On September 7, three days before the national Mid-Autumn holiday weekend, my husband and I received separate phone calls from the pandemic prevention office in the Shanghai district where we live. We were informed that we had become sub-contacts to a recently confirmed COVID-19 case and were required to be taken to a centralized quarantine facility. Having lived through the excruciating two-month lockdown of the city, we have adapted to the new post-lockdown reality: lining up for PCR tests every two or three days, scanning venue codes posted outside every public location to facilitate contact tracing, showing a green health...