Global Health

From the balcony of our apartment in Hong Kong overlooking the main shipping lane into Victoria Harbour, one of the busiest ports in the world, we watched the megaships pass, among them those of the Evergreen line heading for the Kwai Tsing Container Terminals. For two weeks in the summer of 2020, during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when we’d been tagged with electronic wristbands and quarantined at home, this busy oceangoing and riverine traffic intensified our sense of confinement. Clearly, the draconian lockdowns imposed in Mainland China hadn’t stopped all exports; rather, after an initial decline, the pandemic had provided an opportunity for ramping up global trade, at least in certain sectors.