Saying "No" to Wuhan coronavirus mass testing and a "health code" for Hong Kong

Check out the cockatoos in the above photo,

but notice the (traffic? surveillance?) camera too

And I don't think it's just my imagination that has me

thinking there are more surveillance cameras about

in Hong Kong now than even this time last year :S

At the end of my previous blog post, I mentioned that the High Court would be ruling on a national security law case in which a writ of habeus corpus had been filed by the defendant's legal team.  Sadly, I am obliged to report that challenge was dismissed -- on procedural grounds but still in a way that points to the judges having basically accepted the government line on the matter.  And while Tong Ying-kit's case continues and will have a bail hearing next week, I'm afraid that it's not looking good for him -- or for the state of justice in Hong Kong.

Over on the health front: things appear to be looking better for Hong Kong; with its daily new Wuhan coronavirus case numbers for this week pointing to the third wave having peaked back on July 30th, when we had a record 149 cases that day. For the record: the equivalent figures for the last six days have been 44, 36, 26, 18, 27 and 26 respectively. 

So why is the government still so intent on scheduling a mass testing scheme -- which will only commence on September 1st?  And this after trusted medical experts like Dr Ho Pak-leung have cast doubt on the effectiveness of the universal coronavirus tests, with the head of University of Hong Kong's Centre for Infection saying the government would be "wasting bullets" if the plan is not targeted at people with higher risk of infection.  

For good measure, Professor Benjamin Cowling, also of the University of Hong Kong, has called the government's outlined strategy as "a scatter-gun approach" and stated that "“I don’t think there would be a lot of public support for [this], I don’t think seven million people would agree to be tested”.   And, actually, I think that the authorities have realized that it might not be possible to get even four or five million people (the figures originally suggested by health secretary Sophia Chan a few weeks back) to voluntarily accede to taking these tests; hence that particularly government minister backpedalling yesterday on those earlier estimates.

But rather than abandon plans for this questionable scheme, the powers that be are threatening to abandon the carrot and employ the stick instead.  More specifically, there have been calls for Mainland China's "health code" to be implemented in Hong Kong too -- so that only people with documentation stating that they have tested negative for the coronavirus will be allowed to do such as take public transportation, enter shopping malls, and generally freely go about and around Hong Kong. 

Despite local medical experts also having come out against the implementation of a "health code" in Hong Kong, the authorities are not ruling it out.  And not that popular opinion matters to a government that was not popularly elected but I think it's still worth noting that in a recent Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute (PORI) poll showed, 76 percent of respondents opposed the implementation of a "Hong Kong health code system" (with the total percentage going up even higher to 96 percent among those who identified themselves as being pro-democracy camp supporters; and this scheme still being supported by only 29 percent of those who don't identify themselves as pro-democracy camp supporters!).  

So, why would the Hong Kong government consider this scheme?  I reckon most thinking folk already know this but, as a journalist and a doctor combine to spell out in a Hong Kong Free Press think piece: 

As Beijing tries to export [Mainland China's] Health Code scheme to Hong Kong, it is sending a Trojan horse disguised as health policy. Hong Kong is an open society with robust professional bodies and a developed medical system forged through its SARS experience.  It has no place for an ineffective and unethical app such as the one suggested under the Health Code scheme.  Our low mortality rate and flattening Covid-19 case number curve are proof. The only reason to export the scheme to Hong Kong is to crush professional ethics, break trust, and place a once free people under total state surveillance.

Also noted in the same piece is that: "The Health Code scheme is a new export product from mainland China – a technology not proposed by the medical profession, but stemming from the Chinese Social Credit system."  Consequently, as suggested in its very title: "Medical workers must resist a totalitarian move to crush professional ethics disguised as health policy."  To protect the political, psychological and physicial health of all Hong Kong and prevent it from going further along the slippery slope to becoming another Xinjiang.