For a time now gone by, you were not thinking wrong. And I expect for a time in the future a few years from now, you are not wrong. But you are not right in your thinking for last year and this year. All in all, not too bad!

Thank you!

Reported that CDC is suspending its (stupid) covid test requirement to return to the US

https://china.usembassy-china.org.cn...very-document/

This only applies to Shanghai (not the rest of China, or the rest of the world).
Also tests may be required to get to the airport in the first place.

Yes, which is ironic cause the reason Shanghai is locked down is because of a COVID surge and purportedly the reason for the testing requirement.
I would put the CDC incompetence on the same level as China's central government.

ummm…not really getting your concern.

the people in shanghai have been going thru continual testing for weeks now…if they tested +, they arent exactly going to be allowed to go catch a flight….

First of all, given the incompetence in China's central government, the US central government should not be trusting China's central government, and second, you can test negative and still be infected. CDC should either be testing people who didn't show a negative test before departure on arrival and holding them in a quarantine facility on arrival, or they should do away with the testing requirement entirely. It's perfectly OK for the CDC to change policies based on new data it receives but it makes no sense to have two contradictory policies in effect simultaneously.

This is evacuating our citizens from a bad situation. And the risk from those people is almost certainly less than the average risk in America.

The risk from most places is less than the average risk in America. The policy never made sense in the first place. But the CDC is just run by idiots.
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They are doing a favor to those of us trying to get food in Shanghai. It’s a humanitarian gesture that the state department asked the CDC to allow.

I don’t think it’s idiotic at all and I think every country that has these entry requirements should wave them for their citizens trying to escape the madness that is shanghai.

Ummm, this thread is about entering China, not about America. Can we stay on topic please?

Also China has a CDC, which is different than the American CDC. So if you are going to write CDC please specify which one. Thanks

I’m wondering if there is going to be a time in the near future where the whole situation is reversed. Where the flights into China are almost empty and selling for cheap and the flights leaving China are full and going for $8000 a pop in economy?

At least leaving Shanghai I can see this happening soon.

Well logically let's look at people who want to enter and leave China. Right now the prices are high going into China not necessarily because there is a high supply of people wanting to enter, but because the flight routes in are severely constrained.

People who want to enter China:

• People with direct relatives in China. A lot of people haven't bothered to visit because they can't deal with quarantine requirements.
• Chinese citizens overseas. Same as above.
• Business travelers. I think this population will be decreased compared to pre covid as businesses want to save on cost, but still large.
• Students. I think a lot of students have given up already or anyone who wants to study in China will have serious second thoughts given that students can't get back in right now.
• Tourists who aren't part of the above groups. I think this population, while not very large to begin with, is decreasing due to lessened popularity of China on the world stage.

People who want to leave China:

• Chinese citizens who want to go on vacation overseas. This is a very sizeable number of people which will become large as soon as border restrictions are dropped.
• Expats. This isn't that big of a population.

If the current border restrictions remain, the populations going in and out won't change much (since Chinese citizens can't get passports) so flight prices will remain the same.
If they drop all the border restrictions (and airlines increase capacity as necessary), there will be a large influx of people who want to get into China ASAP for at least the first few months. After that I imagine it will level off. There will also be a lot of people who want to leave. So overall I'd guess that flight prices in will decrease to somewhat normal levels (likely still more than the cheap prices we saw pre covid as they know customers will pay) and also the flight prices out of China will be elevated, but not overly expensive.

got it. CDC is a failure because they are suspending testing requirements for a population that is already over tested, and the CDC should continue to demand testing of the over tested population because you can test negative and still be infected.

Seriously...makes perfect sense.

I just booked an award ticket on United, WAS-EWR-PVG-SIN-CNS (Cairns), for December because it was by far the cheapest way to get to Australia in business. (Yes, it is a ridiculous routing.) My strong hope is that a non-Chinese routing comes up (partly general aversion to being within Chinese jurisdiction). If not, I'm hoping that Chinese health restrictions loosen by December. But, given the CCP's handling of Shanghai, I put my chances of taking that routing at about 10% (and, as I get closer, probably 5%), to the point that I'm really hoping that, if all else fails, I miss my very tight connection in EWR and get re-routed via HND to SIN (or, better yet, just sent to SYD. I'll eat the cost of a new ticket to Cairns).

As for the various comments here about how bad America's government is: I will merely point out that Americans are entirely within their right to mitigate their risk, that the vast majority of recent covid-19 deaths have been among those who choose not to get vaccinated despite being physically fit to do so (and, I suspect, also forgo various other reasonable precautions), and that it is within the control of most Americans to mitigate their risk to a degree that the chance of dying from the disease is reducible to almost negligible levels, even for older Americans. So the "who cares about starving in Shanghai when everywhere else is a warzone" narrative is false. I will abstain from deriding the idea of relying on Chinese state mortality data, or the odd notion that most Americans considered our immediate past president the best president ever.

I give your itinerary a 5% chance of happening in December 2023. There is a 0% chance of it working this year.

You are too optimistic. How about this:

5% chance of happening in December 2030. 0% chance by 2025.

Not everyone should try to be a Comedian..

I can see them relaxing rules and „living with covid“ over the next months, albeit they won’t call it that way.

CDC has been a failure the whole time. It never made sense in the first place to require testing on int'l flights but allow people to take domestic flights without having to test at all. Either get rid of the requirement or apply it to all flights. But now they have a further contradiction in that they suspended the requirements from an area experiencing a big surge, but still have them in place for people coming from areas without surges.

If testing people determined whether they have the virus or not with 100% certainty, then all we'd have to do is test everyone simultaneously once and we'd be able to completely stop it.

I believe the US CDC should just get rid of the requirement. Instead of saying this is a 'humanitarian gesture' just realize the stupidity of it.
Like how customer service agents will say 'this is a one time exception' instead of the company changing its stupid policies.

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And does the CDC require a negative COVID test for Ukraine refugees? I would hope not. But I do hear about refugees being prevented from entering for ... (no idea).
Unfortunately this lack of human sympathy seems to pervade the US government. Using an analogy from China, would one prevent an elderly person who is seriously ill from getting into the hospital because there is no negativr covid test yet?

If the policy is that people need a negative test to enter the US (to protect people against SARS-CoV-2 variants), then the proper humanitarian gesture is to allow refugees in (whether from Ukraine or Shanghai), then test them on entry and segregate them from the general population until the test results come back. The virus doesn't discriminate in who it infects and if there needs to be a policy of testing everyone, then exceptions should not be made for refugees, except to let them in, test them on entry, and not bill them for being tested or quarantined. If on the other hand the humanitarian gesture is to allow refugees to not be tested and just walk into the general population, then that is an indication that no one needs to be tested at all, and the CDC should drop the requirement entirely.

Hopefully the geniuses at the top do it soon. I’m running low on food now.

I have a question , does the Shanghai lockdown extend to the places that abut the metropolitan area? If so , how far ? I've been trying to get in touch with an acquaintance and haven't been able to reach them. TIA.

The Shanghai lockdown itself ends at the border, but many other cities (including ones that abut Shanghai) have varying degrees of lockdown.

But, even if locked down (or even put in central quarantine), people should have access to the phone, etc.

Thanks ! Appreciate it.

Same here in Handan.....For lunch today, I'm just about to cook a 2 year old Christmas pudding I found at the back of the food cupboard....It's the blitz spirit that's going to get us Brit's through this mess.....:D


https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...84fed36f8d.jpg

Not to worry, the Cider will have kept it fresh! ;)

Everyone my wife normally talks to over there is locked down. All are in contact.

After omicron China's response doesn't really make sense at all. It is much more contagious than the previous strains, but it's milder. China seriously should reconsider it's zero covid policy, like the rest of the world is doing. Even Australia did that and opened their borders for foreigners in the end.
Here in Norway everything is back to 2019 , all corona related t restrictons have ended (that includes international travel) which means that if you could enter Norway pre march 2020 you can do it now without any restrictions like testing etc. There are still people dying of course of covid 19 but the median age has rised from 85 to 86 which is an age range many people die anyway.

Anyway I hope China somewhere in the future allows for international travel, but it doesn't seem to happen any time soon with the strict zero covid 19 policy they have in place.

Yes, well, it is widely acknowledged that China's covid strategy is all politics now.

Does the Kingdom have an Exit strategy of COVID, after so many self-inflicted wounds?

From Sinocism:
Really the government is trying to ensure social stability over everything else. I honestly think they are not too concerned about the case numbers because they have an extremely high threshold of "dying from Covid" (i.e. it needs to be the main cause of death, but many deaths of people with covid are attributed to something else)*. As long as people aren't too upset, no reason to change anything.
* source: https://www.vice.com/en/article/3abm...-toll-lockdown

What would be annoying is that the wave ends at some point (either naturally or through more underreporting of case numbers) and then borders are still closed, because of some silly reason. Like what Hong Kong is doing.

Was able to make contact , thanks ! Was told everything is A-OK and there is nothing to worry about.....

Was able to make contact , thanks ! Was told everything is A-OK and there is nothing to worry about.....

There is no coronavirus in Ba Sing Se.

Borders have only gotten closed tighter from 2020 to 2021 to now in 2022 where they require 4 separate Covid tests over a week just to get on the plane which you now have to pay $9000 for an economy ticket to China.

The message is quite clear. China wants to shut itself off from the world. I hate this since I’ve based my career and life here for the last 20+ years, but it’s a reality I’m beginning to accept.

We are not ever going back to 2019 levels of access to China for both people and foreign businesses, unless there is a change in leadership. The current guy seems like he’s happy to bring China back a few decades as long as he’s the guy running the place.

And regarding shutting itself off, China is making it very hard for people to leave the country (Chinese people that is, I presume foreigners have no issues). My friend is trying to do it but you have to get through immigrant, who may just tear up your papers.

The door to HK is still wide-open. As HK just announced its own reopening to non-residents starting 1 May, that provides another avenue for those who want to enter China. Obviously an extra 7 days of quarantine in HK as well as flight ban uncertainties need to be factored in.

As HK relaxes, China will treat HK as if AU or US (I don’t think we’ll be allowed to get that far. I’m happy to be proven wrong).