I experienced insomnia last night when I intentionally went to bed earlier than usual but only fell asleep in the morning. The notion that someone would come and take the baking plate pulled me up at 12:30 pm. Yet, one message in WeChat group totally woke me up that it is required from August 24th to have Covid 19 PCR test for flight transfer in Korea and threw me in anxiety for the whole day until now.

One line on Google comment is right, it is like shooting a moving target because the testing result can not be given on a definitive date but either employers or international flights are asking for a 72-120 hours Covid clearance. Actually the same thing would not happen in China. Yes, the U.S. health care system or other similar high level industries have strict regulations when conducting business. There are rules, and laws everywhere but when it comes to execution, variations prevail. For ordinary PCR test I have seen result returning time from 1 day - 14 days with most testing site stating 3-5 days of length. Even in some “rapid” testing site, the result would return in 3 days. Yeah, one thing is true in America, like its postal services, that if I could use a Chinese cyber slang it is called “Though late, it will definitely come” (虽迟但到). Maybe that is the ultimate expression of capitalism since the lower level running structure in health care system is based on private practice from physicians to hospitals and to testing labs. Those loosely connected relationship underneath becomes part of the reasons that lead to inefficiency. Will it further impact the whole health care system in a larger scale? I am not sure but what I am more certain is that it had already affected individual patients. By the way, there is one thing quite strange that most big hospitals do not want to have hugh flows of patients getting tested on their sites so they set up a rule of no symptoms no testing while small clinics are welcoming patients and saying they would not turn away any patient. Maybe it is because of the payment issue. The printing of USD did not make hospitals or clinics that much more advanced than other countries. All I feel is the mixture of highly developed and inconvenient which is a quite weird combination.

Of course, what makes me have such a deep interaction with the American health care system from a patient perspective is the requirement of testing for going back home which I think is nonsense. We have the ability to organize the closed circuit of airport transportation and to test all those needed. I think it would be a better idea to just ask for testing results from those who want to shorten their quarantine days in China. Adding the 120 hours testing prior to flight yet without adjusting the 14-day quarantine only increases entropy to the world. However, maybe it will become a good record on someone’s resume.

Do you know how I comfort myself? I told myself that it even does not cross the line if a nation wants you to sacrifice life, thus curbing you from a flight back home is just trivial.

Finally, the plan of saving money is broken and the money spent on coming home is way over the budget. That’s all because I am making such little money. So all in all, keep walking, keep working. Hope everything will be fine for my testing. See you in Shanghai.