My son's kindergarten is going to resume in Monday, and they asked for 48h test results from everyone in the household by Monday morning.

Possibly related to this, today I heard a central free testing facility in our neighborhood had run out of swabs by 4pm, and had to stop taking tests for the day because of that.

@AlPage48: "hate the way the word "free" is used in the context of health care"

Even if it's all provided by the state's tax revenues, someone does pay indeed.

But compared to many other countries, in China the state and local governments get revenue from many other sources than direct taxation of individuals.

Lot of people (in particular in cities like Kunming and lower) do not earn enough to ever pay income tax, even if full-time employed. What you earn you keep, and what you spend is your choice.

It makes it appear less like you are paying for someone else's health care when you finance the system by buying an apartment, cigarettes, train ticket, or whatever.

@Fabey

I'm not sure sure if you interpreted my previous post as I intended, but to continue on the HOD theme, my point was for the underlings to do as the King judges best, so the King may observe possible errors in his own judgement and improve on that in future.

So as to avoid giving false impression of (for example) businesses surviving despite the restrictions, just because the restrictions are not actually followed that much.

Varying enforcement and miscommunications could be primary reason for some debatably tough policies (and not just about CoVid) in China.

If government decisions would be followed more accurately, perhaps said government could better observe side-effects of hazardous policies, and avoid formulating such in future.

From this perspective I think that reporting (for what it's worth on forums like this) what really happens on the ground is beneficial in bigger picture - even if it could land some businesses in trouble.

In our vicinity there are places where you can still get the test for free, and other newer ones have been popping up where it is the 16ish RMB with shorter lines. I take this as government acknowledging that the testing burden is too much without buying extra services, hence the fees.

I get that these restrictions are for all of China, but so are my arguments above to try to understand them.

Personally I am against the restrictions despite the (debatable) life saving reasoning behind them.

I would quote a medical professional from Finland at early stages of the pandemic, who tried tor rationalize the acceptability of old people simply dying away. He phrased it along the lines of "old people don't die because they stop eating, they stop eating because they are dying".

About the elderly and other vulnerable groups, I can only assume that the very purpose of these restrictions is to get them stay at home. Getting around is problematic, but that's probably the point of this exercise.

I dare to speculate that the number of those missing important hospital visits or other other life-critical appointments is small relative to those that might get seriously (deadly) ill from getting the virus from going to shopping centers, dancing, or picking up grandchildren, if that was easy.

Notable also that at least in some locales elderly are/were not allowed to get vaccinated at local clinics, and are still missing vaccinations completely.