Recently, pedestrians crossing a bustling intersection in Shuyang, a city in northern China, found themselves being scolded by a police-operated drone equipped with a camera and loudspeakers. Their mistake was neglecting to wear face masks to protect themselves from the coronavirus, which has killed at least 427 people and infected more than 20,000 worldwide, most of them in China’s mainland.
A video posted to Twitter by the Global Times, a jingoistic Chinese government tabloid, on Friday shows clips of bewildered passersby jerking their heads to the sky upon hearing a disembodied voice harassing them about their hygiene. A policewoman yelling through the drone’s loudspeaker quips, “Hey, handsome guy speaking on your mobile, where is your mask?” and later instructs a group of “pretty young ladies” to wait until they get home to eat so they won’t have to lower their masks. Another portion of the video shows a social media star using a drone to bark similar orders at senior citizens out and about in China’s Inner Mongolia province. The video, which has amassed 1.64 million views, resembles a montage from a prank show—except the camera isn’t hidden. It’s prominently displayed to remind people that someone’s always watching.
Image by Pexels from Pixabay
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