From today's news:

The nucleic acid sample collection for Shanghai's new round of covid screening was completed smoothly on Monday.  This will be followed by testing, double-checking, transport of positive cases and related personnel as well as analysis of the results.  After the completion of these tasks, the city will decide on follow-up management and control measures based on the results of the screening.

Basically they're in no hurry.  This isn't even about the virus anymore.  We're on a day-by-day lockdown survival mode where the top priority on everyone's mind is food and grocery supplies, and second to that, medical needs.

As for food, I am feeling hungry every day.  There are supposedly reports of government volunteers going door-to-door handing out vegetables.  I saw that friends have received some here and there, but none in our compound.  Most citizens rightly concluded that they couldn't rely on handouts and so stocked up more than you could imagine in the available time that they had.  We tried to do our best and planned for a week, but at this point I'm afraid it won't be enough.    

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To replenish food supplies your only option is delivery but as you can imagine that's not possible.  If you find an app that works, the stores linked to it will only take pre-orders.  Those pre-orders are placed between 12:00 midnight and 12:01am.  The system obviously floods from the load during this short window.  Getting an order in is like winning the lottery.  Even if you win, there is no telling when it will actually be delivered. 

What I was able to do was use the premium apps for restaurants still open and pay premium prices for it.  For example I paid the equivalent of $15 each for a miniscule chicken burrito.  This didn't fill me up but the main point was to buy some time and give both me and my wife a break from cooking yet more vegetables.  We both said many times, what the hell is this.  We are living in the most affluent city in China and forced to subside on rice and vegetables like this was the cultural revolution.

In actual fact there is plenty of food.  It is just sitting around in warehouses going to waste because the restaurants are locked down and can't replenish their inventory.  

It is commonplace to get these kind of messages:  "So sorry, the restaurant is still closed.  Will cancel and refund your money.  Thank you."   There you have it.  It'll have to be yet more vegetables.

Because of all that I basically had to stop doing online HIIT workouts.  These were a form of therapy to deal with the lockdown madness and not being able to ride bikes.  I could feel my muscles atrophy more and more each day and wondering just how much damage this was going to do to my fitness and physique.

The gym I'm highly involved with in group fitness (F45 Shanghai) invited me to lead a zoom workout yesterday.  I spent hours and hours preparing this and ran a half-hour workout that 100+ other members logged into and said was epic.

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But that also led to an epic form of hunger.  Realizing there was no way I could maintain these workouts with our limited food supply, I had to stop.  

Next, medical needs.  Fortunately for myself I got some crucial surgery done on March 9th and recovered during the initial 'soft lockdowns', as well as got a key follow-up appointment to remove stitches in the wound.  That almost didn't happen.  Now if I didn't get the surgery or the stitches removed in time, I shudder to think what the solution would be in a lockdown.

There are literally hundreds of similar stories with people not so lucky.  As I type this, they are languishing in lockdown unable to refill prescription meds by delivery.  Or they can't get admitted to hospital for something urgent like cancer treatment.  Or they're going into labor and delivering babies in lockdown.  I'm not making any of this up.  Check out this story of the one person who needed eye stitches removed and the doctor came to the gate to do the operation between the bars.