Getting to the bottom (ha ha)

This was an unexpected headline:

China rolls out anal swab coronavirus test, saying it’s more accurate than throat method 

Months-long lockdowns. Entire city populations herded through the streets for mandatory testing. The people of China could be forgiven for thinking they had seen it all during the coronavirus pandemic.

But now they face a new indignity: the addition of anal swabs — yes, you read that right — to the testing regimen for those in quarantine.

Chinese state media outlets introduced the new protocol in recent days, prompting widespread discussion and some outrage. Some Chinese doctors say the science is there. Recovering patients, they say, have continued to test positive through samples from the lower digestive tract days after nasal and throat swabs came back negative.

Yet for many, it seemed a step too far in government intrusions after a year and counting of a dignity-eroding pandemic.

“Everyone involved will be so embarrassed,” one user in Guang­dong province said Wednesday on ­Weibo, a Chinese social media platform. In a Weibo poll, 80 percent of respondents said they “could not accept” the invasive method.

It can't be that hard to get the patient to do the swab themselves, surely?  

And anyone who has had to insert cream for a haemorrhoid would know it's not going to kill you to have something thin inserted.   I mean, it's not going to be like a prostate digital exam, surely.

Are the Chinese particularly culturally sensitive to examination of their body?   I have wondered about this - the Japanese are so relaxed about public and family nudity in the right context (bathing, mainly), yet go across to China and my impression is they seem to have a cultural shyness about bodies.