When Mrs. Lam announced more restrictions on entry into the city, the people of Hong Kong didn’t sigh with relief: We ran to supermarkets and panic-bought three-ply toilet tissue. “We Hong Kongers have to take care of ourselves, because we can’t trust the government to do it,” my 30-something friend Frankie, a social worker, said to me the other day. The determination and grit displayed by Hong Kongers during a long season of pro-democracy protests last year is now channeled into fighting the coronavirus epidemic at the street level, day after day. A few months ago, Hong Kongers stood in lines of thousands to vote in local elections and, before that, in parades of hundreds of thousands to demand universal suffrage. And now, as I stand in a toilet paper–less Wellcome, panic strikes again.

Source: New York Times February 08, 2020 15:56 UTC