People's Republic of Coronavirus

Why a Chinese virology lab is unable to quell the Chinese coronavirus theories around it

By Jane Li

A Chinese state-owned virology lab in Wuhan, the epicenter of China’s coronavirus epidemic, is finding it extremely hard to quell theories proliferating around the institution—a sign of the sharply decreased level of public trust in the government since the outbreak of the Chinese virus.

At the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a subsidiary of the state-owned research institute the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), scientists carry out virus research at a lab with the highest level of biological containment available on the mainland. 

Its construction was approved in 2003, during China’s last deadly coronavirus outbreak, SARS, and completed five years ago, according to Nature journal. 

The lab came under spotlight in late January, after Chinese scientists said the Chinese virus could have a connection to bats via an intermediary, such as some form of game sold at a seafood market in Wuhan. 

As the lab has researchers who study bat-related viruses, it became a target of online suspicion that coalesced into theories that the Chinese virus could have escaped from the lab, or be a bio-weapon gone wrong.
An unvetted research paper published on Jan. 31 by a group of Indian scientists, in which they claimed similarities between the Chinese virus and the HIV virus, appearing to hint at human engineering, also stirred further controversy surrounding the institute. 

Some journals have appended notes to older stories about the Wuhan lab calling the theories about the lab “unverified.”

However, the rumors have kept spreading widely online, to the extent that Shi Zhengli, a lead researcher on bat-related viruses in the lab, posted on her WeChat account on Feb. 2 that the virus was “a punishment from the nature for humans’ uncivilized life habits,” and said she “guaranteed with her life” it was totally unrelated to the lab. 

But just as Shi’s assurance seemed to have calmed some down, a notice from the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology last Saturday (Feb. 15) started a fresh wave of suspicion towards the lab.
The ministry said in the notice that China should enhance its management of viruses and bioagents at all labs and research institutes, without any explanation as to why this is being proposed right now, leaving some to speculate whether this could be a subtle official acknowledgement of a role played by the lab. 

The following day, US senator Tom Cotton appeared on Fox News to say that the Chinese virus was not far from the wildlife market where many people were infected in December.
There are a number of reasons why these theories keep finding many takers—not just among China hawks but among so many in China. 

One is, there’s still so much that isn’t known about the Chinese virus and its origins.“At this stage, no expert can be absolutely certain about the cause of the outbreak. This uncertainty makes it easier for some people to think all explanations have equal merit,” explained assistant professor Masato Kajimoto, who researches information ecosystems in Asia at the University of Hong Kong’s journalism school.

After Shi’s statement, the lab too has stepped out more than once to try quell the theories. 

The institute first rejected speculation that the first patient to be infected with the Chinese virus was a graduate student who studied at the lab, saying on Sunday (Feb. 16) the student is in "good health". 

Yesterday (Feb. 19), it issued a worded statement (link in Chinese), saying the rumors about it have “hurt the feelings of its frontline researchers hugely” and “severely interfered” with its task to study viruses. 

“We have nothing to hide,” the letter read.
Nonetheless, internet users don’t appear to be convinced by the assurances from the lab. 

“What is the truth? The collapse of trustworthiness of media and government is not only sad for the two parties, but also for us citizens,” said a user on Weibo commenting on the rumors. 

“Some might think the so-called rumors are just a prophecy ahead of our times,” said another.
Some “rumors” from the early days of the epidemic after all turned out not to be far from reality. 

Li Wenliang, a doctor, had told others about a cluster of cases of viral pneumonia before the outbreak had been made public, but was summoned by Wuhan police for “spreading rumors.” 

He later became infected himself, and his death turned him into a vivid symbol of the costs of the government’s opacity—prompting an outpouring of anger and grief, and rare public demands for freedom of speech and transparency from the government.
“With the government’s bungled handling of the epidemic in Wuhan, and the pain and uncertainty the epidemic and the efforts to cope with it have produced, public trust has clearly decreased,” said Professor Dali Yang, a political scientist at University of Chicago via email. 

“The death of Dr. Li was a milestone in shared grief in China.”
What now can be done to contain theories of a rogue lab? 

Probably not a whole lot, says Kajimoto.
“When the authorities and experts have the history of not being transparent, whatever they say could sound as if they are trying to hide something,” said the assistant professor. 

“In this case, publicly denying the link between the lab and Chinese coronavirus could even be construed as ‘evidence’ by people who believe in this conspiracy because denial is the ‘sign’ that the truth is hidden.”

The Chinese Coronavirus Story Is Too Big for China to Spin

Maybe what goes up online must come down, but what comes down will go up again.
By Kiki Zhao

A vigil in Hong Kong on Feb. 7, the day that Li Wenliang, a doctor who was reprimanded for warning about the coronavirus, died after being infected with it.

Reactions to Li Wenliang’s death last Friday filled the timelines of my social media accounts almost immediately. 

Post after post on my WeChat. 

Grief, frustration, anger.
A week later, the groundswell of emotions seems unabated.
Dr. Li, a 34-year-old ophthalmologist in Wuhan, the Chinese city at the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, was one of the first doctors to try to warn about the disease, and then to die from it.
The story of how the authorities muzzled Dr. Li became an instant parable for their trampling on the Chinese public’s right to know. 

The authorities’ effort to now muzzle the public’s outrage is a parable of government unaccountability.On Dec. 30, Dr. Li told former classmates from medical school in a WeChat group that several patients displaying SARS-like symptoms were being quarantined. 

He was quickly summoned for questioning by the police.
On Jan. 3, Dr. Li was made to sign a statement declaring that his warning had been incorrect and was “illegal,” and that it had “disturbed social order.” 

Under a typed admonishment that said, “If you continue this illegal activity, you will be dealt with by the law! Do you understand?” he wrote by hand, “I understand.” 

Would he now cooperate with the police? 

“I can.”
In an interview later with Caixin, one of China’s leading investigative news outlets, Dr. Li said, “There shouldn’t be only one voice in a healthy society.” 

After news broke last week that he had died, a picture with his quote ignited the Chinese internet.
Fang Fang, a fiction writer based in Wuhan, has been documenting daily life in the city. 

“Dear internet censors, you should let Wuhan people speak,” she wrote recently. 

“We’ve been locked down here for more than ten days; we’ve seen too many extreme tragedies. If you don’t allow us to express our anguish or complaints or reflections, do you really want us to go mad?”
Allowed or not, the people are expressing their anguish, complaints and reflections.
A post on WeChat with photos of young people wearing surgical masks inscribed with “I cannot” and “I do not understand” quickly spread online. 

So did a letter signed by 10 professors in Wuhan demanding an apology from the officials who silenced Dr. Li and other whistle-blower doctors. 

Both posts were promptly taken down.
On Feb. 11, a group of middle-school teachers in Chengdu, about 700 miles west of Wuhan, posted online an open letter to their students about the outbreak. 

“In ‘The Plague,’ Albert Camus wrote that the only way to fight with the plague is honesty,” the text went. 

“We cannot turn a funeral into a wedding. We cannot use songs of praise to replace questioning.”
The article, which was hugely popular online, was taken down just hours after it was posted.

A news website run by the city authorities of Dongying, in the eastern province of Shandong, published an article late last month praising the online censor Guo Qiqi: She sleeps just four hours a day, and monitors the internet for 20. 

The article included photos of a policewoman whose job was to monitor Twitter and Facebook, which are blocked inside China.
The piece swept Weibo like a storm — but not as the authorities had intended. 

“Trying hard to build a Brave New World,” said one comment.
The article and the comments have since been deleted.
The censors can’t keep up, though: Maybe what goes up online must come down, but what comes down will go up again.
Which might explain why, in addition to trying to prevent people from openly discussing Dr. Li’s death, the information blackout in the early stages of the outbreak and the government’s handling of the crisis overall, the authorities are also trying to peddle an alternative narrative — and one that co-opts Dr. Li’s story.
As ever, the central government in Beijing is scrambling to project the image that it has everything under control. 

Instead of admitting to any large-scale inefficiencies or errors, it has sent a team to Wuhan to investigate Dr. Li’s death. 

Two senior provincial party officials were sacked on Thursday.
The government is also trying to cast Dr. Li’s death as the nation’s sacrifice — meaning, the Chinese Communist Party’s own.
The veteran epidemiologist Zhong Nanshan, who is credited with identifying the coronavirus that causes SARS and is widely revered, wept as he spoke about Dr. Li in an interview with Reuters this week. 

“The majority of people think he’s a hero of China,” Dr. Zhong said, in English, tears welling. 

“I’m so proud of him. He told people the truth at the end of December.” 

Many people share that view.
Only, they don’t want the Chinese Communist Party telling them who is a hero or what heroism is.
Xinhua, the party’s official news agency, has called for the population to “turn grief into strength” — and follow Dr. Li’s example to “complete his unfinished undertaking.”
That’s a dangerous invitation. 

The people can see through the government’s ploy, and they are fuming.
On Sunday, I read an article online about Yan Cheng, a teenager with severe cerebral palsy who died on Jan. 29, a week after his father was taken into quarantine. 

The teenager was unable to look after himself and yet he was left on his own. 

I pored over a photo of him smiling, taken not long before he died. 

I thought of how cold and hungry and lonely he must have felt that last night, and I wailed.
The next day I got a notice from Weibo: The platform was banning me from publishing or reposting anything for 30 days. 

But new posts and articles have kept appearing on my timeline, and I keep on upvoting them.

What China’s empty Chinese coronavirus hospitals say about its secretive system

Even after declaring a crisis, Beijing was focused more on propaganda than on managing the Chinese virus outbreak 
Emma Graham-Harrison

Flowers and a photo of the whistleblower doctor Li Wenliang at a hospital in Wuhan. 

China’s two new hospitals built in as many weeks were the official face of its fight against the Chinese coronavirus in Wuhan. 

As the city was locked down, authorities promised that thousands of doctors would be on hand to treat 2,600 patients on the facilities’ wards.
Timelapse videos tracked the fast construction of the hospitals, and state media celebrated their opening in early February. 

The only thing missing a week later? Patients.

Four days after its opening, the larger Leishenshan hospital had only 90 patients, on wards designed for 1,600, but was reporting no spare beds, Wuhan city health data, first reported by the Chinese magazine Caixin, showed. 

The other facility, Huoshenshan, had not yet filled its 1,000 beds a week after opening.
Meanwhile, the city was setting up emergency hospitals in exhibition halls and a sports stadium, and medics were still turning ill people away. 

China has the world’s largest army but it has not deployed any field hospitals to Wuhan.
The gulf between the vision of vast new hospitals created and thrown into action within days and the more complicated reality on the ground is a reminder of one of the main challenges for Beijing as it struggles to contain the Chinese coronavirus: its own secretive, authoritarian system of government and its vast censorship and propaganda apparatus.
Communist party apparatus well honed to crush dissent also muffles legitimate warnings. 

A propaganda system designed to support the party and state cannot be relied on for accurate information. 

That is a problem not just for families left bereft by the Chinese coronavirus and businesses destroyed by the sudden shutdown, but for a world trying to assess Beijing’s success in controlling and containing the disease.
“China’s centralised system and lack of freedom of press definitely delay a necessary aggressive early response when it was still possible to contain epidemics at the local level,” said Ho-fung Hung, a professor in political economy at Johns Hopkins University in the US.
Beijing did go public about the Chinese virus faster than during the 2002-3 Sars crisis.

But it has become increasingly clear that the local government was engaged in a concerted attempt to cover up the crisis during the early weeks of the outbreak, which allowed it to fester at a time when it would have been much easier to contain.

Two officials have been fired, Wuhan’s mayor admitted failings in a live interview on national television, and the central government has sent a team to investigate the treatment of the whistleblowing doctor Li Wenliang.
Security forces punished Li, 34, for trying to warn colleagues about the risks of a dangerous new disease at the end of December. 

Just over a month later he became one of the youngest victims of the Chinese coronavirus. 

His death made him a household name and triggered a rare discussion in China about freedom of speech.
In a biting essay that laid the blame for the crisis with Xi Jinping, a dissident intellectual claimed China’s centralisation and culture of silence had played a key role in the spread of the disease.
“It began with the imposition of stern bans on the reporting of factual information that served to embolden deception at every level of government,” Xu Zhangrun wrote in his essay Viral Alarm, When Fury Overcomes Fear, according to a translation by Geremie Barmé on the website ChinaFile.
“It only struck its true stride when bureaucrats throughout the system shrugged off responsibility for the unfolding situation while continuing to seek the approbation of their superiors,” Xu continued. 

“They all blithely stood by as the crucial window of opportunity to deal with the outbreak of the infection snapped shut in their faces.”

A Chinese coronavirus patient is discharged from a field module hospital after recovery in Wuhan. 

Without a free press, elections or much space for civil society, there are few ways for citizens to hold their rulers accountable. 

Instead, local officials answer only to a party hierarchy that puts a premium on stability and economic growth.
Prof Steve Tsang, director of the Soas China Institute, said: “China is not a poor country. But the incentives are not for a health director (for example) to respond to public health crises in Wuhan first and foremost. The incentive is to do what the party wants … and not embarrass the party.”

The cost of trying to curb the Chinese coronavirus when it first emerged – high-profile moves to close the market where it originated, cull and destroy livestock, quarantine and compensate victims, cancel mass festivities for the new year – would have seemed a risky gamble for little reward.
“That might have ended it, or not,” Tsang said. 

“[But] since you stopped the virus from developing, you have nothing to show. You quashed a potential threat that may not have existed.”
Even when the government reversed course and announced a crisis, it appeared to be focused more on propaganda than on managing the disease, he said. 

It could have deployed medics and a field hospital to Wuhan almost overnight rather than building new hospitals.
It is unclear why they chose not to do so. 

But a country setting up field hospitals looks like one in crisis. 

A government expanding hospitals looks like one in control. 

“Ten days is a very long time when you are looking at a public health crisis like that,” Tsang said. 

“But a new hospital built from the ground up, that’s a world record.”

Diggers begin constructing a new 1,000-bed hospital in Wuhan.

Questions about China’s transparency still hang over efforts to manage the disease. 

Scientists are concerned about its spread in areas that have become new hubs of the disease. 

Zhejiang and Guangdong province – both industrial centres – have reported more than 1,000 cases, as has inland Henan province.
That is higher than the number of cases reported in Hubei province when the lockdown of Wuhan was announced in January. 

But with the economy badly strained by the long shutdown, Chinese authorities are urging people to start heading back to work in “orderly” fashion in these areas.
There have also been doubts about the accuracy of the tally of cases, after many families reported struggling to get testing for sick relatives.The test numbers may be accurate, and disease control measures in place elsewhere may be sufficient to control a virus that scientists already understand much better than they did a few weeks ago. 

But if China cannot address the systemic failings that allowed the outbreak to fester originally, it may struggle to control this epidemic, avert the next one and secure the global trust and cooperation needed to fight disease.
“There is no one quick fix to the Chinese system to make it respond better next time,” said Hung. “But if there is one single factor that could increase the government’s responsiveness to this kind of crisis, [it would be] a free press.”

People's Republic of Coronavirus

Xi's communist malfeasance and misrule fueled China's coronavirus disaster

By Ben Sasse

The coronavirus outbreak sweeping across China, and now threatening dozens of other countries, including the United States, is not just a natural disaster. 

It is the deadly consequence of the Chinese Communist Party’s malfeasance and misrule. 

And, as has been the case for so much of the CCP’s seven-decade hegemony, the cruel irony is that the people of China are its main victims.

More than 60,000 Chinese people have been diagnosed with Chinese coronavirus since the outbreak began in the city of Wuhan in December — many times the number who contracted SARS in 2002-03 worldwide.
More than 1,370 people have died, and nearly 60 million people are in lockdown. 

In Wuhan and surrounding areas, undersupplied doctors are wearing rain jackets for want of biohazard gear, citizens fear imminent food shortages and local crematoria are working around the clock to dispose of bodies.
It did not have to be this way. 

As The New York Times reported, the first case of coronavirus appeared in early December. 

But Chinese officials did not act for more than a month. 

When a Wuhan doctor, Li Wenliang, tried to warn his medical school classmates that an unfamiliar illness was ravaging Wuhan Central Hospital, he and his classmates were silenced by local authorities, who threatened to punish anyone “spreading rumors" and "disrupting social order.”
Chinese tyrant Xi Jinping in Beijing on Feb. 10, 2020.

By the time authorities finally acknowledged what was happening, a full blown epidemic was underway. 

"At critical turning points,” wrote The Times, “Chinese authorities put secrecy and order ahead of openly confronting the growing crisis.”
In an additional tragic turn: Dr. Li contracted coronavirus while treating patients. 

The ophthalmologist died last Friday at the age of 34.
Dr. Li’s courage and commitment to human life made him a hero to the Chinese people and an enemy of the Chinese Communist Party.

'Clean,' 'adaptive,' and 'responsive' are only CCP's lies
Secrecy, denial, and coercion are not bugs in Xi Jinping’s regime. 

They are core features. 

The CCP, concerned first and foremost in its own survival, has had to renegotiate a fragile social contract in recent years, staking its continued right to rule on ensuring that the lives of Chinese citizens are safe, healthy and prosperous.
Xi, the party overlords in Beijing and their apparatchiks in China’s provincial and municipal governments have promised that the Chinese government can be “clean,” or free of corruption. 

They promised to be “adaptive” to crises and changing societywide conditions. 

They promised to be “responsive” to the demands of the citizenry, especially China’s rapidly expanding professional class — its millions of attorneys, journalists, scientists, doctors and more, who are increasingly part of a global exchange, and whose demands for efficient social services (good schools, reliable clinics, etc.) resemble the demands of the Western upper-middle class.
What has happened instead? 

Literal plagues have laid waste to the population. 

Toxic environmental conditions prevail across the country, especially in China’s major cities, where air pollution is so bad that it obscures sunlight.
The government’s efforts to silence increasingly vocal political dissidents and religious minorities have exposed a cross-country network of internment camps, a government-sponsored slave labor industry and a horrifying black market in organ harvesting that serves wealthy party members and their family and friends.
And the government’s attacks on Hong Kong’s semiautonomous status have spurred prolonged, intense protests that have startled party leadership.

Chinese citizens deserve real transparency, accountability
These episodes, and others that have flown under the radar of international news media, have brought sharply into question whether the Chinese system, as it is constituted, can really be “clean,” “adaptive” and “responsive.” 

And rightly so.
When “east, west, south, north and center, the party leads everything,” as the CCP declared in 2017, it cannot simply slough off responsibility for fatal mistakes and grave mismanagement. 

But it also can’t cop to its failures. 

If the tyrants in Beijing acknowledge their mistakes, they chip away at their own right to rule. 

Inevitably, their response is to sweep problems under the rug and demand even greater control over the lives of 1.4 billion Chinese citizens — evermore invasive surveillance, evermore complete submission to CCP ideological propaganda. 

This is a risky game.
There is a better way, of course. 

Real transparency and democratic accountability help to prevent these sorts of nightmares. 

Truly clean, adaptive and responsive government is most likely where information can flow freely, where governments are honest and where the people can hold their leaders responsible — and replace them with genuine alternatives. 

A system that prioritizes and protects the inviolable dignity of its citizens, rather than the perpetuation of its ruling cabal, is the only one where real civic health is possible. Communism is the perfect incubator for the Chinese coronavirus. 

China’s predatory system preys on its own people. 

Trials become tragedies, crises become catastrophes, and the bosses in Beijing exploit their own failures as cover for new and worse abuses.
America and her allies should be clear about what is happening. 

China’s people are sick because the Chinese system is.

The Chinese coronavirus outbreak has exposed the deep flaws of Xi Jinping’s autocracy

China’s political system was meant to be all-powerful, capable of dealing with any crisis. The death of one doctor has shaken that claim
By Richard McGregor

Soon after Li Wenliang succumbed to the Chinese coronavirus in Wuhan early on Friday morning, a drawing of the Chinese doctor appeared on the internet, sleeping and being hoisted gently into heaven by an angel.
From late in the evening until dawn yesterday, Chinese citizens stayed up, posting emotional tributes and venting their fury at the government over the treatment of the 34-year-old ophthalmologist, who had tried to warn the authorities about the virus in late December, only to be told by the police to shut up.
The authorities, seemingly in a panic at the outpouring of grief and anger, announced that Li was still being treated before reposting confirmation of his death hours later.

“You think we’ve all gone to sleep?” posted one netizen? 

“No. We haven’t.”
In an interview with Chinese magazine Caixin before his death, Li delivered his own verdict on the government’s handling of the issue: “I think there should be more than one voice in a healthy society.”
It is wise to be cautious about the political impact of a single event or, in this case, one person’s death, especially in China, which is ruled by an opaque Communist party. 

After all, can a virus that has so far claimed more than 900 lives, fewer than in a normal flu season in many countries, really hold the future of China in its thrall?

The Chinese ophthalmologist Li Wenliang died from the Chinese coronavirus on 7 February. His early warnings about the outbreak were suppressed by the police. 

However, the fallout from the spread of the deadly coronavirus is already grim, most immediately in the form of a reeling Chinese economy that is having to temporarily sever supply lines to factories and retail outlets around the world. 

China has been responsible for about one-third of global growth in recent years, a greater share than the US, and any slowdown in its economy will be felt across the world.
But the greatest focus is on what Li alluded to when he complained about the country being ruled by “one voice”, which Chinese people would immediately recognise as a barb directed at Xi Jinping. 

Xi has swept all enemies, real and imagined, aside since taking over as Communist party chief in late 2012 and made many more along the way.
Powerful families and moneyed interests toppled by his relentless anti-corruption campaign will never forgive him and are lying in wait for revenge. 

Equally, many of the technocratic elite have been alienated by his illiberal economic policies and his assertiveness overseas, which they blame for triggering a concerted pushback in Washington.
Much of their anger was captured in a single moment that embodied their fears that Xi is taking the country backwards – his decision in early 2018 to do away with term limits and make himself leader in perpetuity.
Difficult as it is to measure public opinion in China, it is doubtless true that for many Chinese, the anti-corruption campaign – Xi’s key initiative – has been highly popular. 

With the economy growing steadily before the virus hit, most Chinese are also still seeing their living standards rise.
But Li’s death and the mismanagement of the crisis have done more than just crystallise the elite’s dislike of Xi. 

Over time, they could direct the anger of the wider populace against him as well.
“In previous crises, like the Wenchuan earthquake [in Sichuan in 2008], the vast majority of Chinese citizens were spectators commenting on an event that angered them but was far away,” said Bill Bishop, of Sinocism, a Washington-based China newsletter. 

“In this epidemic, no one is just a spectator – everyone is directly impacted.”
The spread of the virus, most likely starting from live animals in the Wuhan wet market late last year, has showcased both the party state’s formidable strengths and corrosive weaknesses.
The initial coverage of the virus focused on the authorities’ abrupt order, issued at 2am on January 23, to quarantine Wuhan, a city of 11 million in central Hubei province.
“To my knowledge, trying to contain a city of 11 million is new to science,” said Gauden Galea, a World Health Organization official, who seemed both in awe at the order and wryly unsure whether it would work.
Once areas surrounding Wuhan were pulled inside the sealed-off zone days later, a total of 35 million people had been effectively put into lockdown with the stroke of an administrative pen.
The power of the Chinese state and its ability to mobilise resources overnight has long been admired by foreigners, be it in building a hospital in barely a week, as in Wuhan, or enforcing a cordon sanitaire containing tens of millions of people. 

But it is the chronic weaknesses in the political system that exacerbated the spread of the virus in the first place.The authoritarian strictures of the Chinese party state place a premium on the control of information in the name of maintaining stability. 

In such a system, lower-level officials have no incentive to report bad news up the line. 

Under Xi, such restrictions have grown tighter.
In Wuhan, Li and seven of his fellow doctors had been talking among themselves in an internet chat group about a new cluster of viral infections. 

They stopped after being warned by police. 

By the time the authorities reacted and quarantined the city, it was too late.
Li was neither a dissident nor a pro-democracy activist seeking to overthrow the Communist party. 

But he was risking jail to even discuss the virus. 

For in Xi’s China, the professional classes – doctors, lawyers, journalists and the like – all must subsume their skills and ethics to the political directives of the moment.
During the crisis, Xi has maintained an unusually low profile, perhaps because he doesn’t want to step in publicly until it is clear the health authorities have gained control of the situation and new infections start to fall.
For a man whose propaganda apparatus has recently begun to promote him as the “people’s leader”, it has been a humbling moment.

Criminal Regime

As New Coronavirus Spread, China’s Old Bad Habits Delayed Fight

At critical turning points, China's communist regime put secrecy and order ahead of openly confronting the growing crisis and risking public alarm or political embarrassment.

By Chris Buckley and Steven Lee Myers

Officials at the scene on Thursday where a man collapsed and died on a street near a hospital in Wuhan. 

WUHAN, China — A mysterious illness had stricken seven patients at a hospital, and a doctor tried to warn his medical school classmates. 

“Quarantined in the emergency department,” the doctor, Li Wenliang, wrote in an online chat group on Dec. 30, referring to patients.
“So frightening,” one recipient replied, before asking about the epidemic that began in China in 2002 and ultimately killed nearly 800 people. 

“Is SARS coming again?”
In the middle of the night, officials from the health authority in the central city of Wuhan summoned Dr. Li, demanding to know why he had shared the information. 

Three days later, the police compelled him to sign a statement that his warning constituted “illegal behavior.”
The illness was not SARS, but something similar: a coronavirus that is now on a relentless march outward from Wuhan, throughout the country and across the globe, killing at least 362 people in China and infecting more than 17,380 worldwide.

The government’s initial handling of the epidemic allowed the virus to gain a tenacious hold. 

At critical moments, officials chose to put secrecy and order ahead of openly confronting the growing crisis to avoid public alarm and political embarrassment.
A reconstruction of the crucial seven weeks between the appearance of the first symptoms in early December and the government’s decision to lock down the city, based on two dozen interviews with Wuhan residents, doctors and officials, on government statements and on Chinese media reports, points to decisions that delayed a concerted public health offensive.
In those weeks, the authorities silenced doctors and others for raising red flags. 

They played down the dangers to the public, leaving the city’s 11 million residents unaware they should protect themselves. 

They closed a food market where the virus was believed to have started, but didn’t curb the wildlife trade.
The Wuhan Red Cross Hospital on Jan. 25 — five days after China acknowledged a new virus could pass from human to human, but weeks after it had started to spread.

Their reluctance to go public, in part, played to political motivations as local officials prepared for their annual congresses in January. 

Even as cases climbed, officials declared repeatedly that there had likely been no more infections.
By not moving aggressively to warn the public and medical professionals, public health experts say, the Chinese government lost one of its best chances to keep the disease from becoming an epidemic.
“This was an issue of inaction,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations who studies China. 

“There was no action in Wuhan from the local health department to alert people to the threat.”
first case, the details of which are limited and the specific date unknown, was in early December. 

By the time the authorities galvanized into action on Jan. 20, the disease had grown into a formidable threat.
Dr. Li Wenliang

It is now a global health emergency. 

It has triggered travel restrictions around the world, shaken financial markets and created the greatest challenge yet for Chinese dictator Xi Jinping. 

The crisis upends Xi’s agenda for months or longer, even undermining his vision of a political system that offers security and growth in return for submission to iron-fisted authoritarianism.On the last day of 2019, after Dr. Li’s message was shared outside the group, the authorities focused on controlling the narrative. 

The police announced that they were investigating eight people for spreading rumors about the outbreak.
That same day, Wuhan’s health commission, its hand forced by those “rumors,” announced that 27 people were suffering from pneumonia of an "unknown" cause.

Its statement said there was no need to be alarmed.“The disease is preventable and controllable,” the statement said.
Dr. Li, an ophthalmologist, went back to work after being reprimanded. 

On Jan. 10, he treated a woman for glaucoma. 

He did not know she had already been infected with the coronavirus, probably by her daughter. 

They both became sick. 

So would he.

Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan on Jan. 11. It was shut on Jan. 1 — for renovation, state media said.

Hazmat Suits and Disinfectants
Hu Xiaohu, who sold processed pork in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, sensed by late December that something was amiss. 

Workers were coming down with nagging fevers. 

No one knew why but, Mr. Hu said, several were in hospital quarantine.
The market occupies much of a block in a newer part of the city, sitting incongruously near apartment buildings and shops catering to the growing middle class. 

It is a warren of stalls selling meats, poultry and fish, as well as more exotic fare, including live reptiles and wild game that Chinese prize as delicacies. 

According to a report by the city’s center for disease control, sanitation was dismal, with poor ventilation and garbage piled on wet floors.
In hospitals, doctors and nurses were puzzled to see a cluster of patients with symptoms of a viral pneumonia that did not respond to the usual treatments. 

They soon noticed that many patients had one thing in common: They worked in Huanan market.On Jan. 1, police officers showed up at the market, along with public health officials, and shut it down. 

Local officials issued a notice that the market was undergoing an environmental and hygienic cleanup related to the pneumonia outbreak. 

That morning, workers in hazmat suits moved in, washing out stalls and spraying disinfectants.
It was, for the public, the first visible government response to contain the disease. 

The day before, on Dec. 31, national authorities had alerted the World Health Organization’s office in Beijing of an outbreak.

Revolutionary Optimism
City officials struck optimistic notes in their announcements. 

They suggested they had stopped the virus at its source. 

The cluster of illnesses was limited. 

There was no evidence the virus spread between humans.
“Projecting optimism and confidence, if you don’t have the data, is a very dangerous strategy,” said Alexandra Phelan, a faculty research instructor in the department of microbiology and immunology at Georgetown University.
“It undermines the legitimacy of the government in messaging,” she added. 

“And public health is dependent on public trust.”
Nine days after the market closed, a man who shopped there regularly became the first fatality of the disease, according to a report by the Wuhan Health Commission, the agency that oversees public health and sanitation.
The 61-year-old, identified by his last name, Zeng, already had chronic liver disease and a tumor in his abdomen, and had checked into Wuhan Puren Hospital with a raging fever and difficulty breathing.
The authorities disclosed the man’s death two days after it happened.
They did not mention a crucial detail in understanding the course of the epidemic. 
Mr. Zeng’s wife had developed symptoms five days after he did.
She had never visited the market.

The intensive care unit at Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University in Wuhan, China, on Jan. 24.

The Race to Identify a Killer
About 20 miles from the market, scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were studying samples from the patients checking into the city’s hospitals.
One of the scientists, Zheng-Li Shi, was part of the team that tracked down the origins of the SARS virus, which emerged in the southern province of Guangdong in 2002.
As the public remained largely in the dark about the virus, she and her colleagues quickly pieced together that the new outbreak was related to SARS.
The genetic composition suggested a common initial host: bats. 
The SARS epidemic began when a coronavirus jumped from bats to Asian palm civets, a catlike creature that is legally raised and consumed. 
It was likely that this new coronavirus had followed a similar path — possibly somewhere in or on the way to the Huanan market or another market like it.
Around the same time, Dr. Li and other medical professionals in Wuhan started trying to provide warnings to colleagues and others when the government did not. 
Lu Xiaohong, the head of gastroenterology at City Hospital No. 5, told China Youth Daily that she had heard by Dec. 25 that the disease was spreading among medical workers — a full three weeks before the authorities would acknowledge the fact. 
She did not go public with her concerns, but privately warned a school near another market.
By the first week of January, the emergency ward in Hospital No. 5 was filling; the cases included members of the same family, making it clear that the disease was spreading through human contact, which the government had said was not likely.
No one realized, the doctor said, that it was as serious as it would become until it was too late to stop it.
“I realized that we had underestimated the enemy,” she said.
At the Institute of Virology, Dr. Shi and her colleagues isolated the genetic sequence and the viral strain during the first week of January.
They used samples from seven of the first patients, six of them vendors at the market.
On Jan. 7, the institute’s scientists gave the new coronavirus its identity and began referring to it by the technical shorthand 2019-nCoV. 
Four days later, the team shared the virus’s genetic makeup in a public database for scientists everywhere to use.
That allowed scientists around the world to study the virus and swiftly share their findings.
As the scientific community moved quickly to devise a test for exposure, political leaders remained reluctant to act.

Wuhan on Jan. 27. The city went ahead with a giant potluck dinner in mid-January.

‘Politics Is Always No. 1’
As the virus spread in early January, the mayor of Wuhan, Zhou Xianwang, was touting futuristic health care plans for the city.
It was China’s political season, when officials gather for annual meetings of People’s Congresses — the Communist Party-run legislatures that discuss and praise policies. 
It is not a time for bad news.
When Zhou delivered his annual report to the city’s People’s Congress on Jan. 7 against a backdrop of bright red national flags, he promised the city top-class medical schools, a World Health Expo, and a futuristic industry park for medical companies. 
Not once did he or any other city or provincial leader publicly mention the viral outbreak.
“Stressing politics is always No. 1,” the governor of Hubei, Wang Xiaodong, told officials on Jan. 17, citing Xi’s precepts of top-down obedience.
“Political issues are at any time the most fundamental major issues.”
Shortly after, Wuhan went ahead with a massive annual potluck banquet for 40,000 families from a city precinct, which critics later cited as evidence that local leaders took the virus far too lightly.
As the congress was taking place, the health commission’s daily updates on the outbreak said again and again that there were no new cases of infection, no firm evidence of human transmission and no infection of medical workers.
“We knew this was not the case!” said a complaint later filed with the National Health Commission on a government website.
The anonymous author said he was a doctor in Wuhan and described a surge in unusual chest illnesses beginning Jan. 12.
Officials told doctors at a top city hospital “don’t use the words viral pneumonia on the image reports,” according to the complaint, which has since been removed. 
People were complacent, “thinking that if the official reports had nothing, then we were exaggerating,” the doctor explained.
Even those stricken felt lulled into complacency.
When Dong Guanghe developed a fever on Jan. 8 in Wuhan, his family was not alarmed, his daughter said.
He was treated in the hospital and sent home.
Then, 10 days later, Mr. Dong’s wife fell ill with similar symptoms.
“The news said nothing about the severity of the epidemic,” said the daughter, Dong Mingjing.
“I thought that my dad had a common cold.”
The government’s efforts to minimize public disclosure persuaded more than just untrained citizens.
“If there are no new cases in the next few days, the outbreak is over,” Guan Yi, a respected professor of infectious diseases at the University of Hong Kong, said on Jan. 15.
The Beijing puppet World Health Organization’s statements during this period obediently echoed the reassuring words of Chinese officials.
It had spread.
Thailand reported the first confirmed case outside China on Jan. 13.

Health officials in Hangzhou, China, taking train passengers’ temperatures after they arrived from Wuhan on Jan. 23.

A City Besieged
The first deaths and the spread of the disease abroad appeared to grab the attention of the top authorities in Beijing. 
The national government dispatched Zhong Nanshan, a now-semiretired epidemiologist who was instrumental in the fight against SARS, to Wuhan to assess the situation.
He arrived on Jan. 18, just as the tone of local officials was shifting markedly. 
A health conference in Hubei Province that day called on medical workers to make the disease a priority.
An internal document from Wuhan Union Hospital warned its employees that the coronavirus could be spread through saliva.
On Jan. 20, more than a month after the first symptoms spread, the current of anxiety that had been steadily gaining strength exploded into public. 
Zhong announced in an interview on state television that there was no doubt that the coronavirus spread with human contact. 
Worse, one patient had infected at least 14 medical personnel.
Xi, fresh from a state visit to Myanmar, made his first public statement about the outbreak, issuing a brief set of instructions.
It was only with the order from Xi that the bureaucracy leapt into action.
At that point the death toll was three; in the next 11 days, it would rise above 200.
In Wuhan, the city banned tour groups from visiting.
Residents began pulling on masks.
Guan Yi, the Hong Kong expert who had earlier voiced optimism that the outbreak could level off, was now alarmed. 
He dropped by one of the city’s other food markets and was shocked by the complacency, he said.
He told city officials that the epidemic was “already beyond control” and would leave.
“I hurriedly booked a departure,” Dr. Guan told Caixin, a Chinese news organization.
Two days later, the city announced that it was shutting itself down, a move that could only have been approved by Beijing.
In Wuhan, many residents said they did not grasp the gravity of the epidemic until the lockdown.
The mass alarm that officials feared at the start became a reality, heightened by the previous paucity of information.
Crowds of people crushed the airport and train stations to get out before the deadline fell on the morning of Jan. 23.
Hospitals were packed with people desperate to know if they, too, were infected.
“We didn’t wear masks at work. That would have frightened off customers,” Yu Haiyan, a waitress from rural Hubei, said of the days before the shutdown.
“When they closed off Wuhan, only then did I think, ‘Oh, this is really serious, this is not some average virus.’”
Wuhan’s mayor, Zhou Xianwang, later took responsibility for the delay in reporting the scale of the epidemic, but said he was hampered by the national law on infectious diseases.
That law allows provincial governments to declare an epidemic only after receiving central government approval.
“After I receive information, I can only release it when I’m authorized,” he said.

Dr. Li in Wuhan Central Hospital on Friday.

The official reflex for suppressing discomforting information now appears to be cracking, as officials at various levels seek to shift blame for the government’s response.
With the crisis worsening, Dr. Li’s efforts are no longer viewed as reckless.
A commentary on the social media account of the Supreme People’s Court criticized the police for investigating people for circulating rumors.
“It might have been a better way to prevent and control the new coronavirus today if the public had believed the ‘rumor’ then and started to wear masks and carry out sanitary measures and avoid the wild animal market,” the commentary said.
Dr. Li is 34 and has a child.
He and his wife are expecting a second in the summer.
He is now recovering from the virus in the hospital where he worked.
In an interview via text messages, he said he felt aggrieved by the police actions.
“If the officials had disclosed information about the epidemic earlier,” he said, “I think it would have been a lot better. There should be more openness and transparency.”

Building a temporary field hospital in Wuhan on Thursday.