As fire was raging in the mountains surrounding the southwestern Chinese metropolis of Chongqing, 10 million residents stood in 100-plus-degree heat to get Covid tests. Two cases were detected that day in August.A week earlier in Xiamen, in the country’s southeast, pandemic workers swabbed the throats of fishermen before they tested their catch of fish and crab. Cars got swabbed, too, at an auto show last week in Chengdu, in the southwest.When a strong earthquake struck Chengdu on Monday, the first instinct of many residents was not to run for safety but to ask for permission to leave their homes under lockdown. “Don’t come downstairs! @all,” a property manager warned in a group chat. In Luding County, the epicenter of the earthquake, which killed at l …
