A business owner in Tibet who was infected with COVID-19 in September condemned the Chinese regime’s draconian zero-COVID policies as the “biggest hindrance to people’s livelihood” and demands relaxation of the lockdown measures.
Xiao Qiang (pseudonym) is a resident of Lhasa, the seat of China’s western region of Tibet. He owns a motorcycle sports club in the city, which has been closed down since early August this year.
“The whole city of Lhasa has not seen a single tourist since August,” Qiang told the Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times on Oct. 30. “Businesses are not able to make any money during the lockdown, which affects the lives and survival of too many people.”
Lhasa is one of the dozens of Chinese cities being locked in recent months.
The Chinese communist regime has been imposing stringent lockdown measures since the outbreak of COVID in Wuhan, China’s central Hubei Province, at the end of 2019.
Residents are banned from leaving their homes, businesses and public venues are closed, hospitals don’t treat patients who test positive for COVID, and public transport ceases operation.
Infected With Mild Symptoms, Recovers in Days
Qiang recalled that he had a runny nose on Sept. 3 or Sept. 4, and thought it was only a cold.
He said that his symptoms were mild, similar to those of a cold: a runny nose, cough, and phlegm in his throat. His wife had similar symptoms earlier than he did and had gotten a cold.
Then he developed severe symptoms at a later stage, such as dizziness, a low fever, joint pain, and muscle aches.
His severe symptoms subsided within three days, and then the runny nose stayed for five or six days. “I only took two painkillers for the joint pain, and the pain was gone. I was then completely healed in a week,” said Qiang.
On Sept. 6, he tested positive for COVID. And so did all the other 44 people living in the same housing quarter with Xiao Qiang.
There wasn’t quarantine space for them when they were found positive, Qiang said. So they stayed in their residence until Sept. 10, when space was available in a makeshift quarantine facility. By then, Qiang had fully recovered and he tested negative for COVID.
About 30 people in the residence still tested positive on Sept. 10 and they were all taken to the quarantine facility where they didn’t receive any medical treatment.
‘People Wouldn’t Panic if They Know the Truth’
Qiang decided to speak out after he read about the death of a mother and her child in Zhengzhou, China’s central Henan Province.Zhengzhou municipal authorities banned residents from leaving their homes amid the recent outbreak of the pandemic in October. The mother was reportedly trying to leave her apartment by attempting to climb down via a rope made from blankets. She carried her child on her back and both fell when the rope broke when they reached the 17th level. Both the mother and the child died.
“I was so heartbroken, and tears fell down at reading this. She must have panicked to see her child infected with COVID. If she had known it was just like a common cold, she wouldn’t have done such a thing,” Qiang said.
‘Lockdown of the City Is the Greatest Harm to Residents’
“I know hundreds of people in Lhasa, none of whom has been heard of dying of COVID, but there are many deaths caused by isolation and lockdowns,” Qiang said.Qiang noted that about 5,000 neighbors living around his residence have been sent to the makeshift quarantine facilities. He said about 20 percent to 30 percent of the people isolated in the quarantine facilities are aged between 60 and 80.
“I haven’t heard of any death among these elderly people isolated,” Qiang said. He said that elderly people stayed positive for a longer period of time before they turned negative again for COVID.
He said that he had thought it was right to lock down the whole city before he was infected with COVID because he didn’t know that COVID was not even as severe as a bad cold.
The businesses in Lhasa have been badly hit by the lockdowns, Qiang said. His motorcycle sports club has been closed for more than 80 days. “If I have to pay the rent during the closure, I will be bankrupt right away,” Qiang said.
“Some people have committed suicide due to financial pressure. Besides housing mortgages, people have to pay rent, car loans, credit card loans, and loans via peer-to-peer lending,” Qiang said. “These are huge pressures and some people are depressed by these financial burdens.”
He hopes that the authorities will do some research and learn from the practices in other countries. “Many foreign countries have lifted their restrictions, and we can study the mortality rate after they have lifted their restrictions.”
He also hopes that more people speak up and urge the Chinese regime to lift its months-long restrictions.
That said, Qiang said he doesn’t have too much hope about the lifting of the hardline zero-COVID measures.
“I cannot imagine and dare not imagine what China will be like and what our society will be like at long last [when the lockdown measures are lifted],” Qiang said.
