Not everyone who dies in Wuhan due to the coronavirus appears on the official lists. The overflow is such that only a small number, the most serious, are finally admitted to hospitals. The rest must return to their homes with the order to undergo a strict quarantine, and wait. Those who die waiting are not included in the victim count, so the actual figure may be much higher than the National Health Commission announces each morning. The respected Chinese economic magazine Caijing This was denounced this weekend in an extensive article entitled Out of statistics. The report has disappeared from its website.
After, after knowing the true severity of the epidemic, the Chinese government promised transparency, the last two weeks have been, for the Chinese press, a small oasis of freedom. The information published about the situation in Wuhan and its province, Hubei, have been unusual. The opening extended to social networks, through which information has circulated that made it clear to what extent information was hidden in the province at the beginning of the crisis. A wave of videos that denounced the precarious situation of the hospitals in the focus of the infection, which has already infected more than 20,000 people and killed 426. The images of exhausted doctors, with their faces deformed by the uninterrupted hours of work With the mask on, they have gone around the world.
“In this climate, the ruling elites in China were suddenly thrown into a virtual coliseum in which their political skills were put to the test without mercy. And they failed dramatically, ”says social commentator Ma Tianjie in his blog Chublic Opinion.
But that brief period of relative freedom of information seems to have the hours counted. Citizen anger is not a phenomenon with which the Chinese Government is comfortable. Social stability has always been its main objective, even above economic goals. On Sunday he met for the second time in eight days – something extraordinary, there have been only a handful of these meetings in the last five years – the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Communist Party, the highest body of power in China, to analyze the response to the virus
Absent in public for eight days, a whole rarity, the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, urged the meeting to quickly contain the epidemic, an effort that – he stressed – will have an impact on public health, the country’s economy and peace Social. And among the recipes that the meeting has agreed to apply was an old recipe: “Strengthen the control of the media and the Internet.”
Imposing the virus is a vital issue for the regime, and those who do not do their part will be severely punished. “It is a key test of China’s system and its capacity for government,” said Xi, as collected by the official Chinese news agency, Xinhua.
The networks and the media uncovered irregularities in the distribution of donations of masks and other protective material this weekend. Complaints were raised that the Chinese Red Cross, a state agency not affiliated with the International Red Cross and that carries a bad reputation for corruption for years, was the institution that centralized the receipt of these supplies, even if they had been sent to A specific hospital. And that, instead of distributing them to the hospitals that needed them the most, he diverted them to the high offices of the area or doubtful medical centers, far from the front line against the disease.
Meanwhile, at the epicenter of the crisis, some doctors had to resort to protecting themselves with raincoats instead of special suits, or making their own masks. Calls for help multiplied in networks. Photos and videos showing doctors protected with simple surgical masks while the politicians they meet wear the coveted N95 – sold out throughout China – unleashed a wave of outrage on the internet. “It’s very frustrating,” says Niao, an engineering student in his last year of University, “these lessons were supposed to have been learned 17 years ago, with Sara’s epidemic. And we are in them again. ”
To such an extent that the authorities have had to give in and allow hospitals to receive donations sent directly to them.
But the change of tone in the media, following the meeting of the Standing Committee, begins to be noticed. In addition to the disappearance of the report of Caijing -available, however, in some aggregators-, and searches on the Internet for keywords (“red cross scandal”, for example) yield much less results or none. The Central Propaganda Department has sent more than 300 journalists to Hubei on Tuesday to “cover the front line,” state television CCTV reported.
Magazine Caixin, one of the most renowned private media in China, and which has been one of the most combative publications these days, published on Tuesday an editorial calling for transparency. “We ask for transparency throughout the entire process. Transparency should be reflected in all aspects of scientific research, medical treatment and deployment of personnel and material, with all levels and departments required to account. The dissemination of information should be truthful, accurate, complete and fast, without arbitrary omissions or silences on important issues that only recognize small problems, and without fleeing from reality. ”
But the Government, through the state media, already tries to take charge of the story. The construction in record time of two hospitals in Wuhan – the first one is already in operation and the second will be done at the end of this week – was paramount both from a sanitary and propaganda point of view: a way of demonstrating that when proposed, China can undertake prodigious projects that no other country is capable of.
Although the Government itself has admitted that medical supply problems continue for Wuhan and the rest of the quarantined cities, which accumulate about 50 million people since Wenzhou joined, the only one outside the focus of the infection. “What China urgently needs are medical masks, protective suits and safety glasses,” said the Foreign Ministry. After the break for the Lunar New Year, Chinese factories are still only 70% of their production capacity of 20 million masks a day. The epidemic is still far from being under control.
The doctor who launched the alert and is now a sick person
M.V.L
On December 30, ophthalmologist Li Wenliang, 34, wrote an alarming message in his group of friends at the Faculty. Seven patients had been admitted to his hospital, all related to a fish market and with symptoms very similar to SARS, the epidemic caused by another coronavirus that killed almost 800 people in 2003.
He had no intention of disseminating the information beyond his circle of friends. He simply asked his former classmates to warn their families and be careful. But the message went viral. Four days later, the police accused him of spreading rumors, a charge that can carry up to seven years in China. Seven other doctors received the same accusation.
At the police station, the doctor had to sign a statement in which he admitted his fault and promised not to reoffend, before he was allowed to return home.
A few days later he treated a patient, not knowing that his patient was infected with the virus. On the 10th he began to show symptoms, and on the 12th he was admitted to a hospital, where his condition continued to worsen. Last Saturday he gave an interview to Caixin magazine. They had just confirmed his diagnosis: he had the coronavirus
Last Saturday, in an interview with Caixin magazine, Li revealed that he himself had contracted the disease. He had begun to feel sick on January 10, after treating an infected patient, and was admitted to a hospital.
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