Fang Fang - Wuhan Diary - Dispatches from a Quarantined City

Virtually all aspects of people’s lives have been turned upside down by this outbreak; the effect on hospitals has been even worse. Doctors from all different departments have all been busy fighting this virus. Actually, even without this coronavirus outbreak there are already a huge number of patients who need to be cared for. But now all those patients have patiently stepped aside so that their doctors can fight the coronavirus; meanwhile, they continue to silently suffer from their illnesses. Many of those patients are quite anxious about what the ultimate consequences will be of their deferring their own care for so long, but they all put their needs aside so their doctors could join the fight against the coronavirus. I have great admiration for all those amazing patients. I have a colleague who was facing some major health issues and unfortunately had to undergo two major surgeries back-to-back this past January. The coronavirus outbreak erupted just before the Chinese New Year and she had just returned home from the hospital. After being discharged she still had to keep going back to the hospital for her medicine and shots, so she had no choice but to grit her teeth and drive over to the hospital to take care of these things. Her incision wasn’t healing that well and was starting to show signs of purulence. Since the hospital was so overcrowded with people suffering from all kinds of illnesses, her doctors told her she’d better not come every day as she was originally supposed to. Instead they gave her some supplies to take home so she could change her own bandages. When she ran out of bandages, she had to go to the pharmacy to buy more. But once her incision started to get inflamed, she had no choice but to go to the local community hospital near her apartment for her shots. You can get anxious, upset, or even cry out through your tears, but what’s the point? She herself said, “I just need to deal with it, at least until the threat of this virus has passed.” I have another colleague whose father is suffering from cancer. This year she made special arrangements to bring her parents out to spend the Chinese New Year together in Wuhan. Now this entire family—all three generations—are locked down together in her apartment. They can’t go anywhere and her parents are bored out of their minds; all she can do to entertain them is play cards with them every day to help them pass the time. Just now she called and complained to me that she is going crazy playing cards with them all the time. It is actually a big stress on her family. Those women in the city who are pregnant are also in a terribly stressful situation. Even if they are willing to be patient, that doesn’t mean their babies will be. It is not a good time to be giving birth. These babies’ arrivals, which should be filled with joy and celebration, have instead become occasions of extreme anxiety and uncertainty. This may not be a perfect world, but since these babies are brave enough to enter it, well, come on in then! Although this is the epicenter of an outbreak, I need to have faith that you will be received into a place that is warm and clean.

I am recording all the fragmented stories so that those criminals know: Besides the infected patients and the dead, there are a lot of other victims of this calamity. All us ordinary people have paid a price for this human catastrophe.

February 6, 2020

Right now everyone in this city is crying for him.

It started to rain again today in Wuhan. The sky is gray and overcast, the kind of windy and rainy day that leaves people feeling cold and depressed. When I went outside, the cold wind assaulted me, sending a shiver through my body.

There has been a lot of good news today, some of which is probably the most exciting news I have heard in many days. On the radio today someone who is supposedly a specialist in infectious diseases said that the outbreak would start to ease up very soon. What he was saying sounded believable to me. The other bit of news that has been circulating like crazy all over the internet is that the American pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences has developed a new drug called remdesivir (Chinese specialists are calling it “the people’s hope”) and they have already begun clinical trials at Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital. Word has it that so far it has been extremely effective. Everyone in Wuhan is excited about this development; I’m sure that if we weren’t all following the rules of the lockdown we would all be out dancing in the streets to celebrate. We have been stuck at home for so long, hoping for so long; now we finally have gotten a glimpse of something positive. That hope arrived so suddenly, and just in time, because we were all starting to grow increasingly depressed. Even if this news later gets refuted as a rumor or the drug turns out to be ineffective against the virus, I’ll still take this bit of good news for the time being. Perhaps in another couple of days our hopes will be confirmed.

Those mobile hospitals that everyone has been so closely following have officially opened. There are already some patients who have been admitted there who have begun uploading videos, photos, and posts about their experience there. Some of them think that the conditions are really inferior and are complaining about how bad it is. There are quite a few posts like that. But I figure that you have to expect the conditions to be a bit messy at first; after all, these temporary hospitals were hastily constructed in just a single day’s time. However, I’m confident that those other details will fall in place soon and things will improve. Whenever you put a large number of people together, it can be difficult to please everyone, especially when they are all suffering from an illness. It is only natural for people to feel anxious or annoyed; after all, being quarantined there is not nearly as comfortable as being in their own homes. This afternoon I received a text from cultural history professor Feng Tianyu from Wuhan University; he said that according to Yan Zhi, [8] Yan Zhi (b. 1972) is the CEO of Zall Smart Commerce Group. He is also a member of the People’s Congress and a graduate of Wuhan University. Yan Zhi is listed on the Forbes List of the wealthiest people in the world and has also been recognized for his philanthropic activities. Besides his contributions to business and government, Yan Zhi is also a member of the China Writers Association and editor of Chinese Poetry ( Zhongguo shige ). they will be responsible for the two temporary hospitals being set up at the Wuhan International Conference & Exhibition Center and the Wuhan KeTing Expo area. Mr. Yan said that he would do everything in his power to ensure that everything would go smoothly. “We are going to install a lot of television sets, set up a small library area, a charging station, a fast-food area, and make sure that each patient gets at least an apple, a banana, or some other fresh fruit every day; we want the patients to feel like we care.” So you can see that they are really taking these little details into consideration. I’m sure that all the other temporary hospitals also have a system set up to properly delegate responsibility. If Yan Zhi is able to do it, I’m sure the other administrators in charge can do it, too. Wuhan has made it this far; we have already gotten through the most difficult stage of this, so this is not the time to start getting anxious about things. Let’s just let those patients who have been running all over the city trying to get help finally just lie down and get some good rest; they may be quarantined, but they are also finally getting professional medical treatment, which is a good thing for them and everyone else in Wuhan. Otherwise, on a cold day like today, I’m sure a lot of them would have gotten worse or even just collapsed on the street. We have no choice but to steady ourselves and bear with the situation for now; only after things are under control will everyone be able to get back a true sense of peace and stability.