Friday, 29 March, 2024
HomeFrom the FrontlinesThe word from within the Wuhan lockdown

The word from within the Wuhan lockdown

Wang Xiuying, a self-proclaimed pessimist who’s trying to self-quarantine in Wuhan, describes in London Review of Books how misinformation and disinformation dominates lives in a China trying to deal with COVID-19.

He writes:
The new coronavirus – SARS-CoV-2 – has already infected more people than SARS. Besides the lungs and respiratory tract, it can also affect the oesophagus, heart, kidneys, ileum and bladder.

Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, where the virus emerged, was locked down on 23 January. Since then misinformation and disinformation have dominated Chinese lives.

Despite the evasions and failures of party bigwigs and moguls, a fierce battle is being fought by the people on the ground. Frontline medics are working under extreme physical and mental pressure. They wear adult nappies so they don’t have to waste time taking their biohazard suits on and off when they go to the loo. Volunteer drivers are delivering medical necessities while normal transport networks remain suspended.

Chinese people living overseas have been buying up stocks of face masks in Europe and beyond to send back to their families and friends. A picture of an unfazed young man in a hospital bed reading Francis Fukuyama’s The Origins of Political Order was suddenly all over the internet. It reminded me of the photograph of three Englishmen choosing books in what remained of Holland House library after the Blitz. The young man received a great many love notes.

Schools are suspended until further notice. With many workplaces also shut, notoriously absent Chinese fathers have been forced to stay home and entertain their children. Video clips of life under quarantine are trending on TikTok. Children were presumably glad to be off school – until, that is, an app called DingTalk was introduced. Students are meant to sign in and join their class for online lessons; teachers use the app to set homework. Somehow the little brats worked out that if enough users gave the app a one-star review it would get booted off the App Store. Tens of thousands of reviews flooded in, and DingTalk’s rating plummeted overnight from 4.9 to 1.4. The app has had to beg for mercy on social media: “I’m only five years old myself, please don’t kill me.”

Few are profiting from the situation. Tourism is paralysed – the cruise industry may never recover – and many factories, malls, shops and restaurants are closed. The economy has suffered a huge blow. It’s like a high-speed train slamming on the brakes. Many smaller companies will be bankrupt in two or three months. Yet against all logic, the stock market is going strong. Thank heaven for the “invisible hand”.

I have now been at home for a month. I order food on my smartphone and a courier delivers it to the gate of the compound. In China, internet shopping took off after the SARS outbreak in 2003 gave Jack Ma the inspiration for Taobao, an online shopping platform on which virtually everyone these days relies. Now that the number of confirmed cases of infection is dropping, people are preparing to return to work. A real-time map allows us to monitor whether there are any cases nearby.

Those of us in quarantine spend most of our time browsing social media, commenting on news stories, rumours and conspiracy theories. People on the left call for a united front against the virus. Liberals are determined to hold the government to account for everything that has gone wrong. In the West, panda-huggers say no other government would be doing better under the circumstances; dragon-slayers are cheerleading for the end of communist rule, as they do every time there is trouble in China. Whatever happens, those arguments won’t change.

[link url="https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n05/wang-xiuying/the-word-from-wuhan?utm_campaign=4205&utm_content=ukrw_nonsubs&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter"]Full article on the London Review of Books site[/link]

MedicalBrief — our free weekly e-newsletter

We'd appreciate as much information as possible, however only an email address is required.