Fang Fang - Wuhan Diary - Dispatches from a Quarantined City

Actually, we can now see that the last stages of this battle against the coronavirus and our own lives are all gradually becoming more and more orderly. Most community service workers have been quite meticulous, and everyone has a very good attitude. One of my colleagues is always showing us pictures of community workers helping local residents with all kinds of tasks; he said that they are amazing, even helping residents with shopping. To win the people’s approval like that, they must be doing a really good job. You should know that those Wuhan nüjiang can be really hard to please, and sometimes really fierce! To be fair, those community workers who volunteer to go out to these smaller communities really have a tough job; they basically end up doing all kinds of odd jobs; they have to do a little bit of everything. This is especially the case in those traditional old neighborhoods where the buildings have no elevators; they end up lugging groceries up many flights of stairs, teaching elderly residents how to use cellphones, and in some cases helping residents who don’t even have cellphones make phone calls. There are all kinds of people living together in this city. There is no shortage of people who love to bicker; they are very stubborn and won’t think twice about getting in a real fight. Dealing with these types of people makes community service particularly challenging. The fact that most Wuhan people have been able to make it this far and are able to still hold on is, in large part, due to the hard work of those community workers.

Some of my colleagues at the Hubei Writers Association are starting to get back to work. Changjiang Literature and Art Magazine plans to get its next issue out on time, which is something that cannot be done if everyone just stays home. Originally I was supposed to submit a novella to them after the Lunar New Year, but I ended up eating my words. Reporters keep asking me the same question about what I’m most looking forward to doing once the city reopens. My response: I want to take a good rest; and then I want to finish that novella. If I don’t take care of those lingering debts, I’ll probably end up ostracized from all my friends!

The outbreak is already easing up here, yet the tragedies continue. The Xinjia Express Hotel in Quanzhou where people were being housed under quarantine just collapsed. My classmate just sent a message to our chat group; the collapse occurred this evening just after 6:00 p.m. and 71 people were trapped inside. As of 4:00 p.m. firefighters on scene had already rescued 48 people, 10 of whom have already died and the other 38 were taken to the hospital for treatment. There should be another 23 people still trapped inside. I’m so anxious! A lot of these people who were quarantined were from Hubei. Somehow they escaped from the grip of the coronavirus, yet couldn’t escape from this unsafe building. Perhaps this qualifies as yet another secondary disaster?

Today I saw an interview in Caijing with the Hong Kong microbiologist Yuen Kwok-Yung. [11] Yuen Kwok-Yung (b. 1956) is a Hong Kong–based microbiologist, doctor, and surgeon. He serves as a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and is a specialist in novel microbes in emerging infectious diseases. He has been a vocal figure in the fight against COVID-19, advocating for the effectiveness of face masks and educating the public on the virus. Dr. Yuen was a member of the third team of specialists that came to Wuhan. During this outbreak he was appointed as a specialist to the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 task force, and he is also a member of the Advisory Council for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Some of the information he revealed to the reporter in this interview was quite shocking.

Dr. Yuen stated: “I want to tell you the truth; the places we visited in Wuhan were likely all ‘model hospitals.’ They answered all the questions we asked, but it felt like their answers were all prerehearsed. But Zhong Nanshan was particularly sharp; he kept repeatedly asking them questions like: ‘Are you sure there weren’t any?’ ‘Are you positive there aren’t any more cases of infection?’ ‘Is the number of cases you reported really accurate?’ But their answer was always: ‘We are still testing. That’s because the Hubei Center for Disease Control didn’t receive test kits from the central government until January 16.’ After repeated questioning, they finally told us that: ‘It seems that one patient being treated in the department of neurosurgery infected 14 medical practitioners.’ Then they added: ‘But none of those medical workers have been officially diagnosed yet.’ The reporter from Caijing was really good; he followed up by asking: ‘So just who does “they” refer to? When you conducted your investigations at Wuhan Hospital, who were the primary people you met with?’ Yuen Kwok-Yung responded: ‘We met with people from the Wuhan Health Organization, the Wuhan Center for Disease Control, representatives from local Wuhan hospitals, and the Hubei Health Organization.’ The reporter pressed him further: ‘At the time did you suspect that any of them were concealing the facts?’ Dr. Yuen responded, ‘During lunch I saw the Vice Mayor sitting next to Zhong Nanshan and he looked terrible. Judging from the stern look on his face, I’m sure that they already knew at that time that something really bad was happening. After all, we were already the third team of specialists to visit Wuhan. I believe that even if there had been things they were concealing, by that point there was already nothing left to hide. Yet they kept emphasizing the fact that a shipment of test kits had only just arrived in Wuhan so they hadn’t yet had enough time to conduct tests and confirm cases.’”

Now that we have some leads, we need to keep investigating! If we keep asking the right questions, we will eventually get to the cause. All of us want to know why there was a need to conceal such an important thing from the public.

It was only thanks to Zhong Nanshan’s sharp and stern questions that we were able to learn that human-to-human contact was, in fact, possible with this virus. It was only then that the people of Wuhan quickly awakened from their ignorance. Otherwise, had they continued to conceal the facts for much longer, it is hard to imagine just how much worse things would have gotten. Of the more than ten million Wuhan residents, how many would have survived?

Right now the questions we want to ask are: (1) Do we want to investigate all the people that Dr. Yuen Kwok-Yung mentioned? How far do we want to take this investigation? And (2) The two earlier groups of specialists who visited must have clearly seen how serious this was, so why didn’t they pursue their questioning with the same rigor and aggressiveness as Dr. Zhong Nanshan? During the course of his interview Dr. Yuen, at one point, uttered the following words: “Our scientists should know better than to ever overlook the value of soft intelligence.”

March 9, 2020

If someone has to take the blame and resign, let’s start with the secretary and director of Central Hospital.

The downpour was quite heavy last night and this morning it continues. In my mind, I always think of spring rain as being gentle and silent, perhaps even a little romantic, but today it is just flooding down from the sky; I suppose I’ll have to keep the lights on inside all day today.

From the tone of my doctor friend’s texts today, I can tell he is in a good mood. It is now the third straight day that we have had fewer than 100 new cases, and that number continues to drop. After they put in a new set of leaders at the municipal and provincial levels and started implementing a set of new stricter policies, the virus has quickly been brought under control. When the number of patient infections was at its peak, there was a plan to build an additional 19 temporary hospitals, but now those will clearly not be needed. According to my doctor friend, 11 of the temporary hospitals have already been shut down, and the remaining three will be closing down operations within the next two or three days. Wuhan’s fight against the coronavirus is finally nearing its end; it feels like they are now cleaning up the battlefield. The number of cases of serious infections continues to decline. This decline is due to two primary factors: Some of them have recovered and others have passed away. But right now there are still 4,700 patients who are considered to be in serious condition. This is still a fairly large number. Medical workers are providing them with the best care possible, and we hope those patients will be able to hang in there and recover quickly.