Blessed Isolation, the Revenge (i.e. pt 2)

Today was my first day working from home under quarantine. It is quite a feeling to be removed, but completely healthy. I remember last year with the flu, or the year before that post-surgery, trying to contribute to solving some work problems remotely, tiring and lying on the couch, feeling like I've done my bit. Now I feel that eight hours of independent work is a very long time. Fortunately we have a few apps now to facilitate good communication and collaboration.

Two days after my last blog and two days after the Wuhan 14 day period quarantine period, which is now going to be extended, it's a fine day to see how the Chinese official numbers have moved. Firstly, the deaths have risen by over 50% to 637 and the total cases have more than doubled, from 13522 to 31211. In other words, there are plenty of people getting sick from other people despite the self-quarantined and forcibly quarantined nature of people's lives in China.

The growth number is still Hubei province and, in particular, Wuhan. Of the 637 deaths, 478 have come from that one city, which also accounts for a third of the Chinese cases. Hubei as a province accounts for 618, accounting alone for two-thirds of Chinese cases. It fits into the theory that it's the overwhelming number of sick people that causes this disease to be deadly.

Meanwhile, Guangdong broke a thousand cases and to celebrate had its first fatality in Zhaoqing. Zhaoqing is a city close to my heart - I've been there twice, the second city I visited in Mainland China and I even took my sister there when she visited. It's a small city with a famous set of pillar-like limestone peaks in a lake called the Seven Star Crags. A friend of mine who I have had an enduring friendship with lives there and said there was a story behind the death: A friend of his who lived in Wuhan came to visit him in Zhaoqing where they sang Cantonese opera together. He fell ill and went to the hospital where they wrote off his sickness as a cold without testing him for coronavirus. He went home, became gravely sick and by the time he returned to the hospital, it was already too late.

The whole world has stopped moving in China. People who were to go back to work on 10 February will be told to stay home longer. Schools are being delayed even later. The Guangzhou Metro and buses require people to wear medical masks or else they'll be fined and ejected. But with masks in short supply, it means some people have no way but to stay home and ask for someone to buy them some. Wuhan, as you can imagine, is a deathly quiet city.

But every disaster movie needs a hero. His name was Li Wenliang and was the whistleblower who first broke ranks to share his fears, that other people posted and reposted, until everyone knew something big was going down in Wuhan. The local authorities did what authoritarian cultures do and interrogated him and arrested those who "spread rumours". He was forced to sign a letter of admonition in order to move on from it and go back to work. His work, of course, was now a publicly known endeavour to save people from the increasingly prevalent disease, and he was infected, along with many of his colleagues. He died in the early hours of this morning. Sometimes, and especially in Chinese movies, the hero has to die.

There has been a kind of mass public fury after his death, directed at the government and those people in power. In China there is a certain power of the people when everyone borrows strength from the outrage of others to publicly state their disgust and criticise the failings of the system that has failed them. It's not unlike a social media riot. On WeChat, Li Wenliang's death was the dominant theme of the day: in memory, in sympathy and worship of him, but mostly anger at his death. There were articles about him being a hero. And others reflectively saying that it is a shame that such a simple thing as telling the truth of a life-threatening disease could be a heroic act.

In the village where just five days ago I lived, they are now "sealed". It's a loose seal: no cars allowed, and no-one who doesn't live in the village can pass in and out, but the locals can. When my wife's brother-in-law drops something off, my parents-in-law have to walk about 10 minutes to the side of the highway to pick it up. It's happening to a lot of the villages - it happened last week in the town where our Aussie friend was doing the same CNY visit to the wife's hometown as I was. We also got a subtle sign of stress when we were asked how much masks cost in New Zealand. If they're asking for masks here, they are obviously very short of them, or very far-sighted.