In his two-hour-long budget address on Feb 22, Hong Kong’s Financial Secretary Paul Chan did not mention “Covid-19” once. Even if you threw in related words like “epidemic,” the count came to 24, the lowest in three years.
Taking the speech as a proxy for the city’s emphasis on the pathogen, Chan did a sterling job of turning the public’s gaze away from it. The new campaign that replaces that prolonged — and eventually futile — battle to contain the scourge is titled “Happy Hong Kong.”
