An expat who fled the coronavirus in Hong Kong for Britain regrets his decision
- Because of Hong Kong’s proximity to ground zero, he thought he stood a better chance of sidestepping the pandemic overseas
- But as the death toll climbs daily in the UK and the US, he discovered that he came to the wrong conclusion
Well done, you lot. Your bars are open again and serving their HK$75 pints and HK$200 cocktails. Your favourite restaurants are digging their overpriced specials out of the freezer. Your gyms are reinstating their exorbitant monthly direct debits, your cinemas are screening the usual Hollywood tosh, and your schools are almost ready to take your terminally bored offspring off your hands.
You have every right to feel more than just a little self-satisfied as you enjoy your new-found freedoms, bask in the early summer sunshine, and idly ponder where to stop for sunset mojitos on your next Friday night out.
Excuse me if I don’t share in your Liberation Day sentiment. You see, I’m one of those fair-weather expats who scarpered three months ago as the virus closed in, reasoning that the further away I got from a densely populated city on the edge of the country where the pandemic began, the less chance I’d have of being put into a prolonged lockdown.
While Hong Kong people go back to work and start planning exotic holidays around the region, people in Britain are too terrified to set foot outside their houses, let alone the country, and face the prospect of being shut out as pariahs by nations that have handled things better.
In fairness, Hong Kong’s relative success is less a triumph of leadership than a victory of common sense by its people. Carrie Lam dithered and left borders open for far too long but the instinctive caution and practicality of a population acquainted with viral outbreaks, face masks and hand sanitisers cancelled out her perilous procrastination.
Elsewhere, it’s no coincidence that two countries with no living memory of pandemics and blinkered, isolationist right-wing populists for leaders – Britain and the United States – have been undone by hubris and have suffered more from Covid-19 than anywhere in the world.
Unlike Lam and her unelected officials, however, those leaders will face their day of reckoning. And without being mean-spirited, I’d say make the most of your pubs and gyms and savour the fact that – for one weird, warped summer – Hong Kong is enjoying freedoms denied to people in supposedly liberal Western democracies.
Because as surely as September follows August, that scenario isn’t going to last.
