Fang Fang - Wuhan Diary - Dispatches from a Quarantined City

I mentioned I had a headache yesterday, so today one of my colleagues had her husband bring me over a bottle of essential balm. Her husband’s job requires him to be out and about every day to help out around the city. When he got home last night, he dropped off the essential balm and some other traditional Chinese herbal medicine. When I went down to the main gate of the Literary and Arts Federation building, I was surprised to see quite a few people out. I haven’t seen that many people out in public since the Lunar New Year.

I asked what was going on and learned that the orders for the grocery delivery group had just arrived. These people were all volunteers helping to unload everything. At first I thought that all the volunteers worked at the Federation, but I was surprised to learn from my neighbor that even her daughter was volunteering. Her daughter had studied in France and since coming back had opened up her own company here in Wuhan. She has been stuck at home like everyone else and thought it would be a good idea to volunteer to help out. According to the United Nations, the definition of a volunteer is: “Anyone who willingly participates in public serve beneficial to society without receiving any form of incentive or benefit, monetary or otherwise. Sometimes referred to as charity workers.” These volunteer organizations are really incredible and it is great to see so many good-hearted young people supporting them. Through this volunteer work not only can they contribute their own abilities, but it is also a great way for them to observe society, understand something about life, and nurture their own abilities and knowledge. During the outbreak in Wuhan, there have been tens of thousands of volunteers contributing to all aspects of society. If not for them, we would have only had the mechanical government offices to rely on and I am sure that things would have been much worse.

Besides all those people delivering food, there were also several large bundles of celery piled up near the front gate. Standing beside the celery piles was a man who looked like a community worker. As I passed by, he said: “Please feel free to take some celery home.” I told him that I already had enough vegetables back at my apartment so I didn’t need any. He replied by insisting, “We got tons here, please take as much as you like! All this is designated for residents of the Literary and Arts Federation complex.” I gave in and took a few sticks of celery, which was more than enough. Mr. Wang the security guard immediately rushed over and helped me grab a bunch more, saying, “There’s plenty! It all came in from Shandong!” I was a bit confused and asked the worker standing there; he explained that all this celery was donated from Shandong Province. Two tons of celery was allocated to our district, which is actually way too much. We gave some to various government offices and took some for ourselves and distributed it to various families. The worker explained, “They aren’t the freshest, but the heart portion of the celery is still quite good.”

Seeing that pile of celery made me think back to that first shipment of vegetables that Shouguang city in Shandong Province donated to Wuhan. Somehow, some government department ended up having the vegetables delivered to supermarkets to be sold! That elicited a public outcry. Someone even circulated a telephone recording of some of the accusations made against the city government online. Actually, if you ask me, I think unless those vegetables were specifically earmarked to be donated directly to hospital cafeterias or to an organization with storage facilities, probably the most effective thing would indeed be to distribute the food to supermarkets where it could be sold at a discount price to citizens. At the very least, those supermarkets have storage facilities and delivery options; there are channels through which they can distribute the food to the people. Perhaps they could then donate whatever proceeds they generate to nonprofit charity groups in the name of the original donor. Or they could even refund the money and continue selling the vegetables at that discounted price for the local Wuhan market. That would be one way for everyone to benefit. At least the outcome would be better than just delivering the food directly to local communities like this. Ever since the coronavirus outbreak began, community workers have faced a particularly difficult situation; to request them to divide up donations and distribute them to all the different communities is a very challenging task. So I figure even though these items were donated, the whole process could still be handled in a much more practical way. If those donated items should go to waste, it would also be a waste of the donors’ kindness and goodwill, not to mention their money.

I saw a video on my phone today of people crying as Dr. Liu Zhiming’s [28] Liu Zhiming (1968–2020) was a 1991 graduate of the Medical College of Wuhan University. He was a neurosurgeon and director of the Department of Neurosurgery at Third Municipal Hospital of Wuhan before being appointed president of Wuchang Hospital in 2015. Dr. Liu died on February 18, 2020, due to lung failure after being afflicted with the novel coronavirus. funeral car drove away; Dr. Liu had been the Director of Wuchang Hospital. There wasn’t a dry eye among the people lined up to see him off one last time. He was an honest and talented professional who had established a solid platform to do good work for the medical community. Who knows how many people he saved over the course of his career? But these days the bad news just keeps on coming. Wuhan University just lost one of its PhDs to the virus, Huazhong University of Science and Technology just lost a professor…. The specter of death continues to haunt the city of Wuhan.

Currently the confirmed cases of novel coronavirus in Hubei Province have already exceeded 70,000 people. This isn’t far off from my doctor friend’s early estimate. Each day there are roughly 1,500 new confirmed cases. The numbers seem huge but in reality the rate of increase is continuing to slow down. The number that still hasn’t begun to decrease is the number of deaths, which is currently just over 2,000, according to the official government statistics. There are also some people who died who were never confirmed to have contracted coronavirus and others who passed away at home before ever making it to a hospital; I suspect none of them are included in those numbers. So I’m afraid that we still don’t have a completely accurate tally of just how many victims there really are. Once this outbreak has passed, various government departments will have to work together in order to come to a more accurate number of just how many people died during this tragedy.

The overall situation continues to be quite serious. Currently there are still nearly 10,000 critical patients being treated at Huoshenshan Hospital, Leishenshan Hospital, and other facilities around the city, many of whom are still undergoing lifesaving procedures. These are all patients who were infected during the early stages of the outbreak. Many of them did not receive immediate care, and these delays led to the worsening of their condition. How many of them will end up losing the battle? This weighs heavily on us, as it certainly does their families.

When we talk about a turning point, it is always framed by the grave situation we faced early on. At that time, you would turn on your phone and all you saw were videos of patients begging for help; all the hospitals were inundated with sick people trying to get treatment. At least now all patients are able to be received at the hospitals; even if a patient refuses treatment, the hospitals force them to be admitted. Once admitted everyone is guaranteed medical treatment. My doctor friend told me that most of these new patients only have mild symptoms and most should be able to fully recover. The turning point is within sight.