Somebody got sick, somebody said "tampering," and by Tuesday half of Hong Kong was reading ingredient labels on sports drinks like they were defusing a bomb. RTHK reported this week that officials checked and found no evidence of tampering. No contamination, no foreign substance, nothing. The bottles are fine.

Here's the thing about a scare like this: the "all clear" never travels as far as the scare did. The rumour got a headline and a weekend of nervous group chats. The clearance gets one line, buried under bigger news, read by maybe a tenth as many people. So the drink stays on the shelf, the tests say it's safe, and somewhere a mum is still checking the seal twice before she lets her kid drink it. Nobody did anything wrong here, not the company, not the regulator who actually went and tested the thing properly. It's just that fear moves at Temple Street pace and facts move at government pace, and by the time the facts show up, everyone's already made up their mind at the fridge.