Reserving masks is still a battle

As the situation at home has gradually started moving in a better direction, a lot of the credit belongs to the medical workers who have been fighting on the front line for more than a month. Their persistence is what has allowed people to see some hope ahead. They really deserve a sincere thank-you for everything they have endured.

Looking beyond China, though, the picture has been far less reassuring. In the early days, many countries did not seem to take the outbreak seriously enough, and now it has spread widely. On top of that, shortages of protective supplies have left many places still relying on Chinese manufacturing. From where things stand now, the pneumonia outbreak overseas clearly is not going away anytime soon.

In the short term, there is still no reason to be overly optimistic. A recent confirmed case in Guangdong was an imported one, which says a lot about where the pressure has shifted. Domestic prevention and control have already done a great deal, and now the focus has to move more toward ports of entry and cross-border arrivals.

If this is going to be a long fight, masks and disinfectant are basic necessities. The rush to buy masks never really stopped. Last month, a local portal app opened up a mask reservation system, and my wife and I tried more than ten times without succeeding once. That alone shows how scarce masks still were.

Then, on the evening of the 10th at 8 p.m., both of us somehow managed to grab a reservation slot and complete payment. The price was 16 yuan for five masks, including shipping. For once, things actually went through.

At the same time, I had also been trying to reserve masks through the mobile carrier's app. Every time I entered the page, filled in all the information smoothly, and clicked pay, I got the same message: the queue was too long, please try again later. Refresh the page once, and everything was already sold out. After being jerked around like that repeatedly, it was hard not to lose confidence in that platform.

Today, both mask orders shipped through JD finally arrived. Ten masks in total came to 32 yuan.

The NBA comes to a halt

So, congratulations to the Jazz for becoming the "champion of germs" for the 2019–2020 season. Rudy Gobert, by his own efforts, practically opened the coronavirus door to the entire NBA, and with his elite defensive ability, managed to "shut down" the whole league and lock up an ironic FMVP.

After watching him touch all the microphones following an interview, there is really only one thing to say: no zuo no die.

Plenty of people online were joking about it too:

• Virus: He started it first.
• Coronavirus: I heard you're the Defensive Player of the Year—try stopping me if you can.
• Coronavirus: I heard there's a guy named Gobert who doesn't respect me.

After the earlier controversy around Morey's remarks and Curry's injury, I had already been paying much less attention to the NBA. Then the Gobert incident directly pushed the league into suspension. Honestly, all you can do is laugh at how absurd it became.