Yonden Lhatoo

Just Saying | Hong Kong stares into Covid-19 abyss and has only itself to blame

Yonden Lhatoo laments the complacency that has rolled back the city’s exemplary success against the coronavirus and left it battling a resurgent crisis that threatens to overwhelm the public health care system

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Hong Kong is in the grip of a third wave of Covid-19. Photo: May Tse

Yonden Lhatoo

Published: 8:23pm, 18 Jul 2020Updated: 10:30pm, 18 Jul 2020

“Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure.”

That, in a nutshell, explains why Hong Kong is now struggling to contain a resurgence of Covid-19 infections, the so-called third wave and the most alarming so far because of the potential it has to overwhelm our city’s health care system if we don’t get a grip on it soon.

To think that just weeks ago this city was the envy of the world for its exemplary efficiency in handling the coronavirus crisis and its remarkable success in putting a lid on the scourge of our times. Not any more. Now we are staring into the abyss again. And we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Disinfection work in full swing at a wet market in Sham Shui Po on Friday as Hong Kong fights the resurgent health crisis. Photo: Reuters

When our health experts, some of whom are the world’s leading communicable disease specialists, were warning everyone not to let their guard down despite an improving situation that had seen locally transmitted infections whittled down to zero, that’s exactly what we all did and then some.

I’m talking about streets filled with haj-sized crowds of shoppers and loiterers, commuters piling into trains and buses like lemmings, beaches packed to the gills with swimmers and sunbathers, bars and restaurants jammed with wining and dining enthusiasts, large social gatherings with people not giving a damn about wearing masks or avoiding handshakes and spraying saliva-filled conversations into each other’s faces at close range – sorry to say, social distancing was happening mostly on paper, not so much in practice.