As you may have known, China has recently revamped its covid policies when it saw no hope and benefits of keeping strict lockdown or zero-covid policy: it did more harm than good. It is time to make a change, and China government has felt that sentiment of its people.
I. What I have Witnessed and Experienced
Within a couple of weeks after China lifted its various bans and restrictions early December of 2022, I have personally felt and witnessed the swiping surge of covid victims around myself, esp my colleagues at our Shanghai Landing Law Offices. In the meantime, friends on WeChat started reporting their contracting of omicron virus. So people realized that we have to carry on our life with the virus lingering around, and it is just a matter of time when one gets hit by the virus.
On December 17, not long after getting up, I started feeling weak and fatigued, and that afternoon, I felt cold, a typical symptom of a fever. But my body temperature is not high. The next day my parents-in-law showed similar symptoms. Within the week, my wife and my son both fell victims to the virus, with my son getting a high fever up to 39.6 centigrade. Now by the day of this post, my son and I have fully recovered with other family members getting much better. Thank God, this virus was not too harsh against my family.
II. What I have Learned and Heard
What struck me was that on a single day, December 23, major web portals reported that four scientists from China Academy of Sciences and Engineering died. The news didn’t specify the causes for their deaths, and I believed that most of them were taken by the omicron virus.
Also, within a couple of weeks, I received three calls from overseas clients asking about how they shall go about inheriting properties in Beijing China left by their parents who just died amid the covid pandemic. I also got informed by a client who told me his mother-in-law just died after her lung was invaded by the virus and it was simply too late when she was checked in the hospital.
III. What You Should Do for Your Old People
It is a top priority to protect the elderly people. While the omicron virus doesn’t seem fatal to young people, it may easily take toll of old people, as has been already proven in and outside China. So far as I have learned, it is critical to monitor and measure the degree of blood oxygen saturation, and if the saturation is below 90%, it raises alarm for the old people’s lung infection of this virus.
While it may sound inappropriate to “promote” legal services of inheritance when people are still panicking about the pandemic, I still think it is something important and necessary to remind our old family members to think in advance of estate plan by setting up a will passing and distributing assets to their loved ones.
Comments