{"id":3035,"date":"2022-03-23T15:18:14","date_gmt":"2022-03-23T07:18:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.boasecohencollins.com\/?p=3035"},"modified":"2022-03-23T15:18:18","modified_gmt":"2022-03-23T07:18:18","slug":"a-weight-and-wait-just-too-much-to-bear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.boasecohencollins.com\/zh-hant\/%e7%b6%b2%e8%aa%8c\/a-weight-and-wait-just-too-much-to-bear\/","title":{"rendered":"A weight \u2013 and wait \u2013 just too much to bear"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hong Kong, 23 March 2022: <\/strong>\u201cI can stand the despair, it’s the hope!\u201d So wails angst-ridden school headmaster Brian Stimpson (played by John Cleese), famed for his obsession with punctuality, in the 1986 British comedy movie Clockwise<\/em>. His day unravels spectacularly after he boards the wrong train to a conference and endures a catalogue of misunderstandings and chance encounters in a fraught chase across the countryside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What befuddled Brian suffers for a single day, pandemic-weary Hong Kong citizens have endured for more than two years under a government which has turned flip-flopping, ignoring science and lack of planning into an artform. Despair is our default mood and yet \u2013 and yet \u2013 we remain naive enough to retain a fragment of hope. Surely someone, somewhere, in those corridors of power, will grasp we are at our wits\u2019 end? Lives and livelihoods destroyed, businesses bankrupted, families fractured, mental and physical health severely compromised, we desperately need a way out of this unholy mess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hence, when Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced last Thursday she was undertaking a \u201cmidterm review\u201d of current quarantine and social distancing rules \u2013 conceding the public\u2019s tolerance for harsh anti-epidemic measures was \u201cfading\u201d \u2013 our hopes soared. Would this be the long-awaited breakthrough? Much-needed light at the end of the tunnel? The lightbulb moment?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course not. To borrow Hollywood legend David Niven\u2019s famous quip about his notorious fellow actor and one-time housemate \u2013 \u201cyou can rely on Errol Flynn, he\u2019ll always let you down\u201d \u2013 so we should have known what to expect from our leader on Monday morning when she grandly announced some so-called concessions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n