Opinion

Hong Kong’s pandemic fatigue: we’re sick of Covid-19 and a government we can’t trust

Name: Hong Kong’s mass Covid-19 testing to begin on September 1, to last at least 7 days
Uploaded: 2020-08-31T01:30:10.000Z
Duration: 3 min 7 s
Description: Hong Kong’s mass Covid-19 testing to begin on September 1, to last at least 7 days

The public has been diagnosed with ‘anti-epidemic fatigue’ by officials. If they really understood what that meant, they would know why Hongkongers aren’t rushing to join the mass-testing programme for Covid-19

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Passengers wear face masks on a tram in Hong Kong. Photo: EPA-EFE

Alice Wu

Alice Wu is a political consultant and a former associate director of the Asia Pacific Media Network at UCLA.

Published: 9:30am, 31 Aug 2020Updated: 9:48am, 31 Aug 2020

I’m tired of Covid-19. And as much as I try to avoid it – as we have all been trying to do – the novel coronavirus remains that annoying, attention-seeking, self-absorbed party pooper. It is humbling that all these lives have been lost to Covid-19; it’s also almost absurd how badly we are faring against it. Our basic need to breathe makes us susceptible.

The Hong Kong public has been diagnosed with “anti-epidemic fatigue” by officials and experts. But there is little sign that the government actually understands what that means and why Hong Kong has burned out.

This is unfortunate. Someone who doesn’t really understand what Hongkongers have been through is also unlikely to understand why people aren’t jumping at the chance to join the mass testing for Covid-19, an exercise that has become another time bomb for the government.

Fatigue is a coping mechanism. It’s a survival mode; there comes a point when sitting on the edge of our seats every afternoon, waiting for Dr Chuang Shuk-kwan – head of communicable disease at the Centre for Health Protection and the face of the city’s fight against the pandemic – to brief us on the daily tallies of new infections and deaths, is plain unhealthy.

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Hong Kong’s mass Covid-19 testing to begin on September 1, to last at least 7 days

If anything, fatigue is our way of coming to terms with feelings of defeat and failure. Months of being in a heightened state of alertness and fear – of having our lives disrupted, feeling isolated or even disoriented – have only resulted in a third wave of infections in the community. And if that doesn’t warrant feelings of defeat, I don’t know what does.

In case the government has forgotten, our pre-pandemic life wasn’t exactly a bed of roses, thanks to the self-inflicted political catastrophe that started with the extradition bill. We were in a disconcerting free fall before Covid-19. And that’s the pathogen causing our fatigue.