It almost feels like cheating at this point, but given I’ve been in China for exactly a year and one day (and given the rest of my family is still in America), I have a unique perspective on the two extreme ends of COVID-19 responses. Because of this, I thought it would be pretty interesting to share my experiences.
I was still in China in December of 2019 when COVID was first discovered, and went to America in mid-January, so I was in both countries at the start of the pandemic. There were many news articles released in December and January about the novel coronavirus discovered in Wuhan, and how “Chinese hospitals were unable to deal with the outbreak but don’t worry! Western technology and medicine are superior! It will have no impact on our way of life!”
I won’t even get into how much I love those headlines, but a few months later there began a huge discussion on how the Chinese government mishandled the beginning and covered it up. I was still in Beijing when I first heard about “that new virus in Wuhan” and I had plans to visit my grandparents near Shanghai before flying back to America. Even when there were just a few cases, my entire family chat was blowing up with discussion about it. They were even considering having me not visit my grandparents at all, which would’ve been huge given I can only see them once a year, but eventually I was just warned to stop going out and start wearing masks.
On the other hand, although American news did cover how devastating COVID-19 could be, nothing happened at all. There were no warnings, no mask mandates (the one in China was almost unnecessary, as everyone started masking up instantly), no stay-at-home orders (whereas Beijing became a ghost town), and in general no sense of urgency. While China turned into a warzone, America, despite the three-month warning, seemed to only react in the form of memes on Reddit.
The day that Stevens went online, I was visiting my girlfriend in Boston. We immediately booked flights back to Beijing and flew a few days later – I never even went back to Hoboken.
Beijing airport: upon arrival we were taken to a desk, filled out an extensive health questionnaire, had our temperatures taken, and were interviewed. The airport was empty save our flight and medical workers.
Workers walking around in full PPE. There were also many workers walking around with a tank of disinfectant and a nozzle, spraying the floor and desks quite frequently.
I got screwed here by the temperature check. My temperature was 37.4˚C, which is 99.32˚F. The new regulations, which went into effect a few hours before I arrived, had a “fever” temperature cutoff of 37.2˚C, or 98.96˚F. Since my temperature was 0.2˚C above their cutoff, I was detained and sent for further testing. This problem was exacerbated by the fact that, since the regulations were all completely new, none of the workers really knew what was going on and communication between the airport, the government, and the hospital was quite limited.
We ended up sitting in the airport terminal for 10 hours with no food and quite limited water. No one would dare eat or drink because everyone being detained had symptoms of some kind, and it was quite stressful. Despite my temperature being 0.2˚C too high, which honestly could’ve just been attributed to reading error (subsequent temperature tests showed my temperature as normal), I was still sent to the hospital because no one was willing to risk anything. That’s how extreme regulations were.
Eventually I went to the hospital at 10PM. I got tested in three different ways – a nose swab, a blood draw, and a CT scan of my lungs. I’m fairly sure by now I’ve been tested every way possible, with the exception of spitting into a cup (done at HK airports). Results took about 12 hours of just sitting and waiting, and it was the next night before I finally made it out of the hospital. In the 48 hours before I made it to my hotel, I had two small meals and 4 hours of sleep, randomly interspersed at waiting chairs outside.
The bus to my hotel.
Eventually I was cleared and taken to my hotel in a private bus. If you didn’t have a completely private apartment, you were taken to a hotel to be quarantined for 2 weeks. Even if I hadn’t had a slight fever, I wouldn’t have been allowed to stay with my girlfriend despite having spent the past week together and flown in together. Everyone had to have either their own apartment, or their own hotel room.
The hotel room cost around 1500 USD and included 3 meals a day. You weren’t allowed to leave the room at any point for any reason, and every day a worker called in to take your temperature, once in the morning and once in the afternoon.
You would think this would be the end of the road, but I actually got screwed even harder. Two days into quarantine, my temperature one morning was 37.3˚C. If you remember earlier, that’s 0.1˚C too high. I was immediately whisked away to the hospital again and had more tests done – a CT scan, 3 blood draws, and 3 nose swabs. I was there for five days.
My hospital room. Note the little cubby where food was sent in.
The thing about the hospital was that I couldn’t even take off my mask in my own room. It did come with a bathroom and a shower, which was nice, but I was also told that it would take one day – the next morning, they would have my test results and I’d be free to go. They kept coming back and doing more tests, however, and as stated earlier I ended up staying five days. By the end, the workers all knew me because I was the last patient to leave, and we exchanged little notes (they’re in Chinese, so I’m not sure a photo would help here).
Eventually I made it out, went back to my quarantine hotel, and less than 10 minutes after finally getting to my room after that ordeal, I had to go to a thermo stats class. Life is sad.
The thing about the Chinese response was that it was extremely thorough and even the smallest issues warranted a large response, because COVID wasn’t too well understood yet and no one was willing to take a risk. I’ve been on the U.S. CDC webpage and looked at state travel advisories. Flying back to the U.S. requires 2 things: a U.S. passport, and proof of negative COVID test taken in the past 3 days. No quarantine. No testing done upon arrival. No extensive health questionnaire. No interview. You land, go through immigration, and walk free. We’re one year into the pandemic, and America is still so unbelievably lax about travel regulations.
I can probably double this paper with more examples of China’s response, including contact tracing, the health code, traveling procedures in China and HK, and city lockdowns, but given the arrival itself took 8 pages I’ll end it here. Regardless, it just really shocked me how disorganized America is. While the Chinese response was disorganized at the start, especially every time new regulations are made, their compromise is to not let any loopholes go. Not even my 0.1˚C fever. On the other hand, America is the land of the “free,” and so an argument frequently used is that as a democratic government, the U.S. government doesn’t have the authority to impose lockdown or be as strict as China. While I already fundamentally disagree with that (and clearly, so does the virus), the fact that they don’t even have border regulations says that it is far more about the attitude, and that the “democracy” is merely an excuse to hide behind.
Leaving the hotel after quarantine is done!
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