timelets

In 2020, China's initial efforts to contain COVID worked reasonably well, with no broad lockdowns in important cities like Shanghai. It all changed with the emergence of the highly contagious omicron variant. The system went berserk, including the use of drones:

An even more bewildering use of drones took place in the early days of the Shanghai lockdown. The city’s top mental health official introduced an unexpectedly sparky phrase in an otherwise drab press conference on the course of the virus, demanding that Shanghainese “repress your soul’s yearning for freedom.”

“One night in April, as the lockdown swung into high gear, a drone carrying a megaphone began blasting that message into apartments full of huddling residents: “Repress your soul’s yearning for freedom,” with a woman’s voice played on loop while a light blinked from the drone. “Do not open your windows to sing, which can spread the virus.”

-- Daniel Wang. “Breakneck: Chinas Quest to Engineer the Future.”