Originally Posted by
UA_Flyer
I agree with everything you stated, but to wait until after October can mean 2022 is gone. We all know implementation takes time. For example, airlines won't have all the staff ready on moments of notice after almost three years of hiatus. Many have been laid off.
It is really frustrating. Hong Kong is probably worse with its lower vaccination rate, lack of infrastructure for mass testing and adverse to change mentality.
I've not contributed to this discussion so far because I still had a spouse and cat trapped in HK but they're now free and will touch down in Bangkok in about 20 minutes. Having spent the Great Plague in both Shenzhen (Aug 2020 - March 2021) and HK (March 2020 - August 2020 + March 2021 - Dec 2021) I can say that day to day life in Shenzhen was a lot more normal than in HK with pretty much no mask wearing by locals or foreigners in Shenzhen (apart from on the metro) and all the bars, restaurants, shops, gyms, and services open and operating as normal in Futian. HK, on the other hand, suffers from the ever-present risk of arbitrary detention in Penny's Bay (yup, I was rounded up and incarcerated for bizarre, spurious reasons) and random, inconsistent rule changes which have got even worse since I escaped at the end of December.
I also think that HK's covid quarantine policy is worse and more debilitating than the mainland making it more isolated from the rest of the world even taking the mainland's challenging visa requirements into account. We had planned on living in HK until at least August this year and possibly another two years after that. After my experience since last March with the administration there, I will never return. Ever. What's happened to HK (and, as we're on Flyertalk, by extension Cathay) is a tragedy but at some point you have to move on from past experience.