Fang Fang - Wuhan Diary - Dispatches from a Quarantined City

The sky was extremely dark and when I went down to the main gate at dusk to pick up a parcel, there was a light spring drizzle; I didn’t bring an umbrella, but it felt great to let the rain fall on me. Just as I got back to my front door the rain suddenly turned into a downpour; if I had arrived home just a moment later I would have been soaked. I guess I got lucky.

The coronavirus outbreak seems to have stabilized, but people’s hearts have not. People are scared that patients who have recovered from the coronavirus might get reinfected; they are scared that hospitals will not report new cases because they don’t want to spoil the perfect new record of “zero” new infections. Since people are talking about these issues, I decided to ask my doctor friend and he gave me a clear answer. However, online I see that a lot of people are still very worried about this. This virus works in strange ways; it is crafty, it is elusive, and there are still a lot of unknowns concerning how it works. People are extremely scared, especially those of us here in Wuhan. We have all witnessed the tragedy firsthand during the early stages of the outbreak, and I think the fear we felt is still lurking deep inside us. But no matter what happens, we need to stay calm and collected. It is no use to get panicky; I think that the terrible situation early on was, to some extent, related to the state of panic we were thrown into. Anyone who had even the slightest fever rushed straight to the hospital; that led to a situation where a lot of people who didn’t have the novel coronavirus ended up getting infected by going to the hospital. That, in turn, put even more stress on a medical system that was already on the verge of collapse and led to even more deaths.

Now that the outbreak has gotten to its current point, things have more or less stabilized and there is no need for us to be in panic mode. The hospitals now have enough experience treating patients of novel coronavirus so patients who are newly infected or recurring cases don’t need to be as anxious as before; you just need to go in for treatment. We are, after all, not made of steel; people often get sick and, just like always, we need to seek out treatment when we fall ill; it just takes time to go through the treatment. During the period between winter and spring, it was already flu season, which is also contagious; but didn’t we all get through that? According to a doctor in Shanghai named Dr. Zhang Wenhong, [22] Zhang Wenhong (b. 1969) is a physician and director and secretary of the Party Branch of the Department of Infectious Disease at Huashan Hospital in Shanghai, which is affiliated with Fudan University. During the COVID-19 outbreak, Dr. Zhang was the leader of the Shanghai Medical Treatment Expert Group. In February 2020 he made media comments relating to the origin of the virus that generated controversy online. Then in April, he was the center of more criticism when he suggested Chinese children should have milk and eggs for breakfast instead of porridge, which was interpreted as “worshipping the West.” the death rate from novel coronavirus is less than 1 percent. If that’s the case, there isn’t that much to be scared of. Except for those few lethal cases, we shouldn’t be so terrified of infection; weren’t those patients in the temporary hospitals singing and dancing? Once they got discharged, they all seemed happy as can be, as if this illness is no different than any other.

But, on the other hand, I am having trouble understanding this desire to keep all the numbers at zero. Just how big is the difference between one and zero, anyhow? I feel that neither the government nor the people need to be so fixated on this issue. During normal times, there are always various infectious diseases out there; we just need to be cautious and if we get sick, we seek out medical help. Don’t tell me that if we are at zero we can all go back to work, but that even one confirmed case will affect our ability to return to normal? Can’t we just solve the problem by sending that one patient to the hospital for quarantine? We can’t necessarily always get a perfect zero; sometimes perfection simply isn’t practical.

When it comes to precautionary measures against the novel coronavirus, I trust the judgment of Dr. Zhang Wenhong in Shanghai. According to Dr. Zhang, there are protective measures you can take. You need to adopt effective personal protection measures such as practicing social distancing, frequent hand washing, and wearing a face mask; all three of these are essential. Dr. Zhang said: “Up until this point, we have still not seen a single example of someone who carefully and consistently implemented all three of these measures and still got infected. If you follow these guidelines, it is highly unlikely that you will be infected.” I very much agree with his view on this. There is a meme that says, “You can send anything you want to Hubei, except for Dr. Zhang Wenhong!” So why do the people of Shanghai hold Dr. Zhang Wenhong in such high regard? It’s because most of what he has said has already been proven to be true. It is said that the reason Japan has been so successful in controlling the coronavirus has a lot to do with the high hygiene standards of the Japanese people. There is some truth there; if you travel around the world, it is indeed hard to find a country cleaner than Japan. That is also why Japanese people tend to have long life spans; implementing strict hygiene standards can prevent a lot of illnesses.

Since the outbreak, concepts like “love” and “goodness” no longer seem as empty as before. People are now able to clearly see what true love and true goodness really are. It is just a shame that there are some people who insist on shouting these phrases, yet when it comes time for them to take real action, you can’t find them anywhere. They are used to passionately expressing love and goodness as empty, politicized concepts, but once you bring them down to the real world and put these concepts in real concrete terms, you won’t see an ounce of passion; in fact, you won’t even feel the slightest warmth. During the past few days I have seen a few videos of people cursing and insulting Chinese who have just returned from abroad; I also saw footage of people from other provinces getting into heated conflicts with Hubei workers who have just arrived to get back to work. These videos have left me utterly flabbergasted. Why can’t they love these people with the same passion they put into loving their country?

I remember that when the coronavirus first broke out in Wuhan and our local cache of medical equipment and supplies was facing a severe shortage, a lot of overseas Chinese really stepped up to the plate; they basically cleaned out the shelves from stores in whatever country they were in and sent it all to Wuhan to help us get through this difficult period. But who would have expected that, once they started facing difficulties themselves and decided to come home, so many people would come out against them. How quickly people change; it just goes to show you how evil human nature can be. And then there are the residents of Hubei who, in order to stop the spread of the virus, faced a myriad of difficulties staying at home for more than 50 days, yet once they tried returning to work, they still had to face all kinds of resistance. Our country has so many grand slogans that we shout, so many official government documents, yet when it comes down to it, they all amount to nothing. In both of these cases, the government provided amazing support to both those compatriots abroad who decided to return to China as well as those Hubei residents who wanted to resume work outside their home province, yet in both cases there were many citizens who simply seemed intent on making it hard for these people; the whole thing is very strange indeed.