Hong Kong Expats Turn to Covid Tweeter to Track City’s Outbreak
With many local media outlets decimated by a political crackdown, the account has filled a gap.
(Bloomberg) -- Amid what is the deadliest Covid-19 outbreak in the world right now, and government policies that change day to day, a stay-at-home dad from Western Australia has unexpectedly emerged as the go-to source of information for Hong Kong’s expatriate population, and even doctors.
The Twitter account @tripperhead, which has amassed over 22,000 followers -- many more than accounts belonging to local public health experts and government Covid advisers -- provides a regular stream of information on the pandemic in Hong Kong. It live-tweets news from government briefings, summarizes insights from medical experts and tracks the frenetically changing travel rules that continue to keep the city isolated from much of the world.
“Even a lot of people at the university get their news from him because it’s so reliable,” said Karen Grepin, an expert in health economics and public health policy at the University of Hong Kong. “The Hong Kong response literally changes every single day. I don’t think there is much that has happened in the city that he hasn’t covered.”
While scientists and health journalists around the world found fame during the pandemic on social media as people desperately sought out timely and clear information, interest in @tripperhead in Hong Kong has come amid patchy and inconsistent government public health policy and communication.
And with many local media outlets decimated by a political crackdown, the account has filled a gap.
The man behind it is Aaron Busch, a 47-year-old stay-at-home dad who has lived in Hong Kong since 2014. He started tracking the Covid data coming out of China in early 2020, using Google to translate the news as English-language information of the granularity he was after was hard to come by. Busch entered the daily cases and death figures on a spreadsheet that has now grown to more than 790 rows -- a rough reflection of the number of consecutive days he’s devoted to the effort.
“At no point did I expect me to be the person responsible for English-language Hong Kong Covid news,” said Busch, who wore a button-down flowery shirt, shorts and sandals in his first meeting with someone outside his family without a mask in 2022. “I was tracking the numbers for China, just in case something was going to happen. From there, it snowballed.”
Busch, who says his Twitter handle was inspired by his early days as a skateboarder in Australia, spends up to 14 hours a day on his efforts, often planking on his bed as he watches government press conferences. He said he’s able to devote more time to the endeavor now, given his kids are at an age where they’re less dependent on him. He described his home environment as “constant chaos,” with his kids learning remotely, his wife working from home and a dog.
Though @tripperhead’s Covid tweets started off as an amateur project, devoted followers are beginning to reward him financially for the efforts. Andre Blumberg, chief information officer at power supplier CLP Holdings Ltd., said he convinced Busch to monetize his feed.
“He’s my first and last reason to look at Twitter,” said Blumberg. “He’s well past the hobbyist, volunteer stage where you do things on the side after your day job.”
Busch said he was originally resistant to the idea of getting paid, but eventually relented and now gets donations from readers via bank transfers and Buy Me a Coffee. His tweets on Hong Kong’s constant flight cancellations, often before government press releases, have earned him a particularly devoted following by expatriates. Busch said he now earns less than the minimum wage of HK$38 ($4.84) an hour, below that of a Hong Kong bus driver, which he estimated brings in HK$14,000 a month. He spent some of the proceeds to replace a damaged laptop and some donating to foreign domestic workers and others hit by pandemic measures.
Busch says he tries not to be overtly political. Still, replies to his tweets often reflect the frustration felt by the population at large at the city’s poor handling of the pandemic. His feed provides a platform for people, often expats, seeking an outlet for their anger, in a city where there is little accountability for the impact of the Covid-Zero policy on livelihoods, mental health and children’s well-being.
“I try to keep the snark down, and I 100% stay away from opinion,” Busch said. As for his followers, who have criticized him from both ends of the political spectrum: “We’ve reached detente,” he said. “They take my videos and rant, and leave me alone in the middle.”
How long it will last is anyone’s guess. Busch has lived in Hong Kong longer than anywhere else in his life, and he’s not eager to pull up roots again.
“I love Hong Kong, and it would take a lot for me to leave,” he said. “But I don’t have a crystal ball, so I can’t say what will happen six months from now.”
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