Blessed Isolation, the Revenge

It might have been a rumour, but the outbreak of Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome outbreak (SARS) in 2003 badly affected that the soft drink brand, Sars, and the flavour associated with it. Sars was available in NZ, I recall, but only because I had tried it during my time in Taiwan. A disgusting soft drink, I also recall. It was called Sars because it was short for Sarsaparilla, an ingredient in it. And now we have Corona... Will be funny if that brand takes a hit in the coming period and they make a PR-name change.

Names often get twisted up in bad incidents. I remember one of my favourite bands, Massive Attack, changed its name to Massive during the Iraq war. Apparently, there were a few who prior to 2013 made the decision to name their businesses, groups and babies, the beautiful name of Isis, an Egyptian goddess.

The place-name Wuhan might be etched in people's memories for quite some time. It is hard to remember particular places that have their names indelibly stenched by a disease. Pre-Corona, Wuhan for me was a possible location for Chinese study. In China, besides Beijing, it was one of the earliest to really build up a name and infrastructure as a place for foreigners to go and learn Chinese. Deep in China's interior, it also got mildly tainted in my mind by the usual stories that come from the slightly more backward parts of the world. To the ear it even sounds backward: Woo-HAN. The Chinese characters for it are also interesting: Military Han (as in Han Chinese, the ethnicity of the majority). I visited Wuhan for the first time in 2013-2014 to see it with my own eyes. It was a city renovating itself like many Chinese cities. There was massive construction projects digging up pavements, streets and whatever. I believe they were putting in a subway. Though there were the mandatory ancient sites (it was a major holiday so they were wall-to-wall people) and natural sites (East Lake), it didn't really endear itself to me.

But like a lot of the places I've been to, with later reading it has come alive. I read the things that every Chinese person knows and would feel when they hear the name Wuhan. Its name is actually a portmanteau of two different names: WUchang and HANkou. These were actually two separate cities before they amalgamated into one megacity. Anyone with a rudimentary idea of Chinese history knows Wuchang, its the place where a critical uprising happened in 1911 that led to the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty. I remember reading Hankou in many stories and was always confused why I couldn't find it on a map. It is surprising how late you learn these things.

Wuhan is located in Hubei province. Chinese provincial names might sound rather confusing but they're pretty straight forward. Hu means lake. Bei means north. Hubei is north of some of the famous lakes (including Dongting Hu). Hunan is to the south of Hubei, and literally means "Lakes-South". Of course when they come together, they have completely different flavours. When you say Hunan, anyone who has spent time in China immediately has a humid, spicy taste arise in their mouths and knows the aroma of stinky tofu isn't far away. Such is the nature of language that the whole is always greater than the sum of a word's etymological parts. Day 9 of quarantine.

Virus news? In terms of spread, the virus is now on a downward slope. New cases numbered just 2000 yesterday, which though still a ridiculous number, is half the ridiculous numbers of 10 days previous. But with the good news comes the grim accounting. The virus is cashing in its chips, the last two days with the largest number of deaths with 100 or more in both of the last two days. Wuhan by itself now totals more than the worldwide deaths for SARS. Yesterday, however, had fewer deaths than the previous day so perhaps that has peaked, too. Hubei officials reported that there are now no people waiting for testing or care. If true, that would mean the death rate will plummet. Hubei has hoovered up a lot of the country's medical resources - the gamble I mentioned previously. If they can process things and bring it down to a manageable number, essentially the war against the virus is won with a heck of a lot of battles remaining.

With the tide of the war turning, there is more knowledge about it. It is widely reported that 14 days is not long enough to cover the whole range of possible incubation periods, that people are falling ill and able to spread it up to 24 days after infection. I hope this doesn't affect my quarantine... Also a treatment has been developed, although with the economics of this virus it doesn't "work" in my head. It's a disease that spreads widely, quickly and only really fatal in a small number of cases if there is appropriate care. It'd be just a bad flu. They did a human trial but since there are so many people recovering from it without this drug, it must be stretching it to say that the drug was responsible. But I haven't studied the reports closely.

The one other shadow for me personally is that there have been another two cases in our hometown. It had been stuck at a total of 10 for many days, with 5 recovered cases. These new two might be "imported" cases, that is, people from Guangzhou or Shenzhen. Or it could be cases who developed symptoms later than others. There is no reporting on them like there was earlier.

Commentary on the two pictures: In the last three days, the Hubei deaths (1068) is almost 300 higher, of the 1117 deaths in China. Guangdong, the second on the list, still has just 1 death and cases have only grown to 1219 (from 1131). The total cases has gone from 37294 to 44766, a rise of about 7000 (20%). Although there are a lot of places that there have been little or no fatalities despite high case count, some provinces outside of Hubei have had a disproportionate number: Henan, Heilongjiang, Anhui all break this trend with 8, 8 and 4 respectively; but in the context of this outbreak, they are not scarily high. Cases outside China, with the exception of the Diamond Princess, seem to be sporadic. Since it is unlikely this disease will be exterminated completely regardless what measures are done, it might be something that is latently there and may just be another disease to add to the pantheon. Once the borders are opened again, carriers may bring it to the rest of the world.