Not sure if you’ve been following this with everything else going on in the world at the moment, but over in Shanghai they’ve recently enforced a total lockdown to try and get their numbers of the Omicron variant of Covid down, meaning that people aren’t even allowed to leave their houses and have to rely on delivery services and the government to supply them with food and drink.

Featured Image VIA

These conditions – which have been described as the strictest in the world – have clearly taken their toll on the 26 million residents of the city as videos of them slowly cracking have been making their way onto social media. This first ones show everyone in the city literally screaming in unison in the middle of the night/day in protest at their conditions and it’s genuinely disheartening and creepy:

This is not a new phenomenon. This is from several days ago. Absolutely appalling. pic.twitter.com/643Thw8fOa

— Gary Paul Hermit ‏ن (@enternoon) April 9, 2022

So dystopian – except that it’s happening right now. This next one is subtitled and just shows a guy ranting on his phone and could have easily been doctored, but it’s been reported on a few news sites so I would at least like to think that it’s accurate. He’s screaming at the government about how his elderly parents are starving because nobody has brought them food for the duration of the lockdown and if that is true, then you can definitely understand his frustration.

The human cost of this awful lockdown is unfathomable, people are being driven to the brink, the mental health cost is immeasurable, this man sums up how many are feeling at the moment pic.twitter.com/0kBGPwiNEE

— Winston Sterzel (@serpentza) April 7, 2022

Sheesh. These last couple are probably the most concerning yet – one of them shows people literally being sealed in their houses by anticontamination workers and the other one shows people rioting on the streets because they don’t have any food:

上海徐汇区，算是最发达的区之一，开始要家家贴封条。

（2022/04/10）

Shanghai’s Xuhui District, considered one of the most developed districts, began to post seals to each household. Very anti-human and violating all of China’s own laws and the world’s basic human rights standards pic.twitter.com/JJk9Qt2feN

— Inty (@__Inty__) April 10, 2022

food riot in shanghai—china’s largest and wealthiest city—under covid lockdown. pic.twitter.com/w0kBR2Pbmp

— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) April 9, 2022

Jesus. Really does look grim over there doesn’t it and I suppose we should be thankful that our government have decided to try and live with COVID instead of eradicate it like they’re doing over there.

I hope the people in charge in Shanghai come to their senses because it doesn’t seem to be leaving the population in a good place and it isn’t even working – there were 23,600 new infections last Friday despite the lockdown. I respect them trying to eradicate the virus, but when the rest of the world has given up, is there really much point? And even so, is this the best way to go about it two years into the pandemic?

For more of the same, check out these eerie photos of Shanghai with its streets completely empty from last week. Very spooky.