Despite Warnings Crowds Flock to Flower Markets

This afternoon Mongkok people were busy buying flowers

It's ironic that the Hong Kong government cancelled the Lunar New Year fairs, open-air markets selling flowers, snacks and festive decorations when instead people flocked to the flower market in Mongkok today.

Secretary for Food and Health Sophia Chan Siu-chee said yesterday it was a tough decision to make to cancel the fairs.

Chan says cancelling fairs was a difficult decision

"From a health perspective, we want to control the epidemic as soon as possible so we cannot hold large gatherings," she said.

However, judging from the hordes of people in Mongkok's flower area known as fa hui, it perhaps would have been better to hold the fair anyway.

"How are they supposed to do crowd control in the middle of the road? Why can't we just set up the fairs with social-distancing measures and vaccine bubble requirements?" asked a 62-year-old mandarin plant vendor surnamed Leung.

"It's a big headache. We were all looking forward to selling our produce at the fairs, but now we have to make last-minute changes on how to distribute tens of thousands of mandarin plants."

What a logistical nightmare.

In the meantime the good news is that there were only five new cases of Covid-19 recorded, yesterday there were nine. 

Children can get vaccinated as early as next week

Children as young as five can get the Sinovac vaccine from next week, while those wanting the Pfizer BioNTech one will have to wait until after Chinese New Year.

One health expert is calling for a review of coronavirus measures, saying perhaps the use of partition boards are not helpful in terms of air flow and that tables should be more spaced apart.

Small eateries cannot place tables 1.5 metres apart and instead use partitions as a bid to be able to have more customers, but Dr Gabriel Leung of Hong Kong University says the partitions could block ventilation. He also adds when dine-in services resume, perhaps restaurants could open until 9pm... 

Meanwhile my relatives still refuse to get vaccinated even though that will mean not being able to dine in restaurants if they don't have at least one jab when the social-distancing measures are lifted.

"Then we just won't go to restaurants," she said. 

Maybe partitions aren't a good thing anymore?

While they often eat at home for dinner, they frequent eateries like cha chaan tengs and sometimes have dim sum for lunch, but in the next few weeks they won't be able to do it at all. There will also be a push later for people to have two jabs in order to enter restaurants. Then what?

"We'll see when that happens," she replied.

Completely impractical and irrational... but then again so is this government that is making out Omicron to be a deathly virus and refuses to live with the reality that Covid-19 is here to stay...