Opinion | Recovery from Covid-19: Hong Kong says it wants to reopen, but acts like it does not

“Man is born free but is everywhere in chains,” the great French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in the 18th century. Hong Kong has brought his saying bang up to date: man is born free but is everywhere in masks, registering his entry to the restaurant or queuing at the testing centre.

Because we live here and have grown accustomed to the package of control measures, we have grown numb to the comprehensiveness of them and the extraordinary degree to which they have affected our daily lives.

Our testing rules are bizarre: every schoolchild every day, workers in many industries several times a week, one before we board a plane to return home and an incredible nine in the first week after arrival, down from 11 as of today. Registering our presence and confirming vaccination status on entry to many types of premises. Compulsory wearing of masks everywhere, even outdoors, unless exercising. How strange this package must seem to outsiders.

We cheered when, soon after taking office, the present administration scrapped the flight suspension mechanism. Why was it ever introduced? How did it survive so long?

We cheered again when the draconian quarantine arrangements were unwound. But the price of these concessions was more testing, and introduction of the notorious banquet RAT rule.

The underlying philosophy of such a system can mean only one thing: deep in their hearts, the members of the chief executive’s panel of expert advisers believe “zero Covid” is achievable. I have described them before as high priests of a fundamentalist religion.