#Satire #SurveillanceState
Down with the live-with-COVID believers

Above four-panel-cartoon is created by a popular artist in Hong Kong, Ar To. The cartoonist attempts to bring out real intention behind the COVID-control measures purposefully imposed in the city in the face of Omicron outbreak.

Inscriptions from upper right panel:
"So it's come to this ..."
"We've got to live with the vir-"
"..."
"We've got to live with surveillance!"

Hong Kong is reeling under an outbreak of Omicron infections, recording nearly 7,000 cases in a day on February 20, straining hospitals and testing centers to their limits.

An opinion poll taken last month -- at the beginning of the current outbreak -- shows that nearly two-thirds of citizens are receptive of a "live with the virus" approach similar to other countries such as the UK.

The Hong Kong government, however, had taken this outbreak as an opportunity to tighten gathering restrictions, enforce mandatory use of its controversial #LeaveHomeSafe tracking app, and carry out sudden, community-wide lockdowns and mandatory testing that last for days. As China is growing more concerned with Hong Kong's seeming inability to contain the outbreak, Carrie Lam and her government may be hard pressed into enacting more Orwellian surveillance measures in order to satisfy Beijing's demands for "dynamic zero covid" -- whatever that now means.

image source: Ar To
https://www.facebook.com/100044541035098/posts/513031630191534/

See also;
New York Times: Hong Kong Can’t Live With the Virus. It Can’t Stop It, Either.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/16/world/asia/hong-kong-covid-omicron-wave.html

#Omicron #FailedState #CCP #Authoritarianism