Do you remember that Lunar New Year festivities were cancelled five years ago? I realized at the time that this was a major event. As the days went by, more Chinese cities shut down and New Year events were cancelled. That hit the international news on January 23rd or so and continued. In the same article it said there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission outside of China, it eported there were cases being reported in the U.S., Japan, South Korea and Thailand. And then the article opinionated about the closures that "such sweeping measures are typical of China's authoritarian communist government, although their effectiveness in containing the outbreak remains uncertain" - that article is HERE. It comes from FRANCE 24 with AP, AFP, and REUTERS.
COVID's anniversary is not likely to be a celebration, but a memorial in the future. The CIA report from 2024 saying it most likely originated from a lab leak, though it then claimed low confidence in this. No surprise that the Trump administration declassified it this week for the anniversary. The lab leak theory remains in play from various the epidemiology experts, and it will be time before all the evidence and facts come out.
So here we are at Lunar New Year 2025. I had wondered if the celebration has become tainted by Covid memories. The Canadian Press article says the answer is yes - in places like Vancouver where Chinese Canadians experienced racism during Covid. Another article talks about the 76-day lockdown in Wuhan, but indicates that there is a cultural policy in China to erase the event, so there are no reports on the five-year anniversary that will come out of China. Worldcrunch has an article on all the changes in the city in response to the outbreak. It is HERE and is very revealing about how impactful the virus was in Wuhan as a city and how it has made a "rebirth."
And travelling to China for the celebration, there's lots of advice from travel.gc.canada. Things lik:e risk of accidental injuries is higher in large crowds, stays away from very crowded areas, know where to find medical care, and practise safe food and water precautions, insect bit protection, and so on.
This is the Frank Gehry Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles - what a mysterious building it is.
No comments:
Post a Comment