The five don'ts of novel coronavirus vaccination in Hainan, China
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A notice issued in Wancheng, a town in Hainan Province on March 31 warning people of consequences if they refuse to take vaccines. (Screenshot via Weibo)
The notice reads:
zhǔdòng jiēzhòng
quánmín jiēzhòng
yīng zhòng jǐn zhòng
主动接种
全民接种
应种尽种
Take the initiative to get vaccinated
Universal vaccination
Those who should be vaccinated must all be vaccinated
—–
jiēzhòng xīnguān yìmiáo "wǔ bù" zhùyì shìxiàng
接种新冠疫苗 "五不" 注意事项。
"Five don'ts" concerning novel coronavirus vaccination that require attention
—–
1.
Bù jiēzhòng yìmiáo, chūxíng jiāotōng méi chē zuò.
不接种疫苗，出行交通没车坐。
If you don't get vaccinated, when you go out to travel there will be no cars for you.
2.
Bù jiēzhòng yìmiáo, shìchǎng, chāoshì, jiǔdiàn nán jìnrù.
不接种疫苗，市场，超市，酒店难进入。
If you don't get vaccinated, it will be hard for you to enter markets, supermarkets, and hotels.
3.
Bù jiēzhòng yìmiáo, cānyǐn, jiǔdiàn, shāngchāo děng fúwù hángyè bùdé yíngyè.
不接种疫苗，餐饮，酒店，商超等服务行业不得营业。
If you don't get vaccinated, you will not be permitted to operate catering, hotels, supermarkets, and other service industries.
4.
Bù jiēzhòng yìmiáo, àn cūnguī mínyuē lièrù hēibāng míngdān, bùdé xiǎngshòu zhèngfǔ yōuhuì zhèngcè.
不接种疫苗，按村规民约列入黑帮名单，不得享受政府优惠政策。
If you don't get vaccinated, your name will be entered on the black list according to the village rules and social contract, and you will not be able to enjoy preferential government policies.
5.
Bù jiēzhòng yìmiáo, duì jīnhòu zǐnǚ shàngxué, gōngzuò, cānjūn, zhùfáng bàojiàn děng dōu huì shòudào yǐngxiǎng
不接种疫苗，对今后子女上学，工作，参军，
If you don't get vaccinated, in the future, your children’s schooling, work, military enlistment, and housing applications will all be affected.
Wànchéng zhèn xīnguān yìmiáo jiēzhòng diǎn fēnbùtú
万城镇新冠疫苗接种点分布图
Notice of the novel coronavirus vaccination point of Wancheng Town
Note that, as has been typical of Chinese law for thousands of years, penalties imposed on an individual extend to his / her offspring.
When I first saw this notice earlier today, it struck me as so super-draconian that it seemed surreal. Unless you accept the vaccine, you wouldn't be able to do anything.
So I inquired among some of my friends in China whether it were authentic. Here's how one of them replied:
It is authentic, and the Wancheng Government made a public apology and withdrew this notice via the Wanning 万宁 official Wechat platform on March 31 for their “simple and crude” ("jiǎndān cūbào 简单粗暴") way of publicizing the vaccine and their "inappropriate wording" ("cuòcí bùdāng 措辞不当"). The statement still suggests that taking vaccines is a civil obligation, and it is expected that people could understand that the notice was intended to help "achieve herd immunity" ("chéng qúntǐ miǎnyì 成群体免疫").
One wonders how many variants of this notice have been posted in various parts of the PRC during the last year of horrors.
Selected readings
- "Baffling propaganda: "black" and "evil" in contemporary Chinese society" (4/7/19)
- "Chinese coronavirus linguistic war" (2/22/20) — note how early this started, even before lockdowns were imposed in America
- "The PRC censors its own national anthem" (2/9/20)
- "Novel transmission of the novel coronavirus" (3/15/20)
- "A novel lexicon for the novel coronavirus" (3/20/20)
- "Coronavirus slang and the rapid evolution of English" (3/22/20)
- Coronavirus à la japonaise" (3/15/20)
- "COVID-19 response?" (3/14/20)
- "Annual Reviews response to the COVID-19 pandemic" (3/14/20)
- "Scaring off the coronavirus" (3/3/20)
- "Spoofing the 'crisis' meme" (3/3/20)
- "'Forty Days and Forty Nights'" (2/29/20)
- "Winnie the Flu" (2/24/20)
- "Facebook Guang Guang Guang Guang translate loop" (2/22/20)
- "Chinese coronavirus linguistic war" (2/22/20)
- "'Crisis = danger + opportunity' redux" (2/19/20)
- "Braised enterovirus, anyone?" (7/16/08)
- "Heirs to the dragon / cage" (5/26/20)
- "All clear in kindergarten" (5/30/19)
[h.t. Mark Metcalf; thanks to Yijie Zhang and Chenfeng Wang]
Cervantes said,
April 7, 2021 @ 9:15 am
I agree that the last point about children is draconian. However, in a pluralistic society such as ours, it may well be that car services, markets, and places of public accommodation will start requiring what are being called "vaccine passports," and that employers may require employees to be vaccinated as well. This is a subject which is currently being debated in the U.S., and where you come down on it depends on how you interpret and apply the concept of liberty to these situations. I'm not sure it's as super-draconian and surreal as it strikes you. If a market doesn't want to let you in or a driver doesn't want you in the car if you aren't vaccinated, that may well be their right.
David Marjanović said,
April 7, 2021 @ 9:40 am
Probably only during the last 4 or 5 months, though, because there weren't any vaccines yet before then.
Philip Taylor said,
April 7, 2021 @ 10:01 am
I am with Cervantes here. We do not allow people to wander around killing people willy-nilly with an automatic rifle, and neither should we allow people to wander around killing people willy-nilly by passing on a virus that they have contracted because they refused to be vaccinated.
DaveK said,
April 7, 2021 @ 10:32 am
The first three items on the list seem to parallel restrictions being talked about in the US, but the last two, about denying refuses and their children rights to government services, seem purely punitive.
Cervantes said,
April 7, 2021 @ 10:52 am
From NYT:
WASHINGTON — Cathay Pacific airlines, convinced that digital proof of coronavirus vaccination will bring about the return of safe international travel, asked its pilots and crew to try out a new mobile app that showed their vaccination status on a recent flight from Hong Kong to Los Angeles.
New York has rolled out “Excelsior Pass,” billed by the state as “a free, fast and secure way to present digital proof of Covid-19 vaccination” in case reopening sports and entertainment venues require proof of attendees’ status. . . .
But the idea is raising charged legal and ethical questions: Can businesses require employees or customers to provide proof — digital or otherwise — that they have been vaccinated when the coronavirus vaccine is ostensibly voluntary?
Can schools require that students prove they have been injected with what is still officially an experimental prophylaxis the same way they require long-approved vaccines for measles and polio? And finally, can governments mandate vaccinations — or stand in the way of businesses or educational institutions that demand proof?
Legal experts say the answer to all of these questions is generally yes, though in a society so divided, politicians are already girding for a fight. Government entities like school boards and the Army can require vaccinations for entry, service and travel — practices that flow from a 1905 Supreme Court ruling that said states could require residents to be vaccinated against smallpox or pay a fine.
“A community has the right to protect itself against an epidemic of disease which threatens the safety of its members,” Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, the 1905 case.
Private companies, moreover, are free to refuse to employ or do business with whomever they want, subject to only a few exceptions, ones that do not include vaccination status.
Daniel Barkalow said,
April 7, 2021 @ 2:49 pm
Is the thing about children really intended as a penalty applied over generations, or is it directly about children too young to be vaccinated? I mean, nobody's ancestors are getting vaccinated, obviously. And children's immune systems are different in ways that call for separately evaluating vaccines for them, and that's generally been lower-priority, so it could simply be saying that, if the government is isolating you, they aren't going to let the disease get out by way of potential carriers living with you.
Chester Draws said,
April 7, 2021 @ 3:52 pm
This is a subject which is currently being debated in the U.S., and where you come down on it depends on how you interpret and apply the concept of liberty to these situations. I'm not sure it's as super-draconian and surreal as it strikes you.
Now replace Covid with HIV, and see how you feel. No going to the doctor or dentist without your "HIV passport". How is one not super-draconian and yet the other politically impossible?
Now, why not add every other transmissible disease? There's a whole pile out there being transmitted that are a lot worse than Covid.
It has little to do with interpretation of liberty, and everything to do with our fear of the new.
Alexander Browne said,
April 7, 2021 @ 8:17 pm
@Chester Draws It's not a "Covid passport", it's a "Covid vaccine passport", so you can't compare it with HIV, or any other disease, unless/until there is vaccine for that disease. Schools, summer camps and similar places certainly do require certain vaccines now.
AntC said,
April 8, 2021 @ 2:03 am
why not add every other transmissible disease?
Because HIV/Hepatitis/Meningitis/Ebola fever/etc are not transmissible merely by breathing the air within 2 metres of an infected person. Contrast that SARS-1 turned out to be far less infectious than first feared. although there was no vaccine until recently.
OTOH my dentist and doctor follow the precautionary principle, and take steps to avoid contact with body fluids.
You could also contrast the prevalence of those other diseases, and the numbers of deaths over the much longer period they've been around. There's been no need for a 'HIV-lockdown'/travel restrictions, because each individual can take steps to avoid getting infected.
Cervantes said,
April 8, 2021 @ 7:07 am
Chester — the difference is that HIV is not transmissible by casual contact. Health care providers take universal precautions so they don't need to know your HIV status if they're treating you for something else. Covid is transmissible if you just breath the same air. There is no comparison at all.
Peter Grubtal said,
April 8, 2021 @ 9:46 am
The fly in the ointment with the covid passport is that at the moment it is not known whether successful vaccination prevents transmission. As a layperson, I was surprised to hear this, but it seems correct:
https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/20210401/can-vaccinations-stop-covid-transmission
Michael Watts said,
April 8, 2021 @ 10:20 am
This question doesn't appear to make any sense, given the statement that the children's military enlistment will be affected.
DaveK said,
April 8, 2021 @ 11:45 am
@Michael Watts. The English translation of that passage: “in the future, your children’s schooling, work, military enlistment, and housing applications will all be affected” can be read as either referring to your children’s work, military enlistment and housing, or to “your children’s schooling, your work, your military enlistment,” etc.
Is the ambiguity there in the original?
Jerry Packard said,
April 8, 2021 @ 3:50 pm
@DaveK
No.
David Marjanović said,
April 9, 2021 @ 2:30 pm
Ah, the emergency authorization coming home to roost.
The EU has given normal non-emergency authorizations to the Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, and a nearly normal one to AstraZeneca, so the answer ought to be "yes"… but institutional America doesn't often look abroad.
Victor Mair said,
April 9, 2021 @ 4:50 pm
A different approach
(also from Weibo)
Hǎo xiāoxī!!! 好消息!!! ("Good news!!!")
Jírì qǐ, 60 suì (hán) yǐshàng jiēzhòng xīnguān yìmiáo dì yī zhēn de jūmín kě lǐngqǔ 5 jīn jīdàn yī fèn. Xiān dào xiān dé!!!
即日起，60岁（含）以上接种新冠疫苗第一针的居民可领取5斤鸡蛋一份。
先到先得！！！
Starting today, residents 60 and above who get their first novel coronavirus vaccination will receive one portion of 5 catties* of eggs.
First come first served!!!
[*VHM: a catty is equal to about 1.33 pounds]
Victor Mair said,
April 13, 2021 @ 10:44 pm
From a Chinese citizen in the PRC:
=====
I believe the "egg-reward" notice is absolutely authentic, since I totally can imagine if this takes place right in my neighborhood. It's a typical and––I'd say, somehow probably an "efficient" act––to push people to do something unwilling in China even today. The Chinese National Health Commission made an official statement yesterday about "纠正强制接种新冠疫苗现象" ("rectify the phenomenon of forcing people to take the COVID vaccine"), which suggests people's constant protest and outrage against mandatory vaccination requirements in China.
It has been more than a year since the outbreak of the pandemic, and we have witnessed so many dramatic, unprecedented, and tragic events here in this country, especially in the city of Wuhan. I was chatting with a friend last week and was deeply impressed by what she told me about her nephew: her nephew is three years old now, and when he saw a person who was not wearing a mask on the street, he asked his mom “why isn't that person wearing a mask”––to his knowledge since he had memory, humans wear medical masks. Hopefully, we can lead a freer life again soon!
=====