In post-Covid Japan and Britain, life is a celebration again. Why not Hong Kong, too?

I am in a holding pattern for a return to Hong Kong, spending time on an aeroplane but without an opportunity to land, so to speak. Even though friends are leaving South Lantau for Europe and Britain, albeit temporarily and telling me to stay away, the weather is changing, I need lighter clothes and I miss my mattress - so I wouldn't mind getting back home.

However, I cannot deal with being locked up for 14 days mentally or financially right now.

I have witnessed two communities recovering from Covid-19 restrictions, the first in the UK where the test-obsessed Brits were on the verge of losing their cool with all the swabbing up the nose and down the throat, and secondly in Japan, where I am waiting out Hong Kong's Omicron wave. Patience even here has been getting strained, though recently the pressure in both places has been relieved.

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Being called out over the illegal lock-down parties at the prime minister's residence, the British government accelerated the removal of restrictions early this year to save its bacon, and were conveniently able to lean on statistics to support its case.

Official stats determined that the death rate for Omicron - if you are tucked up at home in the warm with a pack of paracetamol - was below that of the annual flu and therefore the health ministry decided there no point continuing with social distancing, or masks - at least until something more lethal comes along. The reaction was swift, with pubs and restaurants getting busy very quickly. I witnessed this first hand, staying on the south coast in Bournemouth where few masks were being worn although encouraged in supermarkets and on public transport.

The final measures to discourage movement and track visitors to the UK will be abandoned before Easter. At that point you won't even need to be vaccinated to land at Heathrow - you'll be able to go straight to the pub. Tourists are on the move again as travel around Europe opens up without serious restrictions and the package holiday companies and airlines are going to see a very strong start to the year. Family and friends have already clocked up multiple ski trips this year to France and Italy and are planning early warm weather getaways to the Canaries, Madeira and Cape Verde - and it's not even April. Many are ready to pack their bags to travel further to Asia as Thailand beckons, and possibly Vietnam soon.

In Japan too, the government has decided not to push the patience of the public any further. Everyone is sick and tired of corona rules, and with the seniors resembling pin cushions from all the vaccinations and boosters, and only going out in the cold to hospitals, the statistics again have suggested it is time to call it a day on the restrictions. This weekend they were removed.

Travel into Japan is opening and although not to tourists yet - it has been slow to reopen relative to much of Asia - visa holders and permanent residents can come and go now with minimal hindrance, typically being required to do three days of self-isolation at home.

The guidelines for early bar and restaurant closing - 8pm last alcohol orders and 8.30pm last food orders - were already starting to slip, and certainly any establishments without a PoS system to record the time of sale generally ignored the "rules". As the police had no legal rights to enforce and had better things to do, they have stayed out of the way.

Now the Japanese are out in droves and spending, much to the relief of F&B and retail businesses, as I witnessed in Osaka recently.

Osaka is going nuts. And I joined in, falling just short of needing a blood transfusion trying to keep up with the locals drinking on a Friday night: a motley crew of schoolteachers, a couple running a clinic, a Japanese-Filipino couple who were discovering gin in a big way and a silver haired gentleman who clearly wanted to drink the gaijin under the table. No masks were worn, even the barman had ditched his despite a sign on the front door asking patrons to wear them.

I explored the confined spaces of the restaurants under Osaka station, where there were queues for okonomiyaki, yakitori, standing-while-you-eat kushiyaki and octopus Takoyaki washed down with highballs.

With more than my average number of steps being required to walk off the evening's excesses, I marched through the whole of the Dotonbori and Shinsaibashi areas of town - the liveliest parts of Osaka. Here's what I observed:

The young people are out in force, I don't think I have seen so many teen to mid-20-year-olds out at the same time in perhaps 10 years, milling around the shops. The previous generation tended to stay home with video games, perhaps the fresh crop are different having been locked up now for 1/10th of their lives.

Osaka has always been foody, and that seemed to be the priority last Sunday. Eat! Crowds formed at the takeaway and standing-and-eating food bars during the day, and the cheap stand-up drinking bars and tiny restaurants at night. Owners welcomed crowds rather trying to discourage them.

The farmers markets were open and in full swing, with cheap vegetables and produce to die for, young families were in there as well as working their way into the restaurants nearby where they could all sit together without plastic screens.

The older folk were milling around in the shops offering senior fashions and spring bargains, with shop owners happy to see the business. Their margins must have been cut to the bone judging by the prices, but finally a bit of turnover was a relief.

The few specialist shops that offer on-the-spot PCR tests with results in less than 10 minutes were completely empty. The staff dressed in plastic bags, masks and goggles looked very self-consciously out of place.

The Hong Kong government must do what it sees best for its small population. We know it is largely influenced by the mainland's plans for integration, and that includes the harsh zero-Covid policy. But, there is something that the Hong Kong government can learn from the UK and Japan aside from the statistics: that people have their limits.

As the Brits moved to being openly disobedient, from the very top, and even the typically obedient Japanese got sick of the rules and started rebelling, the respective governments decided not to test the population any further and let them take the risk with what appears to be a variant that is barely worse than flu.

The Hong Kong government is grappling with a mess and it would seem there is little hope of putting this genie back in the bottle. With the beaches now closed, families unable to dine together and the absurdity of rules that increase transmission risks, such as mobbing a hospital or locking travellers up in a hermetically sealed hotel for two weeks, there is a growing risk that Hongkongers, like the Brits and the Japanese, will reach the end of their tether.

The flipside on offer - and managing symptomatic patients like the UK and Japan is completely the opposite of locking them down - is that life gets back to something celebratory and the pent-up spending gets released.

Surely, that would be as good for Hong Kong right now as anywhere else?

Neil Newman is a thematic portfolio strategist focused on pan-Asian equity markets

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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