Fang Fang - Wuhan Diary - Dispatches from a Quarantined City

Some of the smaller supermarkets are still open. There are also a few vegetable peddlers set up on the sidewalk. I bought some vegetables from one of those peddlers and went to the supermarket to pick up some milk and eggs (I actually had to go to three markets before I found one with eggs in stock). I asked the storekeeper whether or not she was afraid of getting infected by staying open during the outbreak. She answered frankly: “We’ve got to go on living; so do you!” That’s right, they have to carry on, we all have to carry on; that’s simply all we can do! I always admire those working-class people and often strike up a chat with them; somehow that always gives me a strange sense of security. Even during that two- or three-day cold spell when it was windy and rainy and the outbreak was really out of control, the streets were almost completely empty. Yet even then there would always be at least one sanitation worker out there, meticulously sweeping the streets. Whenever I caught a glimpse of one of them, I would immediately start to feel guilty for feeling so scared and anxious; one sight of them is always enough to immediately set me at ease.

February 1, 2020

And as he is saving them, I hope he saves himself, too.

The weather is still clear today. It is now Day Eight of the Lunar New Year and I’m feeling a bit nostalgic for all the excitement that normally fills our courtyard area this time of year. Once again, I started looking at my phone before getting out of bed and saw some statistics that were just published yesterday. The result of those figures were: There continues to be an increase in both the number of confirmed cases as well as the suspected cases of coronavirus infection; however, the rate of infection has clearly begun to slow down. Moreover, it has continued to slow over the course of the past three days. The number of patients with critical symptoms has also begun to decline. The mortality rate is holding steady at around 2 percent, as before. And the number of patients who have recovered and suspected cases that have been ruled out has also increased. This is all great news! All of this demonstrates that the quarantine measures taken of late have been very effective. My eldest brother sent this news out to our family chat group this morning; I can’t confirm that all these statistics are accurate, but I certainly hope so! And so I keep coming back to say, If Wuhan can make it through this, the rest of the country can, too.

Now that I think back, it was actually my eldest brother who first told me that this virus was contagious. There are actually just us four siblings in that family chat group. Not even my sister-in-law and niece are in the group. Since both my brothers are university professors, they often have access to really good information from their colleagues and friends. That is especially the case for my eldest brother; he is a graduate of Qinghua University and teaches at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, so he often gets a lot of valuable information. At 10:00 a.m. on December 31st, that brother forwarded me an essay entitled “Suspected Case of Virus of Unknown Origin in Wuhan” and then in parentheses was the word “SARS.”

My brother said that he wasn’t sure if this news was authentic. But my other brother immediately chimed in and suggested that none of us go outside. My other brother works in Shenyang and offered for us to come visit him for a while so we could huddle down and wait things out there. He said: “It is 20 below in Shenyang, and no viruses can survive here for long.” But my eldest brother reminded him: “It was actually hot climates that hindered the spread of SARS. Don’t you remember what happened in 2003?” A bit later my eldest brother sent another text confirming that the news of this new disease was true and that a group of specialists from the National Health Commission had already arrived in Wuhan.

My other brother was quite shaken by this news, since he lives very close to the Huanan Seafood Market, [1] Huanan Seafood Market is a live animal and seafood market located in the Jianghan District of Wuhan. During the initial outbreak of the novel coronavirus, some two-thirds of the first group of 41 patients were identified as having visited the market. Several specialists have pointed to evidence that the source of the virus may be tied to bats or pangolins (scaly anteaters) sold at the market. The market was closed on January 1, 2020, after the outbreak began. which is the epicenter of the outbreak. I didn’t see those texts until around noon and when I did, I immediately told them both to avoid hospitals for the time being. My brother isn’t in the best of health, and he often goes to Wuhan Central Hospital for his appointments, which is where there is a concentration of patients with flu-like symptoms. He quickly sent another text saying he just looked outside and Central Hospital looks quiet as always. There were no reporters outside, as he had originally suspected there would be. It wasn’t long after that that I started to receive videos from friends reporting on the situation at the Huanan Seafood Market and Wuhan Central Hospital. I immediately forwarded the news to my family chat group. I even reminded my brother to be sure to wear a face mask if he goes out. I even suggested that he just come to my apartment after the New Year to get away from that area for the time being. After all, I live in the Jiangxia District, which is a bit further away from Hankou. But he just said he would sit tight for the time being and see what happens. He didn’t think it would turn out to be anything to be too concerned about. He also didn’t think that the government would block information about what was happening; that would be a true blow to the people. My thoughts on the matter were pretty close to my brother’s. I figured that there was no way the government would censor news about something so important. How could they possibly stop the public from learning the truth about what was happening?

On the morning of January 1, my elder brother reposted a story from the Wuhan Evening News about the Huanan Seaford Market closure. My other brother said that things around his neighborhood were still about the same and everyone was going about their normal business as usual. As concerned citizens, we were all really tuned into the news that was happening that day. The protective measures they recommended that day were actually about the same as right now: Wear a face mask, stay home, and don’t go outside. I’m sure that most Wuhan residents who had lived through the terror of SARS are just like me and took this news quite seriously. However, it wasn’t long before the official government line came down. Based on the findings of specialists, they boiled everything down to a little eight-word maxim: “Not Contagious Between People; It’s Controllable and Preventable.” As soon as we heard that, everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief. After all, we never consume exotic wildlife and had no plans to go to the Huanan Seafood Market, so it appeared that there was nothing to be concerned about.

The reason that I am recounting all these details is that this morning I read an interview with Mr. Wang Guangfa. [2] Wang Guangfa (b. 1964) is a respiratory specialist at Peking University First Hospital. He is also a professor at Peking University and serves on numerous national health committees. Mr. Wang was part of the second team of specialists sent to Wuhan to investigate the outbreak. Shortly after he declared “it’s controllable and preventable,” he himself became infected with the coronavirus. Of course, that early statement might not have been directly coming from him; after all, it was a collective decision of the team. But I expected him to at least show some sense of remorse, self-reproach, or—dare I say?—reflection. As members of the team of specialists, they, at the very least, were responsible for giving the people of Wuhan information that severely underestimated the nature of this virus. Not matter how useless and bureaucratic those officials from Hubei and Wuhan might be, and no matter how many people attempt to cover up the truth in order to show how prosperous and powerful our country is, as a doctor, couldn’t Mr. Wang have been a bit more prudent when he made that initial statement? Instead, he made that proclamation with such resolution and decisiveness. By the time that Mr. Wang was infected on January 16, it was already quite clear that this virus “ Was Contagious Between People.” Yet for some reason we did not hear Mr. Wang’s timely revision of that earlier statement; nor did we hear him sound the alarm for people to start taking precautions. It was only three days later when Zhong Nanshan [3] Zhong Nanshan (b. 1936) is a Chinese epidemiologist who came under the national spotlight in 2003 for his role in heading China’s response to the SARS epidemic. In 2020 he was appointed as a leading advisor for managing the novel coronavirus outbreak. from the Chinese Academy of Engineering arrived in Wuhan that the truth was finally revealed.