Fang Fang - Wuhan Diary - Dispatches from a Quarantined City

The coronavirus is here, and from its early phase to its period of expansion and all the way up to the point where it began to get out of control, our response has gone from being completely wrong to being delayed and ultimately to its current flawed state. We were unable to get ahead of this virus and stop it; instead, we have been frantically chasing after it, and paying a heavy price in the process. This is not the time to slowly cross the river by gradually feeling for the stones; there have been so many previous outbreaks that we could have referred to, so how come we haven’t learned from them? Couldn’t we just copy what people have previously done to successfully control outbreaks like this in the past? Or perhaps I’m just oversimplifying things?

There was another video I saw today of a family driving over a bridge from Chongqing to Guizhou. In the car was a married couple with what looked like two children (I couldn’t quite see it clearly in the video). The man was from Chongqing and the woman was from Guizhou. Their car set out from the Chongqing side and was headed to the border of Guizhou. In the end, the guards said they would let the wife through since she was from Guizhou, but no matter what, they refused to let her husband through; in the end, he had no choice but to turn the car around and go back to Chongqing. Once they got back to the other side of the bridge the guards on that side told them that since they had already left the city limits of Chongqing, only the husband could go back in, but the wife was not permitted through. The husband who was driving said: “They won’t let us through on that side and now you won’t let us through here; what do you want us to do? Live on this bridge?” Watching that video, I really didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I once wrote a novel entitled The City of Wuchang , [5] The City of Wuchang ( Wuchang cheng ) was originally published in 2011 by People’s Literature Publishing House. The novel portrays historical events that occurred in the city before and after 1927 through the story of Chen Mingwu and Ma Weifu, who are coming of age amid a backdrop of war and violence. which was set nearly a hundred years ago when warlords had surrounded the city. (What a coincidence that I now find myself also quarantined here in Wuchang!) During the siege, countless numbers of people inside the city of Wuchang starved to death. People from Hankou and Hanyang worked together to try to save the people in Wuchang, and eventually the warlords worked out an agreement allowing residents three days to leave the city to search for food. During that time, the forces surrounding the city vowed not to attack, and the army guarding the city agreed to let the residents out. All this happened back in 1926. During that time there were two armies at war, and yet these two opposing forces were able to work out an agreement; and here we are today, a hundred years later, and we can’t even stretch the rules a little bit for the sake of a family?! It is not as if the sky were falling! There are many ways to resolve a problem. In the end, I don’t know if that family ever made it to Guizhou or ended up going back to Chongqing.

“Lamenting our difficult lives, I heave a deep sigh and wipe away my tears.” [6] This is an inverted line from the poem “Encountering Sorrow” (“Li sao”) from Songs of the South ( Chu ci ) . Attributed to the poet Qu Yuan, “Encountering Sorrow” dates from the Warring States period and recounts the poet’s spiritual voyage to fantasy realms while lamenting his betrayal by various court factions. These days there are a lot of people expressing this sentiment.

February 4, 2020

Fate must have again smiled down on me.

Today the weather continues to be good. The Wuhan people continue to hold steady. We are feeling a bit stifled from being stuck indoors, but as long we can stay alive we can handle the rest.

This afternoon I heard about another person going into panic mode while at the supermarket picking up a few things; this man said he was afraid that the store would shut down and there would be no new supplies of food coming in. I felt like that was an unrealistic fear. The municipal government already issued a proclamation assuring citizens that supermarkets would stay open. Just to think through this logically: Right now, the entire country is standing behind Wuhan, and China isn’t the kind of nation facing any true shortages of material goods, so I’m sure it won’t be too difficult for the country to ensure that the people of Wuhan have enough food and supplies. Of course, there will certainly be some elderly people living alone who might be going through some hard times (even without the coronavirus, they don’t have it easy), but I’m confident that there will be many community volunteers who will be there to help them out. Even if the government made some mistakes early on, no matter what, we now have no choice but to put our faith in our leaders; we need to believe in them. Otherwise, what is the alternative? Who else can we believe in? Who else can you rely on? Those people who are easily frightened are the kind of people who are always on edge anyway; there is really nothing you can do to help them. Just now I went out to throw away the garbage and noticed a sign posted on my front door that read “Disinfection Complete.” There was also a flyer that said if you discover you have a fever, please call the following phone number for Wuchang District. From that you can tell how meticulous is the work being done on the community level. The coronavirus is a great enemy that everyone is united against; no one dares to slack off, so let’s just hope the policymakers don’t have any more missteps.

The question of how many people will end up being infected by this virus remains an extremely sensitive topic. I’m also anxious about how big this number will eventually be. Yesterday I posted something on Weibo that mentioned the number 100,000, which is a number most doctors have long been bracing for, even though none of them will say that publicly. Then there was actually one doctor who, while appealing to the public for help, actually said the number out loud. Today another doctor friend told me that he thought that estimate was right on. “There will indeed be that many people infected. But one thing to keep in mind is that not everyone infected shows symptoms. Perhaps only 30 to 50 percent of the people infected will actually develop symptoms.” I then asked him a follow-up question: “And if you are infected but remain asymptomatic, does that mean that you gradually just recover on your own?” My doctor friend affirmed that: “That is correct.” If this is true, I suppose that counts as good news?

But the fact should be reemphasized that, according to what doctors are saying, the novel coronavirus may be extremely contagious, but as long as patients receive standard treatment, the death rate is not too high. Patients who have received treatment outside of Hubei Province have already proven this to be true. The reason the death rate has been so high here in Wuhan is that there are a large number of patients who cannot get access to hospital care; without proper treatment, mild cases turn serious and serious cases lead to death. Another contributing factor is tied to the fact that the quarantine procedures were flawed early on, which led to many cases of a single person infecting their entire family. This, in turn, led to a dramatic increase in infections and sparked a whole series of other tragedies. My doctor friend told me that if they had been better prepared early on, based on the number of beds available, Wuhan should have been able to treat all the serious cases that came in. But things were just too chaotic during the early stages of the outbreak, people were consumed with fear, and a lot of people who weren’t even sick flooded into the hospitals, making things even more frenzied. Now the government is consistently tweaking its response procedures. The next step will be to see if we can reach a turning point; I hope that moment comes sooner rather than later.