She had barely rolled down her sleeve after receiving her Covid vaccination, when Carrie Lam started declaring her gratitude to the government in Beijing. Lam, Hong Kong’s friendless Chief Executive, does this kind of thing a lot. When talking about the virus, she stresses the benevolence of her masters, who claim to have suppressed Covid at home and are spreading their efforts far and wide to suppress it elsewhere. China is clearly hoping to extinguish the memory of where this pandemic came from in the first place.

There has been much political opportunism all over the world in response to the pandemic. In Hong Kong, though, the prioritisation of politics over medicine has been breathtaking. From the earliest stages of the outbreak, the government here, reeling and battered after the surge of unprecedented pro-democracy protests in 2019, seized upon the spread of Covid as a major tool for quelling dissent. In February 2020, a secret report sent by the Hong Kong government to its bosses in Beijing was leaked. It allegedly contained statements by Lam describing the outbreak of the coronavirus as a “rare opportunity to reverse the situation”, her administration having been “attacked on all fronts” during the protests. She added that with the central government’s help the pandemic could be the means of ending the unrest.