Opinion | To Hong Kong hotel quarantine testers – would saying ‘Good morning’ once in a while kill you?
- A friendly greeting costs nothing and would be well received by the thousands dutifully serving their time in quarantine. Instead, they get nothing
- On my 17th day in quarantine – my birthday, which the medics could see on their tablets – none of them so much as grunted an acknowledgement
The biggest challenge of the three-week quarantine, especially for those doing it solo, is lack of human contact. The only people you see in the flesh are the government-appointed Covid-19 testers who visit every three days – and they are not great conversationalists.
These hazmat-suited testers keep closely to a four-line script: “Open up Covid test / ID card number / Mask off / Put this in the rubbish bin.” I quickly learned to tell by the knock on the door who was there – a gentle knock and it was the friendly hotel staff dropping off a meal or delivery from a friend, a loud rap and it was the medics.
During the first couple of weeks of incarceration, I enjoyed the challenge of trying to get them to veer a little off-script, anything that would make this rare human encounter less austere. “Busy today?” I’d ask as my temperature was checked. My quarantine neighbour got a chuckle out of one with the line, “Come here often?”
By day 17, the novelty of quarantine was wearing thin and I jumped when there was a sudden hammering on the door. I knew the drill and donned my mask, dragged the chair over to the door and opened it. I could have done with a simple greeting – “Good morning” would have gone down a treat. Instead I got the opening gambit: “ID card number.”
I reeled off the first four digits of my ID card like the well-trained leper that I’d become. “It’s my birthday,” I added as one of the medics checked my details on a tablet.