep them worm free for years to come) and the impoverished country jumped at the opportunity. Sinovac hasn’t gone down too well in many places. In the Philippines, President Duterte actually apologised for being vaccinated with the unapproved Sinopharm. And the SinoVac efficacy has sparked riots in Thailand, Indonesia and Peru, whilst countries like Chile, Bahrain, Mongolia, and the Seychelles are finding out that the Chinese vaccine is a lame duck against the Delta variant.

Of course, Sinovac was never meant to prevent contagion – and true to form, my mum, my brother, his wife, my nephew, his wife, my cousin, her husband and my brother-in-law all went down with Covid. And we aren’t exactly a feely-touchy family. Oh, there were plenty more, including an entire wedding party for a distant cousin, but I’m restricted to 600 words. Thankfully, everyone survived, but all agreed that this was no flu, leaving them absolutely shattered.

My point is, despite the lower efficacy of Sinovac, it kept them out of hospital and alive. Most deaths in Zimbabwe (and there have been many) are those who haven’t had the jab. Food for thought?

I wonder if infecting an entire population will ironically reach that illusive herd immunity? In recent studies, an Israeli health centre found that doublejabbed, previously uninfected people are 13 times as likely to get Covid compared with the naturally immune. This statement sounds pretty dangerous but it does beg the question over vaccinating children; perhaps it is better to simply allow them to be infected on the grounds they’re highly unlikely to come to serious harm but are more likely to gain lasting immunity from the disease that way.

To quote one anti-vaxxer brainchild:

“But the vaccine doesn’t even guarantee you won’t get sick, it really only stops you from dying.”

Not dying sounds pretty damn spectacular, to

me.

Anyway, since were are on the topic of pestilence and plague: do you think Covid has brought us closer together? I’m way too old, or remotely interested to make use of dating apps *ahem* but I’m reliably informed that the dating app industry has proliferated during our confinement. If statistics are to be believed, virtual dates—a modern take on safe sex— have increased by 30% in the UK in the earlier part the year. As one British lonely heart so eloquently put it; “This year has brought us closer together, there is no time-wasting as well. We had a lot of fun and are having a lot of fun still. There is no bullshit – maybe that is just the way it worked out with us but there does not seem to be the normal dating bullshit, which is nice.”

You go girl!

Writer, podcaster and Sai Kung resident, Peter Wood

Wood landed in Hong Kong in 1993. He worked as a photographer for the Eastern Express newspaper and for AFP. His first book, a memoir, Mud Between Your Toes, is available.

Listen here:

mudbetweenyourtoes.podbean.com