Fang Fang - Wuhan Diary - Dispatches from a Quarantined City

Besides this, yesterday some people online started to raise some questions about those “temporary hospital stations” [7] In February 2020, after the novel coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, the China National Health Commission, in conjunction with local authorities, began building the Huoshenshan Hospital, the Leishenshan Hospital, and 11 other temporary hospitals across the area. These large, mobile hospital facilities were established to quickly expand the ability to care for the large influx of patients infected with COVID-19. that have just been set up; they were worried that isolating large numbers of patients together would actually lead to a huge spike in cases of cross-infection. But my take on it is that those temporary hospitals are based on a model typically seen in battlefield situations during wartime. The first thing that must be done is to segregate suspected carriers together as quickly as possible, and then send doctors to provide treatment. As that is taking place, they can then gradually work to improve the conditions for those quarantined patients. If these steps are not taken, those infected individuals will continue moving around the city and every day they are out there means that more people will become infected. If that continues, there is no way this virus will ever be able to be contained. Although the conditions in those mobile hospitals are far from ideal, I imagine that the next step will be to divide those large open spaces up into smaller rooms. But that is just my guess; I’m not sure if that is the actual plan. But no matter what, quickly separating those infected individuals from the general population is the most pressing issue at the moment.

I saw a “selfie” video today that was shot by one of the patients at Huoshenshan Hospital. From the video I could tell that the treatment facilities there are quite good and the patients there seem to have a positive outlook. That is exactly the kind of video I was hoping I might be able to see. I hope they all recover soon, and I hope that everything will move forward from here in a more rational and organized manner.

This outbreak is the result of several forces coming together. The enemy is not just the virus itself. We ourselves are also our own worst enemies in this fight, or, at the very least, we are accomplices to the crime. I’m told that there are a lot of people who are now suddenly waking up to just how meaningless it is to go around every day shouting empty slogans about how awesome our country is; they know that those cadres who go around giving speeches on political education but who never take concrete action are utterly useless (we used to refer to them as people who “live off the labor of their mouths”); and they certainly know that a society that lacks common sense and fails to pursue the facts as they present themselves not only ends up harming people through words but can actually result in the loss of human lives—many, many human lives. This is a lesson that resonates deeply and also comes with a heavy weight. Even though we have all lived through the SARS epidemic of 2003, it seems we have all quickly forgotten the lessons we supposedly learned then; now fast-forward to 2020—will we forget again? The devil is always on our heels and if we aren’t careful, he will catch up to us again and torture us until we finally wake up. The real question is: Do we even want to wake up?

Thinking back to the year of SARS, that disease began to spread in March but the government initially tried to cover it up. At the time, I had an old classmate in Guangzhou who was about to undergo a big operation. I went with a few dozen old friends from all over China down to Guangzhou to support her during her surgery; we all descended on the very hospital where the SARS outbreak was fiercely raging, but none of us knew that at the time (and none of us were wearing face masks). We all traveled there roundtrip by train. Once what was happening was finally exposed, everyone all over the country was in a state of panic. We in particular were sweating bullets; amid the chaos, I told myself that fate must have smiled down on me to allow me to have escaped infection. This time I made three trips to the hospital between January 1st and the 18th, each time to visit colleagues who had been hospitalized for surgery. During two of those visits I didn’t even wear a face mask. Now that it has passed, I cringe when I think about it and, once again, I think that fate must have again smiled down on me.

February 5, 2020

All us ordinary people have paid a price for this human catastrophe.

Yesterday marked the first day of spring and today the weather indeed feels like spring. Across from our house is a row of old camphor trees, two osmanthus trees, and one yulan magnolia; the rich blanket of leaves makes one feel as if winter was never even here.

Today we are still in the middle of what the experts had predicted to be the peak period of the coronavirus outbreak. It is said that the number of confirmed cases is continuing to climb. A famous painter who I know is right now in critical condition due to the virus. My friend YL told me that she knows three cinematographers who got infected while on a shoot and all of them have since died from the coronavirus. My circle of friends is quite small and I’m so thankful that they are doing well so far. The situation in Wuhan is still grim, but not as chaotic as before. At the same time, things have not really eased up. Those depressing online videos and desperate cries for help that were circulating all over the internet seem to have died down quite a bit, and they have been replaced by positive messages online that are encouraging everyone to move forward. I’m not sure if those earlier issues have really been resolved or if they’ve just been censored from the internet. After experiencing so much censorship, I have come to grow numb about the whole thing. Yesterday I said that we are our own worst enemies; this process of becoming enemies of ourselves probably begins with that feeling of numbness. For the time being we need to be on guard, we need to be particularly aware of what’s going on with our own bodies. I’m still continually nagging my friends: Be sure not to go outside! Be sure not to go out! I know we have been locked up inside for a long time and we might end up quarantined for much longer, but we can’t worry about any of that. We might not have a lot of great food to eat at home but once this outbreak has passed, we can go out to a restaurant and order all those things we have been craving. We’ll be happy and those restaurants will finally be able to start making some money again.

I saw a report this afternoon that I thought was interesting. Although the title, “The First Shots in the Battle Against the Coronavirus in Wuhan Have Already Been Fired,” sounded like an official government media report, the content was actually very much worth reading. I’ll provide a quick summary of the major points: (1) patients have been divided into three quarantine categories; (2) Huoshenshan Hospital, Leishenshan Hospital, and other designated hospitals are Level One facilities responsible for isolating and treating critical patients; (3) the 11 newly constructed mobile hospitals are designated Level Two facilities responsible for the isolation and treatment of patients with mild infections; (4) hotels and Chinese Communist Party Schools will be designated as Level Three facilities in charge of isolating suspected cases of infection and members of the population who have been in close contact with infected individuals; (5) once these three groups of individuals have been isolated, a comprehensive, citywide sterilization process will be put into play; (6) all hospitals will resume their normal operations (and all departments previously closed will reopen); (7) other businesses will be able to reopen and resume commerce; (8) patients will be continually monitored and their treatment will be updated based on their condition. For instance, once patients with critical symptoms turn mild, they will be transferred to mobile hospital units and if mild cases turn critical they will be moved to Level One facilities. We will follow this protocol until this catastrophic illness is completely eradicated! I’m not able to confirm whether all the details in this article were factual, but based on what I know, it seemed accurate. Ever since the military entered Wuhan, there seems to have been a clear improvement in terms of the overall efficiency with which they are facing this outbreak. The way they are fighting this virus really does feel a bit like a military campaign—clean and direct. I have a lot of high hopes for what this stage of the situation will bring. But what I really hope is that, no matter what level patients have been designated as, they are all given high-quality, effective, and reliable care.