(New York Times) – People who endured the longest Covid restrictions in the world are still grappling with what they lost: their loved ones, their livelihoods, their dignity.

Perhaps no country was as deeply reshaped by the pandemic as China, where the outbreak began in the central city of Wuhan five years ago. For three years afterward, longer than anywhere else, the Chinese government sealed the country’s borders. In the final year, 2022, it declared an especially harsh “zero-tolerance” policy for infections, imposing lockdowns like the one in Shanghai, nationwide. Officials insisted on the restrictions even as the rest of the world decided to reopen and live with the virus.

Years later, the shadow of that experience still lingers. (Read More)