Damage Assessment

It has been over 40 days in lockdown. There is some evidence on the ground that we'll soon be getting out of this. While it is great to see indications of freedom, it's going to be a long and painful road to recovery. That much is for sure.

Before we recover from the damage, we need to assess the damage itself. This is very difficult since much of it is intangible. For starters we have been denied sunshine and exercise during the most beautiful days of the year in Shanghai. The food supply has been totally disrupted and along with that our daily meal planning and calorie consumption. Those are about the top two I can think of at this point. A ton more will surely come to light as the days and months go by, especially with the disruption to social and economic life

Meanwhile, reported covid cases are going down slowly and there are some signs of re-emergence from this lockdown. Luckier friends than me who live in districts with low case counts managed to get passes to leave their compounds and then go bike riding.

A common sight on roads. As I figured they would build makeshift borders between districts and sub districts

Meanwhile, I had basically gained over 20 pounds and lost a significant portion of muscle in less than two months. For a fitness guy such as myself, this was a horror story. It would take many months to reverse this. Also, the lack of exercise meant that I didn't walk around which was needed to properly treat my Achilles tendon condition. I was averaging maybe 200-300 steps a day. When I did take walks I felt a chronic pain in the tendon from calficication and underuse.

Part of it was my fault due to poor eating and sleeping habits, not to mention drinking alcohol on a near daily basis to cope with this lockdown. The sedentary lifestyle was forced on all of us however. As much as I tried to exercise at the beginning, I soon gave up.

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