There is reason to believe this lockdown will go on for at least a month, and probably until the beginning of May or later.   That is depressing yet I at least confirmed it through some studies.  Also, I came to realize that my mathematical genius friend who I later blocked was right.  Her predictions of the lockdown were indeed correct, despite them coming off as a rumor.  

Now for the good news, if there is any.  There is a leading online food supplier app called 'JingDong' which is a bit like Costco, and they were able to resume order taking today.  Somehow they got a special license from the government to get back online and sort out their logistics.  Basically they paid their massive bribe.  Not wanting to delay on this, we got an order in and it will probably arrive in a month.  

There was a huge rumor mill grinding away, yet again, that the government was purposely trying to take over the food supply.  That is they would block all market-oriented ways of getting food to the population and instead hand out rations.  Then they would deploy the military to keep order.  The rumor was later debunked.  I almost fell for this too and it seemed very plausible from the evidence on the ground. 

Rumors thrive in this chaotic and high-pressure environment because we simply don't have transparent access to information on what is happening.  For whatever rumor is being propagated, you can find facts on the ground to support it and then dismiss other facts that don't support it.  Secondly, as I've mentioned, many past rumors do in fact turn out to be true.  So you just don't know.

Here are the facts that people were using to support their thesis that the government wanted to commandeer the food supply:

• Online delivery is indeed suspended for over 90% of platforms
• More and more compounds won't accept deliveries at all, they are going into what is called 'silent mode'.  They are doing this because delivery drivers have covid.  Delivery drivers have covid because they are camping outside on the street and refusing to be locked down "at home" since that would prevent them from earning a living.
• Larger compounds with grocery stores inside of them have been under strict orders to close down and have tape sealed the doors.  Those that do operate will illegally sell eggs and other items at midnight with covert operations.  This is exactly how we got food earlier at a nearby store before they got shut down
• Mail and courier delivery to Shanghai is indeed stopped.  This is confirmed as I even tried asking friends in other provinces to try and send me mail.  
• Government handouts of vegetables to compounds are indeed happening.    

Again we have to ask:  what is the end goal in all of this?  Why are the officials cracking down on the food supply and deliveries?  And what does any of this have to do with slowing the spread of an invisible virus?

Residents in a compound in a suburb of Songjiang sure had a lot to say about all this.  That location is about 40km out of town, I've biked through it countless times on short tours in the past.  It seems that Songjiang got hit particularly hard with the restrictions if you can believe that.  Didn't we get the brunt of it downtown?  I guess not. 

A set of viral videos went out with the locals chanting 'fa wu zi' which means two things.  In Mandarin it literally means 'send us groceries', but is a clever play on words in Shanghai dialect to mean 'free us'.  These videos were vetted and verified and on multiple channels.  Needless to say, it wasn't long before the men in white showed up.

On that note, it has become common practice to for locals to use dialect as code words to protest their discontent against Xi Jinping.  There have also been many examples of this in Guangdong province where they use Cantonese to express how they really think about that non-person.

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