Tag Archives: lockdown

World

Guangzhou lockdown: Chinese are criticizing zero-Covid — in language censors don’t understand

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Hong Kong
CNN
 — 

In many countries, cursing online about the government is so commonplace nobody bats an eye. But it’s not such an easy task on China’s heavily censored internet.

That doesn’t appear to have stopped residents of Guangzhou from venting their frustration after their city – a global manufacturing powerhouse home to 19 million people – became the epicenter of a nationwide Covid outbreak, prompting lockdown measures yet again.

“We had to lock down in April, and then again in November,” one resident posted on Weibo, China’s restricted version of Twitter, on Monday – before peppering the post with profanities that included references to officials’ mothers. “The government hasn’t provided subsidies – do you think my rent doesn’t cost money?”

Other users left posts with directions that loosely translate to “go to hell,” while some accused authorities of “spouting nonsense” – albeit in less polite phrasing.

Such colorful posts are remarkable not only because they represent growing public frustration at China’s unrelenting zero-Covid policy – which uses snap lockdowns, mass testing, extensive contact-tracing and quarantines to stamp out infections as soon as they emerge – but because they remain visible at all.

Normally such harsh criticisms of government policies would be swiftly removed by the government’s army of censors, yet these posts have remained untouched for days. And that is, most likely, because they are written in language few censors will fully understand.

These posts are in Cantonese, which originated in Guangzhou’s surrounding province of Guangdong and is spoken by tens of millions of people across Southern China. It can be difficult to decipher by speakers of Mandarin – China’s official language and the one favored by the government – especially in its written form.

And this appears to be just the latest example of how Chinese people are turning to Cantonese – an irreverent tongue that offers rich possibilities for satire – to express discontent toward their government without attracting the notice of the all-seeing censors.

In nearby Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong, anti-government demonstrators in 2019 often used Cantonese wordplay both for protest slogans and to guard against potential surveillance by mainland Chinese authorities.

Now, Cantonese appears to be offering those fed-up with China’s strict zero-Covid policies an avenue for more subtle displays of dissent.

Jean-François Dupré, an assistant professor of political science at Université TÉLUQ who has studied the language politics of Hong Kong, said the Chinese government’s shrinking tolerance for public criticism has pushed its critics to “innovate” in their communication.

“It does seem that using non-Mandarin forms of communication could enable dissenters to evade online censorship, at least for some time,” Dupré said.

“This phenomenon testifies to the regime’s lack of confidence and increasing paranoia, and of citizens’ continuing eagerness to resist despite the risks and hurdles.”

Though Cantonese shares much of its vocabulary and writing system with Mandarin, many of its slang terms, expletives and everyday phrases have no Mandarin equivalent. Its written form also sometimes relies on rarely used and archaic characters, or ones that mean something totally different in Mandarin, so Cantonese sentences can be difficult for Mandarin readers to understand.

Compared to Mandarin, Cantonese is highly colloquial, often informal, and lends itself easily to wordplay – making it well-suited for inventing and slinging barbs.

When Hong Kong was rocked by anti-government protests in 2019 – fueled in part by fears Beijing was encroaching on the city’s autonomy, freedoms and culture – these attributes of Cantonese came into sharp focus.

“Cantonese was, of course, an important conveyor of political grievances during the 2019 protests,” Dupré said, adding that the language gave “a strong local flavor to the protests.”

He pointed to how entirely new written characters were born spontaneously from the pro-democracy movement – including one that combined the characters for “freedom” with a popular profanity.

Other plays on written characters illustrate the endless creativity of Cantonese, such as a stylized version of “Hong Kong” that, when read sideways, becomes “add oil” – a rallying cry in the protests.

Protesters also found ways to protect their communications, wary that online chat groups – where they organized rallies and railed against the authorities – were being monitored by mainland agents.

For example, because spoken Cantonese sounds different to spoken Mandarin, some people experimented with romanizing Cantonese – spelling out the sounds using the English alphabet – thereby making it virtually impossible to understand for a non-native speaker.

And, while the protests died down after the Chinese government imposed a sweeping national security law in 2020, Cantonese continues to offer the city’s residents an avenue for expressing their unique local identity – something people have long feared losing as the city is drawn further under Beijing’s grip.

For some, using Cantonese to criticize the government seems particularly fitting given the central government has aggressively pushed for Mandarin to be used nationwide in education and daily life – for instance, in television broadcasts and other media – often at the expense of regional languages and dialects.

These efforts turned into national controversy in 2010, when government officials suggested increasing Mandarin programming on the primarily-Cantonese Guangzhou Television channel – outraging residents, who took part in rare mass street rallies and scuffles with police.

It’s not just Cantonese affected – many ethnic minorities have voiced alarm that the decline of their native languages could spell an end to cultures and ways of life they say are already under threat.

In 2020, students and parents in Inner Mongolia staged mass school boycotts over a new policy that replaced the Mongolian language with Mandarin in elementary and middle schools.

Similar fears have long existed in Hong Kong – and grew in the 2010s as more Mandarin-speaking mainlanders began living and working in the city.

“Growing numbers of Mandarin-speaking schoolchildren have been enrolled in Hong Kong schools and been seen commuting between Shenzhen and Hong Kong on a daily basis,” Dupré said. “Through these encounters, the language shift that has been operating in Guangdong became quite visible to Hong Kong people.”

He added that these concerns were heightened by local government policies that emphasized the role of Mandarin, and referred to Cantonese as a “dialect” – infuriating some Hong Kongers who saw the term as a snub and argued it should be referred to as a “language” instead.

In the past decade, schools across Hong Kong have been encouraged by the government to switch to using Mandarin in Chinese lessons, while others have switched to teaching simplified characters – the written form preferred in the mainland – instead of the traditional characters used in Hong Kong.

There was further outrage in 2019 when the city’s education chief suggested that continued use of Cantonese over Mandarin in the city’s schools could mean Hong Kong would lose its competitive edge in the future.

“Given Hong Kong’s rapid economic and political integration, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Hong Kong’s language regime be brought in line with that of the mainland, especially where Mandarin promotion is concerned,” Dupré said.

It’s not the first time people in the mainland have found ways around the censors. Many use emojis to represent taboo phrases, English abbreviations that represent Mandarin phrases, and images like cartoons and digitally altered photos, which are harder for censors to monitor.

But these methods, by their very nature, have their limits. In contrast, for the fed-up residents of Guangzhou, Cantonese offers an endless linguistic landscape with which to lambast their leaders.

It’s not clear whether these more subversive uses of Cantonese will encourage greater solidarity between its speakers in Southern China – or whether it could encourage the central government to further clamp down on the use of local dialects, Dupré said.

For now though, many Weibo users have embraced the rare opportunity to voice frustration with China’s zero-Covid policy, which has battered the country’s economy, isolated it from the rest of the world, and disrupted people’s daily lives with the constant threat of lockdowns and unemployment.

“I hope everyone can maintain their anger,” wrote one Weibo user, noting how most of the posts relating to the Guangzhou lockdowns were in Cantonese.

“Watching Cantonese people scolding (authorities) on Weibo without getting caught,” another posted, using characters that signify laughter.

“Learn Cantonese well, and go across Weibo without fear.”

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World

China Covid: Death of boy in lockdown fuels backlash against zero-Covid policy

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Hong Kong
CNN
 — 

The death of a 3-year-old boy following a suspected gas leak at a locked down residential compound in northwestern China has triggered a fresh wave of outrage at the country’s stringent zero-Covid policy.

The boy’s father claimed in a social media post that Covid workers tried to prevent him from leaving their compound in Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu province, to seek treatment for his child – causing a delay that he believes proved fatal.

A social media post by the father on Wednesday about his son’s death was met with an outpouring of public anger and grief, with several related hashtags racking up hundreds of millions of views over the following day on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform.

“Three years of pandemic was his entire life,” a popular comment read.

It’s the latest tragedy to have fueled a growing backlash against China’s unrelenting zero-Covid policy, which continues to upend daily life with incessant lockdowns, quarantines and mass testing mandates even as the rest of the world moves on from the pandemic.

Numerous similar cases have involved people dying after being denied prompt access to emergency medical care during lockdowns – despite the insistence of Chinese officials, including leader Xi Jinping, that the country’s Covid policies “put people and their lives first.”

Large parts of Lanzhou, including the neighborhood where the boy’s family live, have been locked down since early October.

The boy’s father said his wife and child both fell ill around noon on Tuesday, showing signs of gas poisoning. The mother’s condition improved after receiving CPR from the father, but the boy fell into a coma, according to the man’s social media post.

The father said he made numerous attempts to call both an ambulance and the police but failed to get through. He said he then went to plead for help from Covid workers who were enforcing the lockdown at their compound, but was rejected and told to seek help from officials in his community or keep calling for an ambulance himself.

He said the workers asked him to show a negative Covid test result, but he could not do so as no tests had been carried out at the compound in the previous 10 days.

He grew desperate and eventually carried his son outside, where a “kind-hearted” resident called a taxi to take them to hospital, he wrote.

However, it was too late by the time they arrived and the doctors failed to save his son.

“My child might have been saved if he had been taken to the hospital sooner,” he wrote.

According to online maps, the hospital is just 3 kilometers (1.86 miles) away from the boy’s home – a 10-minute drive.

The father claimed in his social media post that the police did not show up until after he had taken his son to hospital. But the local police said in a statement late on Tuesday that they had immediately rushed to the scene after receiving a call for help from the public, and helped send two people, including the child, to hospital 14 minutes later.

The police statement said the child had died of carbon monoxide poisoning and the mother remained in hospital in a stable condition – but it made no mention of whether lockdown measures had delayed their treatment.

CNN contacted both Lanzhou officials and the boy’s father for comment. The father did not respond.

On Thursday, Lanzhou authorities issued a statement expressing grief for the child’s death and condolences to his family. They vowed to “seriously deal with” officials and work units that had failed to facilitate a timely rescue for the boy.

“We have learned a painful lesson from this incident … and will put people and their lives first in our work in the future,” the statement said.

The boy’s death also ignited anger from local residents. Videos circulating on social media show residents taking to the streets to demand an answer from authorities.

One shows a woman shouting at officials wrapped head to toe in hazmat suits. “Ask your leader to come here and tell us what happened today,” she shouts. In another, a man chants, “Give me back my freedom!”

Other videos show several buses containing SWAT police officers arriving at the scene.

One shows rows of officers in hazmat suits marching down the street; several others show residents in a standoff with uniformed police officers who are holding shields and wearing helmets and masks.

CNN cannot independently verify the videos, but a resident who lives nearby confirmed to CNN he saw the SWAT team police moving in.

“They shouted ‘one, two, one’ (when they marched down the street) so loudly they could be heard from 500 meters away,” the resident said.

He lamented Lanzhou’s “excessive epidemic prevention and lockdowns” and what he said was increasingly stringent censorship.

“Now, even knowing the truth has become an extravagant hope,” he said. “Who knows how many similar incidents have happened across the country?”

In his social media post, the father said he was approached by someone who claimed to work for a “civil organization” and was offered 100,000 yuan (about $14,000) on the condition that he signed an agreement vowing not to seek accountability from the authorities.

“I didn’t sign it. All I want is an explanation (for my son’s death),” he wrote. “I want (them) to tell me directly, why wouldn’t they let me go at the time?”

The father’s posts on Weibo and Baidu, another online site, recounting the incident both disappeared late on Wednesday night.



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Health

Many lockdown babies slower at social development, faster at crawling, study says

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Early in the pandemic, when much of the world was in lockdown, many parents and other caregivers expressed fears about how a historic period of prolonged isolation could affect their children.

Now, a study out of Ireland has shed some light on this question. Its results suggest that babies born during Ireland’s first covid-19 lockdown were likely to be slower to develop some social communication skills than their pre-pandemic peers. They were less likely to be able to wave goodbye, point at things and know one “definite and meaningful word” by the time they turn 1. On the other hand, they were more likely to be able to crawl.

Experts say children’s early years of life are their most formative — their brains soak up every interaction and experience, positive and negative, to build the neural connections that will serve them for the rest of their lives.

For the cohort of “lockdown babies,” the “first year of life was very different to the pre-pandemic babies,” Susan Byrne, a pediatric neurologist at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and lead author of the study, told The Washington Post.

But she and the other authors of the study have one message for parents: Don’t be too worried. “Babies are resilient and inquisitive by nature,” they note, and are likely to bounce back given the right support.

Pregnancy complications spiked during the pandemic. No one knows exactly why.

While the pandemic is not over, and experts say it could be years before they have a fuller picture of its effects on children, parents around the world have already begun to report noticing differences in their lockdown babies.

When Chi Lam, 33, had her first child, Adriana, in April 2020, England was in lockdown. Most people were not permitted to leave their homes without a “reasonable excuse.” Her parents and in-laws, who were in Hong Kong, were also unable to visit, as Hong Kong had closed its border.

As a result, for the first few months of Adriana’s life, it was “just us three,” Lam told The Post. There were no play dates or visits from family and friends, and Adriana wasn’t regularly exposed to children her own age until she turned 1.

Lam thinks the prolonged isolation had some impact on her daughter Adriana. At her two-year checkup, doctors told Lam that Adriana had “weak” gross motor skills — actions like jumping and walking that engage the whole body. “I guess it’s because we only let her play in the park when she turned 1-ish because we thought it’s not safe” because of the pandemic, Lam said. Adriana was also easily startled by loud noises, such as motorcycle exhausts.

It’s difficult, Lam says, to disentangle how much of this is inherent to who Adriana is, and how much is tied to the unusual circumstances of her first year of life. But her observations echo the findings of studies that are beginning to suggest that lockdowns and the pandemic did affect children — though how much and through what mechanisms remains a largely open question.

The Irish study, published this month in the British Medical Journal, asked parents of 309 babies born between March and May 2020 to report on their child’s ability to meet 10 developmental milestones at age 1 — including the ability to crawl, stack bricks and point at objects. The researchers compared those parents’ responses to data collected on over 1,600 babies as part of a large-scale study that followed babies born in Ireland between 2008 and 2011 and assessed their development over time.

There were some small but significant differences between the two groups. Fewer babies in the study could wave goodbye — 87.7 percent compared to 94.4 percent, point at objects around them — 83.8 percent compared with 92.8 percent, or say at least one “definite and meaningful word” — 76.6 percent compared to 89.3 percent — at their 12-month assessment, according to their parents. They were more likely than their pre-pandemic peers to be able to crawl at age 1, however. In the other six categories, the researchers found no meaningful differences.

Studies that rely on observations can identify differences but not shed light on the reason for the difference. However, the authors of the Irish study have some theories.

They suggest that the babies in the lockdown cohort may have had fewer visitors, and so fewer occasions to learn to wave goodbye. With limited trips outside of the house, babies may have seen fewer few objects they’d want to point to. And they may have “heard a narrower repertoire of language and saw fewer unmasked faces speaking to them,” due to lockdown measures.

Conversely, lockdown babies may have learned to crawl faster because they spent more time at home, playing on the floor, “rather than out of the home in cars and strollers.”

“The jury is still very much out in terms of what the effects of this pandemic are going to be on this generation,” Dani Dumitriu, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Columbia University who was not involved in the Irish study, told The Post.

Dumitriu, who is a co-author of a separate study on babies born in 2020, characterized the findings as reassuring. “They’re not finding major developmental delays, just like we didn’t.”

Pandemic brought out something positive for some people — resilience

The study, which was peer-reviewed, has some limitations. It relies on parents’ observations of their own children, which can be flawed or incomplete. There were demographic differences between the population of pre- and post-pandemic babies, and in each case, the parents were asked to assess their children’s development “in a slightly different way.”

What is needed, the authors and other experts say, is a large-scale study that follows babies over time and measures their development in standardized ways — what’s known as a longitudinal cohort study. The authors of this study assessed the cohort of lockdown babies when they turned 2 with a standardized set of developmental questionnaires, and hope to publish their findings, which are under review, in a follow-up paper.

In the meantime, the authors of the study say most babies can overcome any delay caused by the pandemic with the right support. Researchers who have studied this cohort of babies have called on governments to provide more resources to families of lockdown babies — particularly those most at risk — and to follow those babies over time to ensure there are no long-term delays. “If we do notice a delay, then we can quickly intervene and set that child back onto a correct trajectory,” Dumitriu explains.

Parenting a child under 12 in the age of delta: ‘It’s like a fire alarm every day’

Ultimately, Byrne is hopeful that “with the reopening … babies will really thrive.”

“There is such scope for plasticity in the brains of babies and children,” she told The Post.

Lam is also optimistic that Adriana will catch up with any delays as she gets older. “People around me are telling me, once they go back to study in a school, then they’ll be fine,” she told The Post. “I believe that as well.”

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US

Sources – NBC New York

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A series of possible swatting incidents — hoax calls reporting serious crimes designed to draw large emergency responses to a single place — locked down high schools in at least a half-dozen New Jersey counties Friday within a half-hour span, law enforcement sources with knowledge of the case say, indicating a possible targeted attack.

Police in Toms River tweeted that they got a call about a possible shooting at High School North around 11 a.m. and the school was locked down. Cops confirmed they were investigating the incident as a possible swatting case and said there was no active threat.

Around the same time, emergency correspondence showed more than a half-dozen schools in at least five counties got similar calls. All of the affected buildings are high schools and they cover the length of the state, from Hamilton High in Mercer County to East Brunswick High School in Middlesex, Barnegat High School in Ocean and Weequihaic in Newark.

Sussex and Monmouth counties reported similar calls. Emergency correspondence indicated all of the calls came in over roughly a half-hour span starting around 10:45 a.m.

Swatting involves a fake emergency call about a series crime — an active shooter, in some cases — that forces a large-scale emergency response, directing police and other resources en masse. Similar incidents have been reported across the country in recent days, involving schools from California to Florida to South Carolina and other states.

Chopper 4 was over the scene of a high school in Newark, New Jersey, one of many affected by an apparent swatting attack across the state Friday.

The police chief in Jackson, New Jersey, where a high school was also locked down Friday, said his department was warned about the possible swatting attack a week or so ago. He said, “Everyone performed in a professional matter.”

Another law enforcement source said an email went out to multiple law agencies advising the same. Details of the message, which the source said came from the state Department of Education, weren’t immediately clear. News 4 is reaching out to the department for comment.

No further details were immediately available.



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Health

Babies born in lockdown were less likely to have said their first word by the time they turned one

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Lockdowns and mask mandates have stunted babies’ development, a study suggests.

Youngsters born during the pandemic were less likely to have said their first words by their first birthday compared to babies born pre-Covid.

They were also less likely to be able to wave ‘bye’ or point at objects, researchers in Ireland found.

The team say face masks limited children’s ability to read facial expressions or see people’s mouths move — a crucial part of learning to speak. 

Bans on visiting grandparents and relatives were also blamed for depriving them of vital socializing time.

It is just the latest piece of evidence to highlight the devastating toll of pandemic restrictions on the health of America’s youth.

The above graph shows the likelihood of a particular behavior in pandemic babies compared to non-pandemic babies by their first birthday. Pincer refers to using the thumb and index fingure together. Pandemic babies were more likely to crawl, but less likely to be talking, pointing or waving goodbye

More than 3.6million babies were born in America over the first year of the Covid pandemic alone.

Evidence has already emerged suggesting that they suffered weakened immune systems due to the isolation, putting them at greater risk of nasty colds.

And today’s study is the latest to add to a growing body of evidence pointing to the measures as triggering delays in development for the youngest in society. 

Record number of toddlers hospitalized with colds ‘due to lockdowns’

More children and young people are being hospitalized with colds and respiratory problems than ever after the Covid pandemic, official data suggests.

Experts have repeatedly warned lockdowns and measures used to contain Covid like face masks also suppressed the spread of germs which are crucial for building a strong immune system in children.

A retrospective report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today showed levels of common cold viruses hit their highest level ever among under-18s in August 2021.

The CDC samples random pediatric hospitals across the US and makes national estimates to gauge how prevalent viruses are.

There were nearly 700 children in hospital sick with a respiratory virus across the seven wards studied in August last year, of which just over half had tested positive for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) – which is normally benign.

This was the highest levels ever recorded in summer, and came off the back of a year and a half of brutal pandemic restrictions forcing many to stay indoors.

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In the paper, led by the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, researchers looked at 309 babies born between March and May 2020.

Ireland was in lockdown for five months over that year, and spent many others under tight restrictions.

Parents were surveyed about 10 developmental milestones after their child turned one year old.

These included: saying one definite word, finger pointing, waving bye, being able to stand, stepping sideways, crawling and stacking bricks.

The results were compared to 2,000 babies born between 2008 and 2011.

Lockdown babies were 14 per cent less likely to have said one definite word, results showed.

They were also nine per cent less likely to have started pointing, and six per cent less likely to wave goodbye.

On the other hand, however, they were also significantly more likely to be crawling — at seven per cent.

Writing in the release, the College said: ‘Lockdown measures may have reduced the repertoire of language heard and the sight of unmasked faces speaking to [infants].

‘It may also have curtailed opportunities to encounter new items of interest, which might prompt pointing, and the frequency of social contacts to enable them to learn to wave bye-bye.

‘[But] they were still more likely to be crawling… which might be because they were more likely to have spent more time at home on the ground rather than out of the home in cars and strollers.’

The study relied on parental recall in some cases beyond a month after the child’s first birthday, which may affect the results.

It was also observational, meaning it could not confirm a definite link between lockdowns and delayed development.

Dr Lemmietta McNeilly, the chief of staff at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association who was not involved in the research, told DailyMail.com babies may have lacked a first word because lockdowns meant they had ‘fewer needs to communicate’.

She added: ‘The need to follow the children who are in more naturalistic environments is necessary before determining if the [lockdown] children will have any lasting delays.

‘It is also important to note that the parents were living in a highly stressful environment as they dealt with the pandemic.’ 

The pandemic babies were from the CORAL study, or Impact of CoronaVirus Pandemic on Allergic and Autoimmune Dysregulation in Infants Born During Lockdown.

Those from before the pandemic were from the BASELINE study, or Babies after SCOPE, paper. 

The study was published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood. 

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Entertainment

Lockdown Season 11 Episode 17

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This is not a still from the episode, but two stills, and it amuses me very much.
Photo: Jace Downs/AMC

The third act of The Walking Dead’s 11th and final season has begun, but it doesn’t seem like anyone notified the show. Other than a quick montage of familiar faces at the start, with a bit of narration by Judith (Cailey Fleming), it’s an unceremonious continuation of the last episode. Which isn’t a bad thing! But it’s not exactly a good thing, either.

When we last left our zany pals, Daryl, Maggie, Aaron, Gabriel, Negan, and his new wife Annie were being hunted by Hornsby and about a million Commonwealth troopers. Back in the Commonwealth, Yumiko was Governor Pamela Milton’s lawyer, Carol was watching over the kids while also doing jobs on the side for Hornsby, and Eugene, Max, Magna, Kelly, and Connie were fomenting rebellion against the city’s wealthy elite, which culminated with Connie writing an article about Pam’s son Sebastian’s habit of sending the city’s “undesirables” out to die on various errands on him. It is very important to me to note yet again that the newspaper shown in the previous episode looks like a terrorist manifesto, and an especially poorly designed one at that.

Although it’s repeatedly said that the article offers no proof that Sebastian caused the deaths of so many missing people, “Lockdown” reveals everyone in the Commonwealth believes it and has begun protesting outside Milton’s office, demanding that “Give Sebastian to us!” so… they can murder him, I guess? There’s a court system in the Commonwealth, so I’m unclear why they think this is an option. Although to be fair, Sebastian—now and forever Kingsley St. Buffingsworth of the Cape Cod Buffingsworths—is the most awful person in the zombie apocalypse, so I can see why they’d love to skip a trial and get directly to the execution.

Photo: Jace Downs/AMC

Honestly, I’m going to go ahead and admit there was a great deal that was unclear to me in “Lockdown.” It has some nice action but not enough to distract me from the plot, which often gets The Walking Dead into trouble. I’m fine with Daryl et al. and Hornsby hunting each other for half the episode, although I don’t know if they realize Hornsby has taken over Alexandria, Hilltop, and Riverside yet. I’m equally fine with Negan being sent to the Commonwealth to warn Carol and the others that Hornsby will almost certainly be radioing home and sending his secret goons to kidnap the kids. Carol already had a secret attic hideout where Jerry’s been stockpiling food, of course. It all seems smart!

It’s what everyone else is doing in the Commonwealth that bugs me, because everyone seems to be working at cross-purposes. Connie is delighted—delighted—to have riled up the proletariat to rise against the upper-class/demand the death of an asshole, but Kelly worries things have immediately gotten out of hand. Magna hates the upper class and wants a revolution but somehow feels the need to protect them from the inevitable warfare that inevitably comes with a revolution, but also wants to leave. Yumiko feels like she needs to stay in the Commonwealth even though as Pam’s lawyer the revolution will in all likelihood go poorly for her, and then Magna says she’ll stay if Yumiko stays. While bother toppling the Miltons if you’re just going to leave? Why start a revolution if you’re worried about it putting everyone in danger, because of course it will?

Photo: Jace Downs/AMC

Likewise, Connie’s newspaper specifically targeted Sebastian’s crimes… despite the fact the paper’s (bananas) headline only says, “Pamela Milton is lying to you,” which, uh, she isn’t? She truly seems to have no idea what Kingsley’s been doing, although perhaps she’s lying about other things. But Carol and Negan hunt down Kingsley hiding in a secret room, passed-out drunk and urinating into mason jars, so they can safely escort him back to Pamela in exchange for the governor bringing Hornsby to heel. Carol even says they should blame Hornsby for the deaths, which would take the heat off the Milton family entirely and squash the revolution in its tracks.

I feel like everyone would have benefitted from having a team meeting and figuring out what their goals were and how best to achieve them, partially because they’re all working at cross-purposes, but mostly it would be a lot more exciting to watch these people work together. At the very least it would lend the conflict with the Commonwealth a more epic feel, which would be nice given that there are only seven more episodes to go.

Photo: Jace Downs/AMC

To be fair, I don’t think the bad guys have a plan either. Hornsby seems to have conquered Hilltop, Alexandria, and Oceanside for the immense power and untold riches it will bring him, both of which are non-existent. Pamela Milton just wants to stay in charge and live her life of luxury by exploiting the working class (which sucks, but is unfortunately no more a crime in the zombie apocalypse than it is in reality), but when faced with protestors, she initiates something called plan “B14,” which the show indicates is the following:

Putting the city into lockdown, forcing all the residents to return to their homes. But then, somehow, telling them that anyone caught out after curfew will be arrested “for their own safety.” But… since they’ve already ordered everyone to return to their home, why wouldn’t you just arrest everyone who’s outside regardless of what time it is?

And then it turns out there actually is a giant zombie horde heading towards town, so the lockdown is a perfectly good and smart thing to do, regardless of how it’s stifling public unrest. But did Pamela have a truly giant horde of zombies waiting for this exact situation? How would she get them and contain them? Did she somehow have someone send the zombies to the Commonwealth, endangering everyone including herself, when she could just have her minions lie and say zombies were on the way?

Photo: Jace Downs/AMC

Furthermore, the zombies get through several lines of defense before Mercer, Rosita, and a very small team of Commontroopers head out to stop them. It’s implied that someone, presumably Milton, told the advance soldiers to let the zombies through, but… why? Wouldn’t at least one of the soldiers get suspicious that he was being told to leave his post when zombies are on the way? They’re still out there, by the way, when the episode ends—and Daryl has his knife to Hornsby’s throat, the group surrounded by Commontroopers who very pointedly do not put their guns down.

Here’s the thing about all these questions and plotholes—I don’t particularly care? I don’t have any expectations that The Walking Dead will pull out all the stops for these final eight episodes, and I will be pleasantly surprised if the show manages to surprise me at all in its homestretch. It could, if the show decides to wrap up this Commonwealth business sooner rather than later and start laying the framework for the next several TWD series; maybe by showing us one of these evolved zombies we’ve heard so little about it, or giving us hints of how or why the hell Daryl ends up going to Europe in his spin-off. But somehow, I don’t expect the show to do this for another six episodes at least. Until then, I guess, viva la revolución. Until you don’t want it to viva. Either way.

Photo: Jace Downs/AMC

Assorted Musings:

  • For some reason, AMC has started uploading behind-the-scenes photos with the regular TWD stills and this was too cute not to share.
  • How did the jeep flip? There are only two answers: 1) The driver somehow messed up incredibly badly, given that he was on a practically flat field, or 2) the zombies did it. Silly either way.
  • Carol’s look when Negan tells Kingsley about how he’s seen her pull rabbits out of her ass, as a metaphor for her ability to fix difficult problems, is perfection. Pleased at the compliment and completely annoyed that Negan put it that way.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel and Star Wars releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about House of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

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World

UK leadership candidate Sunak attacks COVID lockdown response

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  • Former finance minister says downsides of lockdowns suppressed
  • Sunak says scientists were given too much influence
  • PM candidate says government tried to scare the public

LONDON, Aug 25 (Reuters) – Former finance minister Rishi Sunak, one of two candidates vying to be Britain’s next premier, criticised the way outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson handled the COVID-19 pandemic, saying it had been a mistake to “empower” scientists and that the downsides of lockdowns were suppressed.

The ruling Conservative Party is choosing a new leader after Johnson was forced to quit when dozens of ministers resigned in protest at a series of scandals and missteps. Party members are voting to select either Sunak or Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, who will take over next month.

Opinion polls show Sunak is behind in race. The handling of the pandemic has become an issue, with Truss saying this month she would never again approve another lockdown and also asserting that as trade minister at the time she was not involved in taking the key decisions about how to respond.

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Sunak said the government had been “wrong to scare people” about coronavirus. He said he was banned by officials in Johnson’s office from discussing the “trade-offs” of imposing coronavirus-related restrictions, such as the impact on missed doctor’s appointments and lengthening waiting lists for health care in the state-run National Health Service.

“The script was not to ever acknowledge them,” he told the Spectator magazine. “The script was: ‘oh there’s no trade-off, because doing this for our health is good for the economy’.”

Sunak said scientists on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, the group that helped respond to the outbreak, were given too much influence by ministers on decision making such as closing schools and nurseries.

Sunak said that during the start of the pandemic, when presented with scenarios by the scientists about what would happen if lockdowns were not imposed or extended, his requests for the underlying modelling were ignored.

Sunak said it is unfair to blame civil servants because ministers are elected to take decisions.

“If you empower all these independent people, you’re screwed,” he said.

Sunak himself was widely popular at the start of the pandemic because as then finance minister he launched a furlough scheme that kept many people on payrolls even when lockdowns meant they could not work.

‘VERY EMOTIONAL’

Asked why opinion polls showed that the public was eager for the country to be in a lockdown, Sunak said: “We helped shape that: with the fear messaging”.

Sunak said it was wrong for the government to publish posters showing patients on ventilators and claimed that the Cabinet Office was “very upset” when he gave a speech in September 2020 urging people to “live without fear”.

Britain under Johnson was slower than most of its European peers to lock down in early 2020. After suffering some of the highest death rates at the start of the pandemic, it later became one of the first major economies to reopen.

Asked about Sunak’s remarks, a government spokesperson defended its record on COVID, saying the economy and children’s education were central to the difficult decisions made during the pandemic.

Sunak, who resigned from Johnson’s government last month, suggested schools could have stayed open during the pandemic. He said during one meeting he tried to voice his opposition to closing schools, saying he got “very emotional about it”.

“There was a big silence afterwards,” he said. “It was the first time someone had said it. I was so furious.”

Lockdown “could have been shorter” or had a “different” approach, he said.

A public inquiry looking at the government’s preparedness as well as the public health and economic response to the pandemic is expected to begin taking evidence next year.

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Reporting by Andrew MacAskill
Editing by Kate Holton and Frances Kerry

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Health

Binge-eating and lack of exercise during lockdown has triggered huge increase in gout

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Binge-eating and lack of exercise during lockdown has triggered huge increase in gout, data suggests

  • Hospital admissions for gout have surged due to binge-eating during lockdowns 
  • Gout is a type of inflammatory arthritis that causes sudden and severe joint pain
  • The joint pain is usually in your big toe but can also be found in other joints

By Xantha Leatham Health And Science Reporter For The Daily Mail

Published: | Updated:

It was once known as the ‘disease of kings’ – but hospital admissions for gout have surged due to binge-eating and exercising less during the lockdowns, figures suggest.

The number of cases has risen by 20 per cent in three years, with 234,000 patients admitted to hospital with gout in 2021/22, NHS Digital statistics show.

There has also been a significant rise in obesity over the same period.

 Experts said many spent more time sitting down during the Covid lockdowns and might have eaten more snacks and junk food while working from home.

Gout is a type of inflammatory arthritis that causes sudden and severe joint pain.

Tam Fry, of the National Obesity Forum, told The Sunday Telegraph: ‘Forget Falstaff, Henry VIII and the rich Victorians who made gout infamous. 

‘Today’s Elizabethans are eating and drinking them all under the table.’

Hospital admissions for gout have surged due to binge-eating and exercising less during the lockdowns

Gout is one of mankind’s oldest known diseases and dates back to the Egyptians.

Symptoms include sudden and severe joint pain, usually in your big toe but can also be found in other joints in your feet, hands, wrists, elbow or knees.

Some people may also suffer hot, swollen, red skin over the affected joint.

It is caused from having too much uric acid in the body, which can lead to deposits of sodium urate crystals forming in and around the joints, causing pain and discomfort.

It can lead to excruciating pain but is usually treatable with medication such as ibuprofen, or steroids if the pain and swelling do not improve.

But Mr Fry warned sufferers were not getting enough help from the NHS.

‘Gout sufferers are miles from getting the treatment they need and their appalling care is little better than that delivered in the days of the Dark Ages,’ he said.

The NHS recommends getting to a healthy weight, exercising regularly, quitting smoking an eating a healthy diet to prevent gout coming back.

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World

They survived lockdown in Shanghai, only to be trapped again in Hainan

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(CNN) — “I chose to come to Sanya because the Covid restrictions are more relaxed than (in) Shanghai,” said Li Zefeng, an engineer who lives in China’s biggest city.

But he, like many others who flocked to the resort island off the coast of southern China, would soon eat his words.

Hainan province is often called China’s equivalent to Hawaii or the Maldives — think gorgeous stretches of beachfront, sleek hotels with world-class amenities and a sense you’ve escaped the pressures of everyday life.

However, the holiday vibes took a hit last week, when 1,200 people in the resort hub of Sanya tested positive for coronavirus.

For many of these travelers, that meant not only making frantic calls to family and changing their travel plans, but dealing with a case of deja vu — many of the people visiting Hainan were seeking a reprieve from strict lockdowns in Shanghai.

Once the Covid cases were detected in Hainan, action was swift.

The local government locked down the city of Sanya, which has about one million residents, in addition to the 80,000 tourists. Flights leaving the island were canceled, public transportation was shut down and many tourists were confined to their hotels.

While an excuse to spend some more time on the beach could have been a silver lining, tourists learned that they would still be expected to pay 50% of the room rate at their resorts, which not everyone could afford. And that didn’t include extra expenses like meals or the cost of missing work.

Under the lockdown, visitors were told they had to stay on the island for a full week and show proof of five negative Covid tests before being allowed to leave.

Despite the local government saying it would provide hotel and meal assistance to all those inconvenienced by the lockdown, some took to social media sites like Weibo to complain that the help wasn’t enough.

As China’s borders remain essentially closed, many Chinese have opted for domestic travel since the start of the pandemic, and Hainan — with its sun, sand and duty free shopping — has been one of the most popular destinations.

CNN’s Nectar Gan contributed reporting.

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World

China Covid: Sanya lockdown traps thousands of holidaymakers

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Since the weekend, however, what began as a leisurely escape has become a stress-filled travel nightmare for tens of thousands of holidaymakers, who are trapped in a sudden lockdown imposed by authorities to curb a spiraling Covid outbreak.

Driven by a highly infectious Omicron subvariant — which authorities blame on contact with overseas seafood dealers at a fishing port — the outbreak has infected more than 1,200 people in Sanya since August 1. It has also spread to a dozen other cities and counties in Hainan, infecting more than 200 others.

That is a major outbreak by the standards of China’s zero-Covid policy, which aims to swiftly snuff out local flareups with snap lockdowns, mass testing, extensive contact tracing and quarantine.

On Saturday, the Sanya government hastily locked down the city of a million people, including some 80,000 tourists. Visitors wishing to leave must show five negative Covid tests taken over seven days, and authorities did not specify when the measures would be lifted.

Public transportation was suspended, people’s movements inside the city were restricted to emergency services, and transport links were halted.

More than 80% of flights leaving Sanya were canceled on Saturday, according to data from flight tracking company Variflight. All trains departing from the city were also canceled, state broadcaster CCTV said Saturday.

The mass, sudden flight cancellations led to scenes of chaos at the airport on Saturday, when some passengers who had already boarded were ordered to deplane, according to state media reports.

A video widely circulated on Chinese social media shows a local official trying in vain to placate dozens of frustrated travelers outside the airport police station.

Speaking into a megaphone, the official promised the government would provide free food and hotel accommodation to travelers stranded at the airport, as a ring of police officers stood around him and pushed back the crowd.

“I want to go home! Go home! Go home!” the crowd chanted in response.

Forced stays

China’s borders have been closed to international tourists since the start of the pandemic, meaning tourist hotspots like Sanya rely even more on domestic travelers.

The Sanya government said Saturday that tourists with canceled flights could book discounted hotel rooms. But for some families, the forced week-long stay may still come at a heavy price — especially as the Chinese economy has been battered by zero-Covid.

On Sunday, state-run news website The Paper reported that a family of 13 from the southwestern city of Chengdu would need to spend about $26,600 for an extra week at their five-star hotel, including charges of more than $100 per person for lunch and dinner buffets.

The report caused a stir on Chinese social media, with a related hashtag attracting 270 million views on China’s microblogging site Weibo as of Monday afternoon. Many comments expressed sympathy toward the family, while others questioned why they didn’t move into a cheaper hotel. After the outcry, the family said they were able to access cheaper food options at the hotel.

Other social media posts by trapped tourists in Sanya accused some hotels of raising their prices to cash in on the forced stays. At a news conference Sunday, the Sanya government vowed to look into the complaints.

It said more than 3,200 tourists stuck at the airport on Saturday would be given seven days of accommodation and food. And about 5,000 workers had been sent to Hainan from other parts of the country to help with a mass Covid testing drive, officials added.

When will it end?

For many stranded tourists, the biggest concern is whether they will be allowed to leave after seven days. They fear the lockdown could be extended if the number of infections rises despite the restrictions.

Schools in China are due to reopen after the summer break in three weeks, and some companies may not allow employees to work remotely for weeks on end.

On Monday, Sanya airport canceled all of its 418 flights, according to flight-tracking site Variflight.

Among the tourists stuck were Shanghai residents who had gone to Hainan for summer holidays after enduring a grueling two-month lockdown in the Chinese financial hub earlier this year.

A foreign resident of Shanghai who arrived in Sanya on July 26 said he had to leave his hotel last Thursday because it was requisitioned by the local government as a quarantine facility. The hotel only gave him a day’s notice and left him to figure out alternative accommodation, he said.

Over the past five days, he has waited in long lines for six Covid tests, he said.

“This situation going forward is unsustainable,” said the tourist, who requested not to be named over fears of a nationalistic blowback. “It’s a little bit like Russian roulette on where you go, and whether or not that area is gonna get locked down.”

For many travelers mindful of the country’s Covid restrictions, Hainan had been considered a safe place because in the past it has reported very few cases.

Other tourist hotspots have recently been struck by abrupt lockdown too. Last month, more than 2,000 tourists were trapped in the resort town of Beihai in southern China, after a lockdown was imposed over 500 infections.

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