Mo News Premium: An Exclusive Tour of a Chinese Covid Quarantine Camp

Thursday April 14, 2022

2022-04-14

**This is a special edition of Mo News only available to premium subscribers. Thank you for your support. Please tell your friends about us and let them know they should Sign Up for our premium newsletter subscription. It will help us grow the newsletter and continue to expand to multiple platforms.**

Hi everyone,

Getting sick with Covid can be bad enough. Quarantining at home for five to ten days is also pretty rough. Now imagine you test positive and are sent to a massive warehouse with thousands of other Covid patients, with no real idea of when you can go home. That's the situation for tens of thousands of people living in Shanghai right now.

We spoke to Alessandro Pavanello, an Italian living in China, who is currently being held at one of these facilities. Some like to call it "Camp Covid." He spoke to us about the experience and gave us a behind-the-scenes tour.

🗞 Before we get to this incredible interview, some headlines...

• 🚨 Brooklyn Shooting Suspect Caught: Police arrested Frank R. James, the man suspected of shooting 10 people on a NYC subway Tuesday morning. He's been charged with committing terrorist attacks and violence against mass transportation systems. If convicted, James could spend his life behind bars.Ummm what?: In a bizarre chain of events, police say James called their Crime Stoppers tip line on himself: “A call came into Crime Stoppers … The guy says, ‘You know I think you’re looking for me. I’m seeing my picture all over the news and I’ll be around this McDonalds… I want to clear things up,’” according to a source who spoke to the NY Post.Police say James wasn't at the McDonalds. They canvassed the East Village neighborhood and spotted him on St. Mark's Place and First Avenue. Some other bystanders, including a 21 year old security camera installer named Zack Tahhan, also spotted James and flagged police. ~CNN

• 🇺🇦 Ukraine: President Biden spoke on the phone to Ukraine's President Zelensky for almost an hour Wednesday. Biden authorized an additional $800 million in assistance for Ukraine, including weapons and ammunition. ~ USA Today"As Russia prepares to intensify its attack in the Donbas region, the United States will continue to provide Ukraine with the capabilities to defend itself.'' -- President BidenZelensky praised Biden for accusing Russia of "genocide" in Ukraine.

• 💰Elon Musk Offers To Buy All of Twitter: The world's richest man has launched a bid to purchase the entire company for about $41 billion in cash and take the company private. This comes just weeks after he became the social media company’s largest shareholder with a 9% ownership stake. Musk called it his "best and final offer," adding that, “Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it.” ~The Verge

• 🚙 California Goes Electric: California regulators introduced a plan to phase out the sale of new gasoline-fueled vehicles by 2035. ~ CNBCIf enacted, the plan calls for sales of electric vehicles to triple within the next four years to 35% of new passenger sales. It also calls for 100% net-zero emissions less than a decade later. This is a huge part of California's plan to battle climate change.

Now to our interview with Alessandro Pavanello in Shanghai. Soon after he tested positive for Covid, Chinese authorities ordered him to pack a bag and get in a car. He was ultimately taken to a former eSports convention center-turned quarantine center (separated from his girlfriend who's in a different quarantine center in the city). Alessandro caught my attention because he has been posting dozens of Instagram Stories (many of them pretty funny) over the last few days. I was struck by how he is taking the experience in stride given the terrible circumstances.

We spoke to him on Tuesday morning and he described the conditions he's living in: sleeping on a cot surrounded by thousands of others, bathing himself in the bathroom sink (the same sink where people are washing their hands and clothes), eating food that is making him sick and doing his best to sleep despite the fact the lights barely go off.

A big thank you to Alessandro for speaking to us. He got his first negative test overnight and needs a second one to be eligible for release. But it could still be days or weeks, depending on transportation and approvals.

~ @Mosheh

[This interview has been edited for length and clarity. The video is worth the watch as he takes me around the facility.]

###

Mosheh Oinounou: Alessandro Pavanello is joining me from what some people are referring to as "Camp COVID," somewhere outside Shanghai. How are you doing Alessandro?

Alessandro Pavanello: I'm holding up. It's not too bad. I tried staying positive (and) go through this whole situation because it's something you have to do. If you test positive here in China, you have to go through this ordeal. So I'm just dealing with this as best as I can.

MO: Tell me about your experience, how did you get to where you are today.

AP: So it started off with a... positive antigen test on the 26th of March. After that test, PCR test on the 29th of March, and then our positive nucleic acid test on the second of April. Then I was left at home, up until the (5th) of April. I had another antigen test, which resulted in negative this time.

MO: So from March 26 to April 5, you're talking about almost 10 days there from your first positive test. The Chinese government didn't immediately take you and bring you to a facility?

AP: No, they didn't. They left me... they closed me in at home. Basically, they didn't allow me to get out of my house. And I had guys wearing the hazmat suits at the front of my building centers to make sure that I would have not left my house. And yeah, after that, on April 9th, I was picked up and brought to this wonderful, wonderful place.

MO: Can you can you walk around a little bit? So what was this before it was a COVID facility?

AP: It wasn't an expo center I think, eSports. So these are, I'm assuming, booths where people were selling stuff that have been remade into bedrooms. So you have....

MO: So is it four of you or two of you to a booth?

AP: Yeah, I'll show you where I'm where I'm living. I'll show you my hood.

MO: So the Chinese do mandatory testing. You test positive several times and then they say please come with us?

AP: Oh, you need only one positive test in order to be to be forced to come to one of these places. I think the reason why they kept me at home for so long is because they didn't have enough spaces left. So they were waiting for some of these to free up. This is where I live. Sorry about the mess.

MO: No apologies necessary, my friend. So what do you get you get a cot?

AP: Yeah, this is like camping beds with sort of weird, weird mattress and pillow. A towel. We also get our own I don't remember how you call these

MO: Buckets.

AP: A bucket and toothpaste, courtesy of the Chinese government. So I have this guy next to me. Yeah, and these two guys in front of me.

MO: Have have you become friends with your roommates?

AP: Not really. On the contrary, the reason why I slept two hours is because they they woke up at three in the morning and they started talking super loudly and I shouted at them and then they did the same exact thing at 5am. But at that point I had already lost my sleep. So we're not friends anymore.

MO: Do you speak Chinese?

AP: Yeah, I can get around like I can talk to the nurses and understand what I'm supposed to do and what my situation, but those guys are old people and they don't really speak "Putong" which is the common, the ordinary Chinese, the one that you study at school. I mean they do, but they speak it with very strong accents or dialects. So I don't necessarily understand everything they say. I would have an easier time with a younger person because they would probably speak much more common Chinese.

MO: Are there any non-Chinese in the facility with you?

AP: I'm the only foreigner.

MO: You have to you have to take notes and write a book about this, or at least an article at some point.

AP: I am documenting everything that's for sure. So I'm taking a lot of videos and trying to create awareness of a situation, which I think is, is well, it's sad for me that I'm Italian. But I think it's sad also for a Chinese person to be treated in this way and to be put in such conditions. I'll show you the bathrooms as well or part of the bathrooms because...

MO: Yeah, I saw you had a bucket and small towel. What did the bathrooms include?

AP: Like I, this guy that includes this guy, so he's washing his face, but people wash their hair in the sink. Because we have no showers. And then, well, inside there, there's bathrooms? I don't know if you want to see the bathrooms necessarily, but do you want to see them?

MO: How are they keeping them? Is it relatively clean?

AP: Ish.

MO: Ish. So no showers, you have to wash yourself in the sink?

AP: Like this guy is doing literally. Yeah, he's washing himself. But yeah.

MO: How many people are in this facility?

AP: I don't have an estimate of people, but I think it's something on the lines of a few thousand, maybe one or two?

MO: Yeah, it's a few thousand people all tested positive, all brought to this warehouse, all living together in this open air warehouse?

AP: Correct. And the funniest thing is that I was feeling really good, like fully recovered after the fifth of April. And I did a COVID test yesterday, and it tested positive again. Which means, and I'm assuming this either is still the same strain of COVID that I got in the first place, but it's been a while now and I doubt it or, you know, just living for three days. Two days, actually, in an environment like this, I may have caught another different strain. So I have a theory now that this is like a center to create the super Chinese the strongest Chinese (people) ever.

MO: Are there any people who are suffering very badly? What's the nature of how most people are doing with their COVID in the facility?

AP: It looks like most people will be doing fine. You know, like, there's a lot of coughing. But I think that's kind of normal. And it's not necessarily related to COVID-- but overall. So honestly, I don't know exactly, because I haven't spoken to pretty much anyone directly from the way that it looks. You know, people are active people are going around cleaning themselves, taking a walk. We have moments during the day where we can go out in the main area, which I cannot show you right now because it's closed. There's like a huge, probably used to be a parking lot in front of this expo center.

MO: Yeah I was watching your videos. It looks like a prison yard where you can walk a little bit.

AP: Exactly. A prison yard.

MO: If you aren't feeling well, are there doctors available for people?

AP: Doctors will be seeing you only if you're about to die, or I guess you're reaching death. Apart from that, you're not supposed to receive any medical treatment. You sign a paper at the beginning saying that you will not receive any medical treatment unless you're you're in critical condition.

MO: So that's even like painkillers, like basic... ?

AP: They don't give us any medicine.

MO: How many meals a day are you getting there?

AP: Three Meals a Day. So breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

MO: How would you describe the meals you've been getting?

AP: My stomach has not been reacting that well to them. Let's put it this way. They're ok, you know, it's Chinese food. And it does its job. I guess it feeds your stomach. But it doesn't taste great. And again, maybe because I'm more sensitive to the kind of food, but it's been acting a bit weird with me on my stomach and it's making me feel not so comfortable. But you know, the thing is that right now in Shanghai, it's actually very hard to buy any foods, vegetables, fruits, meats, eggs, and water. So people outside of these camps are struggling to have a meal. People's fridges are empty because the the shops are closed and the delivery services are very limited. And it feels like a lot of the resources are actually coming this way. So.. all the food is coming to these facilities.

MO: How tense is it in there? Are you seeing people upset, fighting, frustrated?

AP: Well, mine is pretty calm. Where my girlfriend is actually had to have fights on a regular basis.

MO: Wait. What happened to your girlfriend?

AP: She's in a different concentration, not concentration, isolation camp. She's on the other side of the river. I can see her camp, I think. But we have been separated, because she actually was taken on the 30th of March, if I'm not mistaken, because she tested positive one day before me. Which by the way, proves the fact that there were so many cases at the very beginning, that the fact that they took her in two-four days after she tested positive. For me, it was like, almost eight or nine days. They had so many people coming in all at once at the very beginning that they had sealed all of these isolation centers and they didn't have any more space for anybody. So they have to wait a little bit, either to build new ones or for people to start leaving some of these. It feels like a very badly organized operation.

MO: How do you guys communicate?

AP: We keep in touch via WeChat, which is a messaging app very common messaging app here in China. And yeah, we text during the day, and then we have a call, a video call to you know just check on each other. She's Ukrainian. So she's going through a lot right now. And she's been in one of these isolation centers for 17 days.

MO: How do you get released from the isolation center? How does that work?

AP: You should have two negative tests in a row. And then once you have two negative tests, we are allowed to be put on a sort of release list. The results are given to a person that doesn't work in the same facility, it has to be reviewed, and only after it has been reviewed and approved, then they need to arrange for transportation. So this whole process after the two negative tests, for her, it's taken, she tested negative for the last time on April 8th. And she's still there (on April 12), because they haven't obtained the approval or they haven't been able to arrange transport. [Update via IG story: She has since tested negative for a third time and still can't get approval to leave after nearly three weeks.]

MO: You've been (in China) for six and a half years. Have you learned to be pretty deferential to the authorities and the government there?

AP: Yeah, I guess you have to. I have this philosophy. I'm a guest here, right? So I have to abide with China and the Chinese laws. That's why I'm here, I guess, because I, and I didn't make this big story out of it. But yeah, I've always been respectable citizen that respects the place where he lives in. However, I feel like this whole experience has changed the perspective that we foreigners have towards China. A lot of us, me included, are planning to leave.

MO: Oh, really? So after this particular experience, you're like, I can't be here anymore.

AP: You literally you don't feel like a human being anymore. Once you're inside one of these centers. And my fear, I'm not 100% sure it's going to happen. But my fear is that it's just gonna get worse, worse than this. And it's going to be even more dangerous for a foreigner to be here. It's a feeling. I don't know if that's actually going to be the case that I don't want to see if it's going to become true or not.

MO: Can you tell me what's different about right now versus the last two years of lockdowns and restrictions?

AP: Well, last few years, it seemed that they had dealt with the whole outbreak in actually a pretty good manner. So in 2020, I remember when I came back from the United States, I had to do a two weeks home quarantine. But that was it. And I remember the streets of Shanghai were empty. Nobody was going out. And I guess that kind of worked in their favor to stop the virus. And then every once in a while, a few new strains would pop up. But what the government would do, they would know exactly who, first of all, test tested positive, and they could connect this person to each and every person that he had, he or she had entered in contact with and isolate them.

MO: You've traveled in the West, you're from Italy. How would Westerners react to this sort of situation, versus how the Chinese people have reacted to how the government is managing it?

AP: I think most of us know that there's nothing we can do. So we just deal with it. What I've done is... I've made (Instagram) stories. I've tried, I tried to make as many Instagram videos and share them. And luckily, the response has been amazing so far. But I know just a lot of people that are here. They wait and wait. They tried to protect themselves as much as possible. I guess they tried to not move around. They're not happy. They feel like they have been, you know, violated. Everyone feels like-- by we, like everyone who's going to these places-- feel like he's been violated. And the germs and conditions, the very unhealthy conditions. It's a combination of things that makes you think, why are they doing this to people? You know.

MO: It doesn't seem like it's positive for public health, to isolate people like this is what you're saying?

AP: Correct. I mean, I was doing a live interview with an Italian television which included an expert. And when once he saw this, he was just like, horrified. And he just mentioned that there's no way that you can fight off a virus in a situation like this, because it just keeps spreading and sure, at some point, everyone's gonna get each and every possible strain of COVID. But at what cost? Not just physically, but psychologically. You know, I don't think everyone is happy. I also talked with one guy, which I think may be representative of certain kinds of individual that comes to these places, and he was very happy because he was getting three free meals. He was very happy about that.

MO: That's how he's looking at this positively?

AP: Yeah. But I can see a lot of younger people; they look like they're sad. They look like they're hopeless. And again, I'm taking a different approach, which is playing it stupid, going around making videos but deep inside I, again, trying to stay on as positive as I possibly can. But it hurts in a weird way. I don't know how to explain it. It hurts and it doesn't feel human.

MO: Where do you find that optimism? Your videos, you're telling a story.

AP: I think that was just it's always been the way I am. So I've grown up to trying to be a positive guy. A cheerful guy. And I guess I just didn't want a situation like this to take over and you know, ruin what I think is good part of me. So, you know, sometimes it's hard because you start feeling a bit sad and you're like, Oh, why am I doing this? What is happening here, but then you're like, you know what? Let's just give it a go. Let's just try and cheer yourself up. And that's why I make those videos. Instagram has kept me busy. A lot of people showing their support a lot of people showing the love, which helps.

MO: Yeah, you've gained 1000s and 1000s of followers.

AP: In three days. I know. It's crazy. To even just think about it. But yeah, the support of people has been helpful for me. There's nothing you can say about that. Each and every person saying that they are feeling for me. It helps me feel better about myself and making me want to take this in a more positive and uplifting way rather than the negative way.

MO: When do they turn off those lights?

AP: Yes, they do. Luckily, I know the center where my girlfriend is they do not turn the lights, which is it's very bad for health, keeping the lights on. But what they do is they keep maybe two rows on at night. So maybe these last two rows or the middle two rows? Which I mean, if you're directly under one of those lights, it's it's daytime for you. But if you're lucky enough, maybe you you can get some some darkness.

MO: So you showed me the bathroom? Where do you guys eat your meals?

AP: On the bed.

MO: I think I know the answer to this. But if you had an issue or a request, or you know you want to be moved or you need something, what is the customer service like there?

AP: Are you talking about customer service? No, this then, so then the customer service, you're on the guise of other nurses at the front with the hazmat suits. Let's see if I can get a snapshot of them. And they are all very stressed, and very unhelpful.

MO: Can you wash your clothes or your sheets. Can you do that?

AP: For me, it might be hard because I don't have soap. Maybe I could ask them if they have some.

MO: So the same sink where you're showering, the same sink where you're washing your hands... it's also the same thing for you washing your clothes?

AP: Same sink where they spit all the time to if that makes any difference. So yeah, very unsanitary conditions.

MO: Are you, how are you getting your exercise?

AP: I'm walking around a lot... I don't know how you call...push ups. Instead of putting your hands on the floor, you use these devices to do push ups. But I've been having such bad sleep in the past few days that doing physical activity has proven hard for me, mentally speaking, I'm very tired right now. Because I've had an average of four hours sleep the first two nights, last night it was two hours. And you know, my body's just starting to see all the tiredness.

MO: So beyond Instagram, how else are you keeping busy all day?

AP: Instagram taking videos. And I'm talking with friends and family as well. Of course, he's busy for, you know, several hours per day, as well. And yeah, mostly it's a phone. And so I'm not even read I brought books. But um, I don't have the strength to read. I brought my computer but I don't want to watch movies. I tried to stay as connected as I can with people because obviously in this situation, like an Italian surrounded by Chinese in an isolation center, I feel a bit left out.

MO: Yeah. Have you been in touch with the Italian government by the way? Can they provide you any assistance?

AP: Unfortunately, they cannot. They tried. But each and every single individual that tests positive needs to go through the same procedures, apparently. I'm hoping that me becoming Instagram famous is gonna make a difference. Maybe. But if not, yeah, I just have to stick with this place. Because a hotel accommodation obviously would be much better and much more humane than this. But it's something that they just don't allow easily. I know that people from other countries from the UK and US have had a better setup. They were brought to one of these centers, but then they were taken to a hotel. But I guess it also depends on who you are and the connection that you have. That's very important. So I'm trying to be put in a better situation, but I don't know. We'll have to find out to see if anything happens.

MO: Well, I wish you luck there. Tell me. I was curious, you pack the bag, what's the best thing you brought? And then what is the thing you most regret not packing with you.

AP: Um, the best thing I brought probably tissues. They don't have tissues around here. There's like one big roll of toilet paper and you have to go and pick it up for yourself. Tissues is going to be a lifesaver and for the next few days.

I would have brought an umbrella if I had known. You see this cardboard here? It's to protect the people that are sleeping from the light. I think an umbrella would have been probably a good substitute to the cardboard, and maybe also good protection from the light.

⭐️ A reminder that you can follow Alessandro's journey on his Instagram account. He is posting dozens of stories a day.

And ICYMI: We spoke to an American trapped in Shanghai and the NY Times Beijing Bureau Chief in Wednesday's edition.

###

⭐️ Premium Members: You're receiving this email because you signed up for a Premium Subscription of the Mo News newsletter. Thank you for the support. Please tell your friends and family about us and let them know they should Sign Up for our premium newsletter subscription. It will help us grow the newsletter and continue to expand to multiple platforms.

📰 Miss a day? Check out past newsletters here

📧 Any questions or feedback about this newsletter? Email Us

📱 Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and TikTok

###

[Top Newsletter Banner Credit: Photo by Yin Liqin/China News Service via Getty Images]