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It’s time to start paying attention to this story if you’ve been ignoring it.

The quick and dirty version for latecomers: China’s biggest city undertook what was supposed to a brief, temporary lockdown last week to stem an outbreak of Omicron. Half the city would shut down for five days and undergo mass testing, then the other half would do the same. Those testing positive would be whisked away to centralized quarantine to prevent them from infecting others. That was supposed to uproot most of the viral vectors in Shanghai; if anyone tested positive after that, they could be contained via “targeted” lockdowns of their apartment complex or neighborhood.

It hasn’t worked out. Today the city is reporting more than 20,000 positive tests, a record high. The brief, temporary lockdown has become indefinite. Because the entire population is stuck at home, there’s no way to get food except via delivery. And because everyone is ordering delivery, the odds that you’ll be lucky enough to land in the queue are slim.

People are starving and claustrophobic and there’s no end in sight, of necessity. On the one hand, China can’t afford to lift restrictions. Its health-care system can’t cope with the likely number of infections and deaths if the virus were to spread freely, and Xi Jinping won’t want to admit that his “zero COVID” policy was in error at a moment when he’s up for a third term as president. On the other hand, China can’t afford not to lift restrictions. Unrest in the city is growing and the Chinese economy needs Shanghai, a financial powerhouse, to be back online.

It’s getting real and tempers are flaring, as this CNN clip demonstrates. Stick around to the end or you’ll miss a quarantine worker beating an infected man’s dog to death for … reasons. Because the dog might have been infected too, I guess.

There are two interesting wrinkles to Shanghai’s outbreak. One is the fact that Xi Jinping initially had given the city a special exemption from China’s citywide lockdown policies in the event of an outbreak. Again, Shanghai is too big and too economically important to lock everyone in over a few cases, so Xi allowed local authorities to try the “targeted” lockdowns I mentioned instead. And until recently that worked, a tentative step for China away from the Wuhan protocols early in the pandemic.

But then a few infected people fleeing Hong Kong made their way to Shanghai, per the WSJ. Many stayed at a particular hotel upon arrival that quickly became the site of an outbreak. The fuse was lit. Shanghai has been struggling to snuff the COVID flames ever since.

The other wrinkle is that there’s been an unusual degree of public criticism of the government by Shanghai residents, partly having to do with the city’s demographics. Because it’s an economic engine with a large middle class, the locals feel a bit more secure in challenging the CCP about conditions there. The fact that the clips showcased in the CNN video are circulating online is proof enough of the spirit of defiance. The Times has a nice analysis of that today:

Parents have organized petitions, imploring the government not to separate children infected with the coronavirus from their families. Patients have demanded to speak with higher-ups about shoddy conditions at isolation facilities. Residents have confronted officials over containment policies that they see as unfair or inhumane, then shared recordings of those arguments online…

“The fact that Shanghai is being locked down suggests that we are pretty close to the red line, to the tolerable limit of how defensible zero Covid is,” Professor Ong said. “This is a big city with a 25 million population, and is extremely challenging to undergo lockdown — it’s pretty close to people’s psychological breaking point.”…

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Whatever pride Shanghaiers had taken in their city’s response has morphed into dismay and outrage. When local officials asked residents of one neighborhood to sing patriotic songs to boost morale, they joined in a chorus of curses instead, according to footage circulated online. After the authorities confirmed that they were separating infected children from their uninfected parents, a petition to allow children with mild or no symptoms to isolate at home garnered more than 24,000 signatures in three hours, before it was censored. This week, residents in the Baoshan suburb struck pots and pans and shouted “We want supplies! We don’t want to starve to death.”

The big problem is food. The Journal reports that one woman got her first food delivery from the government this week consisting of “two zucchini, a carton of milk, 10 sausages, noodles and a can of Spam.” Some residents are calling authorities and either begging for food or berating them for failing to provide any. Even some who’ve come from other parts of China to Shanghai to help with the crisis have been left high and dry. “Are the supplies just for Shanghai locals? … As an outsider, I can be a volunteer, but why are the goods and supplies not assigned to us?” one medical volunteer complained in a video seen by the Guardian.

A few days ago I posted a series of tweets from this American, who lives in the city with his family. He’s discovered that it is possible to get food delivered — provided that you’re ordering stuff no one else would think to order under the circumstances.

The cake was delivered within two hours. Shanghai is having a “let them eat cake” moment, literally.

At some point, the fact that the Chinese Communist Party shut down its biggest city in furtherance of an unsustainable COVID policy and forgot to figure out a way to feed people before doing so will create certain … perceptions about the leadership’s wisdom and competence. Maybe we’re at that point already. In any case, it doesn’t look like the lockdown will be lifting anytime soon: Shanghai is readying a 50,000-patient makeshift hospital in anticipation of more positive tests.

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