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.”

Made In China Pandemic

The Chinese coronavirus had leaked from a Chinese virology lab
The lone microbiology lab in China that handles viruses like the Chinese coronavirus is located in Wuhan

By STEVEN W. MOSHER

Chinese women and a child wear protective masks as they walk through a Beijing park after the official cancellation of celebrations of the Chinese New Year and Spring Festival on Jan. 25.

At an emergency meeting in Beijing held last Friday, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping spoke about the need to contain the Chinese coronavirus and set up a system to prevent similar epidemics in the future.
A national system to control biosecurity risks must be put in place “to protect the people’s health,” Xi said, because lab safety is a “national security” issue.
What Xi didn’t say is that the Chinese coronavirus that has sickened more than 79,000 and claimed more than 2,600 lives escaped from one of the country’s bioresearch labs. 
But the very next day, evidence emerged suggesting that this is what happened, as the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology released a new directive entitled “Instructions on strengthening biosecurity management in microbiology labs that handle advanced viruses like the novel coronavirus.”
Read that again.
It sure sounds as if China is conceding there may be a problem keeping dangerous pathogens in test tubes, doesn’t it? 
And just how many “microbiology labs” are there in China that handle “advanced viruses like the novel coronavirus”?
It turns out that in all of China there is only one. 
And this one is located in the Chinese city of Wuhan, which, of course, is the epicenter of the epidemic.
That’s right.
China’s only Level 4 microbiology lab equipped to handle deadly coronaviruses, called the National Biosafety Laboratory, is part of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
What’s more, the People’s Liberation Army’s top expert in biological warfare, Maj. Gen. Chen Wei, was dispatched to Wuhan at the end of January to help with the effort to contain the outbreak.
According to the PLA Daily, Chen has been researching coronaviruses since the SARS outbreak of 2003, as well as Ebola and anthrax.
This would not be her first trip to the Wuhan Institute of Virology either, since it is one of only two bioweapons research labs in all of China.
This suggests to me the Chinese coronavirus, now known as SARS-CoV-2, may have escaped from that very lab, and that Chen’s job is to try and put the genie back in the bottle.
Add to this China’s history of similar incidents. 
Even the deadly SARS virus has escaped — twice — from the Beijing lab where it was being used in experiments. 
Both were quickly contained, but neither would have happened at all if proper safety precautions had been taken.
And then there is this little-known fact: Some Chinese researchers are believed to sell laboratory animals to street vendors after they have finished experimenting on them.
You heard me right.
Instead of properly disposing of infected animals by cremation, as the law requires, they sell them on the side to make a little extra cash. 
Or, in some cases, a lot of extra cash.
One Beijing researcher, now in jail, made the equivalent of a million dollars selling monkeys and rats on the live animal market, whence they likely wound up in someone’s stomach.
Also fueling suspicions about Chinese coronavirus’s origins is the series of excuses offered by the Chinese authorities as people began to be sickened and die.
They first blamed a seafood market not far from the Institute of Virology, even though the first documented cases of Chinese coronavirus (the illness caused by SARS-CoV-2) involved people who had never set foot there. 
Then they pointed to snakes, bats and even a scaly anteater called a pangolin as the source of the virus.
I don’t buy any of this.
Snakes don’t carry coronaviruses, and bats aren’t sold at a seafood market. 
Neither are pangolins, for that matter, an endangered species valued for its scales as much as for meat.
The evidence, to me, points to Chinese coronavirus research being carried out at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The Chinese virus may have been carried out of the lab by an infected worker or crossed over into humans who unknowingly consumed a lab animal.
Whatever the vector, Beijing authorities are now clearly scrambling to correct serious problems with the way their labs handle deadly pathogens.
China may have unleashed a plague on its own people.
It’s too early to say how many in China and other countries will ultimately die, but the human cost will be high.
But not to worry.
Xi has assured us that he is controlling biosecurity risks “to protect the people’s health.”
PLA bioweapons experts are in charge.
I doubt the Chinese people will find that very reassuring.
Neither should we.

Chinazism: China, Desperate to Stop Coronavirus, Turns Neighbor Against Neighbor

The authorities hunt for people from Wuhan, the center of the outbreak, encouraging citizens to inform on others. Even those without symptoms are being ostracized.
By Paul Mozur

A man who arrived from Hubei Province in China crossing the Jiujiang Yangtze River Bridge near a checkpoint in Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province.

GUANGZHOU, China — One person was turned away by hotel after hotel after he showed his ID card. 

Another was expelled by fearful local villagers. 

A third found his most sensitive personal information leaked online after registering with the authorities.
These outcasts are from Wuhan, the capital of Hubei Province, which is at the center of a rapidly spreading viral outbreak that has killed more than 420 people in China and sent fear rippling around the world. 

They are pariahs in China, among the millions unable to go home and feared as potential carriers of the mysterious coronavirus.
All across the country, despite China’s vast surveillance network with its facial recognition systems and high-end cameras that is increasingly used to track its 1.4 billion people, the government has turned to familiar authoritarian techniques — like setting up dragnets and asking neighbors to inform on one another — as it tries to contain the outbreak.
It took the authorities about five days to contact Harmo Tang, a college student studying in Wuhan, after he returned to his hometown, Linhai, in eastern Zhejiang Province. 

Mr. Tang said he had already been under self-imposed isolation when local officials asked for his personal information, including name, address, phone number, identity card number and the date he returned from Wuhan. 

Within days, the information began to spread online, along with a list of others who returned to Linhai from Wuhan.
Local officials offered no explanation but returned a few days later to fasten police tape to his door and hang a sign that warned neighbors that a Wuhan returnee lived there. 

The sign included an informant hotline to call if anyone saw him or his family leave the apartment. 

Mr. Tang said he received about four calls a day from different local government departments.
“In reality there’s not much empathy,” he said. 

“It’s not a caring tone they’re using. It’s a warning tone. I don’t feel very comfortable about it.”
Of course, China has a major incentive to track down potential carriers of the disease. 

The Chinese coronavirus outbreak has put parts of the country under lockdown, brought the world’s second-largest economy to a virtual standstill and erected walls between China and the rest of the world.

A person suspected of having the coronavirus in Wuhan, China, was taken from an apartment last week.

Still, even some government officials called for understanding as concerns about prejudice spread. Experts warned such marginalization of an already vulnerable group could prove counterproductive, further damaging public trust and sending those who should be screened and monitored deeper underground.
“We are paying attention to this issue,” Ma Guoqiang, the Chinese Communist Party secretary of Wuhan, said at a news conference there last Tuesday.
“I believe that some people may label Hubei people or report them, but I also think most people will treat Hubei people with a good heart.”
While networks of volunteers and Christian groups have been vocal about offering help, many local leaders have focused efforts on finding and isolating people from Hubei. 

On big screens and billboards, propaganda videos and posters warn people to stay inside, wear masks and wash hands.
In the northern province of Hebei, one county offered bounties of 1,000 yuan, or about $140, for each Wuhan person reported by residents. 

Images online showed towns digging up roads or deputizing men to block outsiders. 

Some apartment-building residents barricaded the doors of their towers with China’s ubiquitous ride-share bikes.
In the eastern province of Jiangsu, quarantine turned to imprisonment after authorities used metal poles to barricade shut the door of a family recently returned from Wuhan. 

To get food, the family relied on neighbors who lowered provisions with a rope down to their back balcony, according to a local news report.
Scared for the safety of his children as conditions at home worsened, Andy Li, a tech worker from Wuhan traveling with his family in Beijing, rented a car and began driving south to Guangdong, an effort to find refuge with relatives there. 

In Nanjing, he was turned away from one hotel before getting a room at a luxury hotel.
There he set up a self-imposed family quarantine for four days, until local authorities ordered all people from Wuhan to move to a hotel next to the city’s central rail station. 

Mr. Li said the quarantine hotel did not seem to be doing a good job isolating people. 

Food delivery workers came and went, while gaps in the doors and walls allowed drafts in.
“They’re only working to separate Wuhan people from Nanjing people,” Mr. Li said. 

“They don’t care at all if Wuhan people infect each other.”
To help, he stuffed towels and tissues under the door to block the drafts.
“I’m not complaining about the government," Mr. Li said. 

“There will always be loopholes in policy. But in a selfish way I’m just really worried about my children.”

Delivering packages protected by a mask and special suit in Wuhan.

Across the country, the response from local authorities often resembles the mass mobilizations of the Mao era rather than the technocratic, data-driven wizardry depicted in propaganda about China’s emerging surveillance state. 

They have also turned to techniques Beijing used to fight the outbreak of SARS, another deadly disease, in 2002 and 2003, when China was much less technologically sophisticated.
Checkpoints to screen people for fevers have popped up at tollbooths, at the front gates of apartment complexes and in hotels, grocery stores and train stations. 

Often those wielding the thermometer guns don’t hold them close enough to a person’s forehead, generating unusually low temperature readings. 

Such checks were worthless, for instance, against one man in the western province of Qinghai, whom police are investigating on suspicion that he covered up his symptoms to travel.
Authorities have used computerized systems that track ID cards — which must be used to take most long-distance transport and stay in hotels — to round up people from Wuhan. 

Yet one article about the ID system in The People’s Daily, the mouthpiece for the Chinese Communist Party, included a plea to all passengers on affected flights and trains to report themselves.
The campaigns have turned life upside down in unexpected ways. 

Jia Yuting, a 21-year-old student in Wuhan, had already been back in her hometown in central China for 18 days — longer than the 14-day quarantine period — when she got news her grandfather was sick in a nearby village. 

During a visit to see him, she followed local instructions broadcast on speakers in the village and registered her personal details with the local Communist Party Committee.
When a middle-school teacher randomly reached out to her on the messaging app WeChat to inquire about her health, she realized her data had been leaked online and was spreading on a list. 

Later, she received a threatening phone call from a man who lived in her home city.

Checkpoints where people’s temperatures are checked, though sometimes not carefully, have proliferated.

“Why did you come back Wuhan? You should have stayed there. You Wuhan dog!” she recalled him saying.
Authorities offered her no explanation for how it happened, and insisted such leaks did not disrupt her regular life. 

Three days after her visit to the village, her grandfather died. 

Local officials there immediately told her family that she would not be allowed to return to the village to pay her final respects at a funeral that was taking place more than three weeks after she had returned from Wuhan.
“I feel that the villagers are ignorant and the government isn’t helping; instead it’s leaking the information everywhere without telling them that I don’t have any symptoms,” she said, adding that she felt guilty she could not be there to comfort her grandmother.
“I was very close to my grandfather. I think it’s not humane — it’s cruel.”

Made In China Pandemic

Rapidly rising caseloads alarm researchers, who fear the Chinese virus may make its way across the globe. But scientists cannot yet predict how many deaths may result.
By Donald G. McNeil Jr.

Medical workers transporting a coronavirus patient into an isolation ward in Fuyang, China, on Saturday. Experts fear a coronavirus pandemic, but its severity is uncertain.

The made in China coronavirus is now likely to become a pandemic that circles the globe, according to many of the world’s leading infectious disease experts.
The prospect is daunting. 

A pandemic — an ongoing epidemic on two or more continents — may well have global consequences, despite the extraordinary travel restrictions and quarantines now imposed by China and other countries, including the United States.
Scientists do not yet know how lethal the new coronavirus is, however, so there is uncertainty about how much damage a pandemic might cause. 

But there is growing consensus that the pathogen is readily transmitted between humans.
The Chinese coronavirus is spreading more like influenza, which is highly transmissible, than like its slow-moving viral cousins, SARS and MERS, scientists have found.
“It’s very, very transmissible, and it almost certainly is going to be a pandemic,” said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.
“But will it be catastrophic? I don’t know.”
In the last three weeks, the number of lab-confirmed cases has soared from about 50 in China to more than 17,000 in at least 23 countries; there have been more than 360 deaths.
But various epidemiological models estimate that the real number of cases is 100,000 or even more. 

While that expansion is not as rapid as that of flu or measles, it is an enormous leap beyond what virologists saw when SARS and MERS emerged.
When SARS was vanquished in July 2003 after spreading for nine months, only 8,098 cases had been confirmed. 

MERS has been circulating since 2012, but there have been only about 2,500 known cases.

The biggest uncertainty now, experts said, is how many people around the world will die. 

SARS killed about 10 percent of those who got it, and MERS now kills about one of three.
The 1918 “Spanish flu” killed only about 2.5 percent of its victims — but because it infected so many people and medical care was much cruder then, 20 to 50 million died.
By contrast, the highly transmissible H1N1 “swine flu” pandemic of 2009 killed about 285,000, fewer than seasonal flu normally does, and had a relatively low fatality rate, estimated at .02 percent.
The mortality rate for known cases of the Chinese coronavirus has been running about 2 percent, although that is likely to drop as more tests are done and more mild cases are found.

Patients in a hospital ward in Fort Riley, Kan., during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. The Chinese coronavirus is transmitted much like influenza, scientists say. 

It is “increasingly unlikely that the virus can be contained,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who now runs Resolve to Save Lives, a nonprofit devoted to fighting epidemics.

“It is therefore likely that it will spread, as flu and other organisms do, but we still don’t know how far, wide or deadly it will be.”
In the early days of the 2009 flu pandemic, “they were talking about Armageddon in Mexico,” Dr. Fauci said. (That virus first emerged in pig-farming areas in Mexico’s Veracruz State.) 

“But it turned out to not be that severe.”
An accurate estimate of the virus’s lethality will not be possible until certain kinds of studies can be done: blood tests to see how many people have antibodies, household studies to learn how often it infects family members, and genetic sequencing to determine whether some strains are more dangerous than others.
Closing borders to highly infectious pathogens never succeeds completely, because all frontiers are somewhat porous. 

Nonetheless, closings and rigorous screening may slow the spread, which will buy time for the development of drug treatments and vaccines.
Other important unknowns include who is most at risk, whether coughing or contaminated surfaces are more likely to transmit the virus, how fast the virus can mutate and whether it will fade out when the weather warms.

Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Spread of the Outbreak. The virus has sickened more than 17,300 people in China and 23 other countries.


The effects of a Chinese pandemic would probably be harsher in some countries than in others. 

While the United States and other wealthy countries may be able to detect and quarantine the first carriers, countries with fragile health care systems will not. 

The virus has already reached Cambodia, India, Malaysia, Nepal, the Philippines and rural Russia.
“This looks far more like H1N1’s spread than SARS, and I am increasingly alarmed,” said Dr. Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. 

“Even 1 percent mortality would mean 10,000 deaths in each million people.”Other experts were more cautious.
Dr. Michael Ryan, head of emergency responses for the World Health Organization, said in an interview with STAT News on Saturday that there was “evidence to suggest this virus can still be contained” and that the world needed to “keep trying.”
Dr. W. Ian Lipkin, a virus-hunter at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health who is in China advising its Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said that although the virus is clearly being transmitted through casual contact, labs are still behind in processing samples.

In Hyderabad, India, doctors left an isolation ward for people kept under observation after returning from China.

But life in China has radically changed in the last two weeks. 

Streets are deserted, public events are canceled, and citizens are wearing masks and washing their hands, Dr. Lipkin said. 

All of that may have slowed down what lab testing indicated was exponential growth in the infection.
It’s unclear exactly how accurate tests done in overwhelmed Chinese laboratories are. 

On the one hand, Chinese state media have reported test kit shortages and processing bottlenecks, which could produce an undercount.
But Dr. Lipkin said he knew of one lab running 5,000 samples a day, which might produce some false-positive results, inflating the count. 

“You can’t possibly do quality control at that rate,” he said.Anecdotal reports from China, and one published study from Germany, indicate that some people infected with the Chinese coronavirus can pass it on before they show symptoms. 

That may make border-screening much harder, scientists said.
Epidemiological modeling released Friday by the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control estimated that 75 percent of infected people reaching Europe from China would still be in the incubation periods upon arrival, and therefore not detected by airport screening, which looks for fevers, coughs and breathing difficulties.
But if thermal cameras miss victims who are beyond incubation and actively infecting others, the real number of missed carriers may be higher than 75 percent.Still, asymptomatic carriers “are not normally major drivers of epidemics,” Dr. Fauci said. 

Most people get ill from someone they know to be sick — a family member, a co-worker or a patient, for example.
The virus’s most vulnerable target is Africa, many experts said. 

More than 1 million expatriate Chinese work there, mostly on mining, drilling or engineering projects. 

Also, many Africans work and study in China and other countries where the virus has been found.
If anyone on the continent has the virus now, “I’m not sure the diagnostic systems are in place to detect it,” said Dr. Daniel Bausch, head of scientific programs for the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, who is consulting with the W.H.O. on the outbreak.
South Africa and Senegal could probably diagnose it, he said. 

Nigeria and some other countries have asked the W.H.O. for the genetic materials and training they need to perform diagnostic tests, but that will take time.
At least four African countries have suspect cases quarantined, according to an article published Friday in The South China Morning Post. 

They have sent samples to France, Germany, India and South Africa for testing.
At the moment, it seems unlikely that the virus will spread widely in countries with vigorous, alert public health systems, said Dr. William Schaffner, a preventive medicine specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
“Every doctor in the U.S. has this top of mind,” he said. 

“Any patient with fever or respiratory problems will get two questions. ‘Have you been to China? Have you had contact with anyone who has?’ If the answer is yes, they’ll be put in isolation right away.”
Assuming the virus spreads globally, tourism to and trade with countries besides China may be affected — and the urgency to find ways to halt the virus and prevent deaths will grow.

Men in protective suits greeted a plane carrying 32 Mongolian citizens evacuated from Wuhan, China, as it arrived in Ulaanbaatar.

It is possible that the Chinese coronavirus will fade out as weather warms. 

Many viruses, like flu, measles and norovirus, thrive in cold, dry air. 

The SARS outbreak began in winter, and MERS transmission also peaks then, though that may be related to transmission in newborn camels.
Four mild coronaviruses cause about a quarter of the nation’s common colds, which also peak in winter.
But even if an outbreak fades in June, there could be a second wave in the fall, as has occurred in every major flu pandemic, including those that began in 1918 and 2009.
By that time, some remedies might be on hand, although they will need rigorous testing and perhaps political pressure to make them available and affordable.
In China, several antiviral drugs are being prescribed. 

A common combination is pills containing lopinavir and ritonavir with infusions of interferon, a signaling protein that wakes up the immune system.
In the United States, the combination is sold as Kaletra by AbbVie for H.I.V. therapy, and it is relatively expensive. 

In India, a dozen generic makers produce the drugs at rock-bottom prices for use against H.I.V. in Africa, and their products are W.H.O.-approved.
Another option may be an experimental drug, remdesivir, on which the patent is held by Gilead. 

The drug has not yet been approved for use against any disease. 

Nonetheless, there is some evidence that it works against coronaviruses, and Gilead has donated doses to China.
Several American companies are working on a vaccine, using various combinations of their own funds, taxpayer money and foundation grants.
Although modern gene-chemistry techniques have made it possible to build vaccine candidates within just days, medical ethics require that they then be carefully tested on animals and small numbers of healthy humans for safety and effectiveness.
That aspect of the process cannot be sped up, because dangerous side effects may take time to appear and because human immune systems need time to produce the antibodies that show whether a vaccine is working.
Whether or not what is being tried in China will be acceptable elsewhere will depend on how rigorously Chinese doctors run their clinical trials.
“In God we trust,” Dr. Schaffner said. 

“All others must provide data.”

Socialist Virus with Chinese Characteristics

Coronavirus Spreads, and the World Pays for China’s Dictatorship
Xi used his tight rule to control information rather than to stop an epidemic.
By Nicholas Kristof

A medical staff member in protective clothing at the Wuhan Red Cross Hospital.

China’s leaders sometimes seem 10 feet tall, presiding over a political and economic juggernaut that has founded universities at a rate of one a week and that recently used more cement in three years than the United States did in the entire 20th century.
Idiotic Trump has hailed Chinese dictator Xi Jinping as a “brilliant leader,” and Michael Bloomberg says Xi is “not a dictator.” 

But we’re now seeing the dangers of Xi’s authoritarian model, for China and the world.
The first known coronavirus infection in the city of Wuhan presented symptoms beginning on Dec. 1, and by late December there was alarm in Wuhan’s medical circles. 

That would have been the moment for the authorities to act decisively.
And act decisively they did — not against the virus, but against whistle-blowers who were trying to call attention to the public health threat. 

A doctor who told a WeChat group about the virus was disciplined by the Communist Party and forced to admit wrongdoing. 

The police reported giving “education” and “criticism” to eight front-line doctors for “rumormongering” about the epidemic; instead of punishing these doctors, Xi should have listened to them.

Chinese tyrant Xi used his tight rule to control information rather than to stop an epidemic.

China informed the World Health Organization of the virus on Dec. 31 but kept its own citizens in the dark; as other countries reported infections even as China pretended that it had confined the outbreak to Wuhan, Chinese joked grimly about a “patriotic” virus that only struck foreigners.
Wuhan’s mayor said he wasn’t authorized to discuss the virus until late this month. 

In that time, people traveled to and from Wuhan and didn’t take precautions.
The government finally ordered a lockdown on Jan. 23 that effectively quarantined people in Wuhan. 

But by then, according to the mayor, five million people had already fled the city.Because the government covered up the epidemic in the early stages, hospitals were not able to gather supplies, and there are now major shortages of testing kits, masks and protective gear. 

Some doctors were reduced to making goggles out of plastic folders.
One reason for the early cover-up is that Xi’s China has systematically gutted institutions like journalism, social media, nongovernmental organizations, the legal profession and others that might provide accountability. 

These institutions were never very robust in China, but on and off they were tolerated until Xi came along.
I conducted a series of experiments on Chinese blogs over the years beginning in 2003 and was sometimes surprised by what I could get away with — but no longer. 

Xi has dragged China backward in terms of civil society, crushing almost every wisp of freedom and oversight.
For the same reason that Xi’s increasingly authoritarian China bungled the coronavirus outbreak, it also mishandled a swine flu virus that since 2018 has devastated China’s hog industry and killed almost one-quarter of the world’s pigs.
Dictators often make poor decisions because they don’t get accurate information: When you squelch independent voices you end up getting just flattery and optimism from those around you. 

Senior Chinese officials have told me that they are routinely lied to on trips to meet local officials and must dispatch their drivers and secretaries to assess the truth and gauge the real mood.For this or other reasons, Xi has made a series of mistakes. 

He mishandled and inflamed the political crisis in Hong Kong, he inadvertently assured the re-election of his nemesis as president of Taiwan, and he has presided over worsening relations with the United States and many other countries.
The coronavirus has already reached the East Turkestan colony in the Far West of China, and one risk is that it will spread in the concentration camps where China is confining about one million Muslims with poor sanitation and limited health care.
Viruses are challenges for any country, and it’s only fair to note that China does a better job protecting its people from measles than the U.S. does. 

But let’s get over any misplaced admiration some Americans have for Xi’s authoritarian model.

The Chinese social contract has been that citizens will not get ballots but will live steadily better lives, yet China’s economy is now as weak as it has been in three decades — and the coronavirus will sap growth further. 

Xi is not living up to his end of the bargain, and this is seen in the anger emerging on Chinese social media despite the best efforts of censors.
I don’t know if Xi is in political trouble for his misrule, but he should be. 

He’s a preening dictator, and with this outbreak some citizens are paying a price.

China's forced solidarity: "If i die, you die with me"

Chinese virus: Australia and Thailand don't have permission from China to evacuate their citizens from Wuhan despite the US and other countries having already begun airlifts out

By Luke Henriques-Gomes and Ben Doherty 

Passengers arrive on a flight from Asia landing at Los Angeles airport on Wednesday. The US has already begun to evacuate its citizens from Wuhan province, ground zero of the coronavirus, while Australia is awaiting permission from China. 

Australia is yet to gain permission from the Chinese government to evacuate hundreds of citizens trapped in the coronavirus-hit city of Wuhan, despite the US and other countries having already been granted access to the region.
As some people on Christmas Island express fears of becoming a “leper colony” after the government said it would be used to quarantine evacuees, the foreign minister, Marise Payne, confirmed on Thursday morning that officials were still to win the “agreement of Chinese authorities for this process”.

Asked why Australia was still in negotiations while other nations had already begun the evacuation process, Payne said the government did not have a consular presence in Wuhan, meaning it was forced to relocate officials from Shanghai.
Globally there are now more than 6,000 confirmed cases of the respiratory illness, including more than 130 deaths, mainly in Wuhan, while seven cases have been diagnosed in Australia.
Two Australian citizens now in China have contracted coronavirus.
The Australian government has said Australian citizens who are in China but who are already sick with a confirmed or suspected case of coronavirus will not be flown out.
The health minister, Greg Hunt, said he had been advised that two Australians had contracted the virus in Guangdong province.
It was unclear if they had previously been in Hubei.
“They have been treated and the advice that I have – and I would want to be cautious on this – is that they have been released and are not seeking consular assistance at this stage.”
Payne said the government would prioritise isolated vulnerable people in the area.
More than 600 citizens have registered as being in Hubei province.
In response to the crisis, Scott Morrison announced on Wednesday that evacuees would be quarantined on Christmas Island for 14 days, a decision that has angered some locals.
The Christmas Island shire president, Gordon Thomson, told Guardian Australia the decision to use the territory reflected “regressive colonialist treatment”.
Already a critic of the government’s use of the island to detain asylum seekers, Thomson said he had learned of the plan by seeing it on the news and was worried that “now we’ll be a leper colony”.
Peter Dutton defended the plan on Thursday, saying it was designed to keep the broader population safe.
“I can’t clear a hospital in Sydney or Melbourne to accommodate 600 people,” the home affairs minister told the Nine Network on Thursday.
“We don’t have a facility otherwise that can take this number of people. I want to make sure that we keep Australians safe.”

Dutton said the plan had been hatched in consultation with Australia’s chief medical officer, who receives frequent advice from the World Health Organization.
Given the concerns from Christmas Island residents, Dutton later told reporters that evacuees would be kept in an isolation area until they received medical clearance.
“My clear message to people on Christmas Island is we won’t be using the medical centre or the health facilities on Christmas Island,” he said.
“We won’t be utilising other areas, common areas, on Christmas Island.”
Dutton also dismissed Thomson’s criticism, describing him as a “member of the Labor party”.
He said the government had tried to contact him on Wednesday before the decision was announced.
The opposition leader, Anthony Albanese, said it was unclear whether the decision to use the remote territory was “motivated by a genuine belief that’s the only option or embarrassment the government opened Christmas Island”.
Qantas has offered its aircraft for use in the evacuation, which is a joint operation with New Zealand. But the design of the island’s runaway means that it cannot land with a full passenger load.
The airline is reportedly looking at landing a passenger plane on the mainland, before transferring the evacuees to Christmas Island using a smaller aircraft.
It is also still considering whether to halt flights to China after British Airways took that step this week.
Dutton said on Thursday that was a decision for Qantas.
The airline was contacted for comment.
Also on Thursday, the New Zealand foreign minister, Winston Peters, cast doubt on a mooted plan to coordinate its own evacuation efforts with Australia.
Peters said officials from both countries would continue discussions in Wuhan on Thursday, but added that the New Zealanders would be quarantined in their home country and not on Christmas Island.
The Australian government has confirmed that those evacuated will have to contribute financially to the trip.

Coronavirus Is a Disease of Chinese Autocracy

When China’s leaders finally declare victory against the outbreak of the new and deadly coronavirus, they will undoubtedly credit the Communist Party of China's leadership. But the truth is just the opposite: the party is again responsible for this calamity.
By MINXIN PEI

CLAREMONT, CALIFORNIA – An outbreak of a new coronavirus that began in the Chinese city of Wuhan has already infected over 6,000 people – mostly in China, but also in several other countries, from Thailand to France to the United States – and killed more than 100. 

Given China’s history of disease outbreaks – including of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Chinese swine fever – and officials’ apparent awareness of the need to strengthen their capacity to address “major risks,” how could this happen?

It should be no surprise that history is repeating itself in China. 

To maintain its authority, the Communist Party of China must keep the public convinced that everything is going according to plan. 

That means carrying out systemic cover-ups of scandals and deficiencies that may reflect poorly upon the CPC’s leadership, instead of doing what is necessary to respond.
This pathological secrecy hobbles the authorities’ capacity to respond quickly to epidemics. 

The SARS epidemic of 2002-03 could have been contained much sooner had Chinese officials, including the health minister, not deliberately concealed information from the public. 

Once proper disease-control and prevention measures were implemented, SARS was contained within months.
Yet China seems not to have learned its lesson. 

Although there are important differences between today’s coronavirus epidemic and the SARS outbreak – including far greater technological capacity to monitor disease – they have the CPC’s habit of cover-ups in common.
To be sure, at first glance, China’s government has appeared to be more forthcoming about the latest outbreak. 

But, although the first case was reported on December 8, the Wuhan municipal health commission didn’t issue an official notice until several weeks later. 

And, since then, Wuhan officials have downplayed the seriousness of the disease and deliberately sought to suppress news coverage.That notice maintained that there was no evidence that the new illness could be transmitted among humans, and claimed that no health-care workers had been infected. 

The commission repeated these claims on January 5, though 59 cases had been confirmed by then. Even after the first death was reported on January 11, the commission continued to insist that there was no evidence that it could be transmitted among humans or that health-care workers had been affected.
Throughout this critical period, there was little news coverage of the outbreak. 

Chinese censors worked diligently to remove references to the outbreak from the public sphere, which is far easier today than it was during the SARS epidemic, thanks to the government’s dramatically tighter control over the Internet, media, and civil society. 

Police have harassed people for “spreading rumors” about the disease.
According to one study, references to the outbreak on WeChat – a popular Chinese messaging, social media, and mobile-payment app – spiked between December 30 and January 4, around the time when the Wuhan municipal health commission first acknowledged the outbreak. 

But mentions of the disease subsequently plummeted.
References to the new coronavirus rose slightly on January 11, when the first death was reported, but then quickly disappeared again. 

It was only after January 20 – following reports of 136 new cases in Wuhan, as well as cases in Beijing and Guangdong – that the government rolled back its censorship efforts. 

Mentions of coronavirus exploded.
Yet again, the Chinese government’s attempts to protect its image proved costly, because they undermined initial containment efforts. 

The authorities have since switched gears, and their strategy now appears to be to show how seriously the government is taking the disease by imposing drastic measures: a blanket travel ban on Wuhan and neighboring cities in Hubei province, which together have a population of 35 million.
At this point, it is unclear whether and to what extent these steps are necessary or effective. 

What is clear is that China’s initial mishandling of the coronavirus outbreak means that thousands will be infected, hundreds may die, and the economy, already weakened by debt and the trade war, will take another hit.But the most tragic part of this story is that there is little reason to hope that next time will be different. 

The survival of the one-party state depends on secrecy, media suppression, and constraints on civil liberties. 

So, even as Chinese dictator Xi Jinping demands that the government increase its capacity to handle “major risks,” China will continue to undermine its own – and the world’s – safety, in order to bolster the CPC’s authority.
When China’s leaders finally declare victory against the current outbreak, they will undoubtedly credit the CPC’s leadership. 

But the truth is just the opposite: the party is again responsible for this calamity.

Containing the Coronavirus: Countries Limit Travel to China

With cases spiking in China and early signs of a spread outside Asia, Hong Kong severely cut back transportation to the mainland.

By Paul Mozur

Medical workers at a checkpoint near the border of Hubei Province on Tuesday.

HONG KONG — Countries, cities and businesses across the globe issued new travel warnings on Tuesday, vastly expanding a cordon intended to control the flow of people to and from China, where the authorities are struggling to contain the outbreak of the new coronavirus.
In the most drastic measure to limit travel, the Hong Kong authorities reduced by half the number of flights and shut down rail service to mainland China, and they also limited visas — moves that could inspire other governments to follow suit.
Measures to contain the outbreak of the virus to its epicenter in Hubei Province appear to have failed to stop the contagion.
On Wednesday morning, Chinese officials said the number of cases had increased by nearly a third overnight. 

Experts warned that the actual number of cases could be significantly higher and growing quickly. The number of deaths attributed to the virus also continued to grow.
The new travel restrictions put a deeper freeze on China’s contact with the world, cutting off business and tourism as China’s economy faces a potential slowdown.
With China’s Lunar New Year holiday nearing its end, companies ordered workers to stay home and avoid travel. 

The economic impact of such measures pointed to a deeper political crisis, with many people accusing the Chinese authorities online of failing to act quickly to contain the virus, even as the government continues to struggle to control its spread.
The travel advisories and bans came as the virus showed early signs of spreading outside China, with cases of transmission to people who had not recently traveled to China reported in Japan, Germany and Vietnam. 

Countries across the world may now be faced with the task of limiting the spread of the disease on their own soil, not simply seeking to identify and quarantine infected people who had been in China.

Disinfecting a Thai Airways airplane near Suvarnabhumi Airport in Thailand.

Officials at the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned against nonessential travel to China, noting that there is “limited access to adequate medical care in affected areas.” 

The United States is expanding the screening of travelers arriving from Wuhan to 20 airports and other ports of entry, from five, federal officials said on Tuesday.
The World Health Organization revised its global risk assessment for the outbreak from “moderate” to “high,” although it noted this shift in a footnote buried in a report published on Monday. 

The change in the risk assessment, which coincided with a visit to China by the organization’s director general, risked confusing the public about the severity of the outbreak, which has killed more than 130 people in China and been diagnosed in at least 14 countries.

The pro-China World Health Organization was criticized after it refused twice in recent days to declare the outbreak a global emergency, despite its spread.
With other countries scrambling to evacuate their citizens from the locked-down epicenter of the outbreak in central China, the WHO said its director general, Beijing puppet Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, had discussed with Chinese officials “possible alternatives to evacuation of foreigners if there are ways to accommodate them and protect their health.”
Although Chinese medical workers have described a desperate need for more resources to treat thousands of new patients, state-run Chinese media reported that Tedros had spoken highly of the Chinese efforts to contain the virus. 

The Chinese authorities agreed on Tuesday to allow in teams of international experts, coordinated by the World Health Organization, to help with research and containment.

A hospital under construction in Wuhan that will treat people infected with the coronavirus.

Chinese officials said Wednesday that 132 people had died from the virus, up from 106 the day before. 

The total number of confirmed cases rose sharply as well, to 5,974 on Wednesday, according to the National Health Commission.
The youngest confirmed patient is a 9-month-old girl in Beijing. 

While the majority of confirmed cases were in Hubei, where a number of cities have been put under effective lockdown, an additional 1,800 cases have been diagnosed outside the province, the authorities said.
In Wuhan, medical workers have cited a lack of masks and kits to test for the virus. 

China’s medical products administration said on Sunday it had approved new virus detection kits to speed detection, but three Chinese medical companies said they did not have the capacity to produce enough of them, according to local news media reports.
Many in Wuhan with symptoms of the virus have not been tested or have been told the hospitals did not have enough test kits, some local residents said.
During a visit to Wuhan on Monday, Li Keqiang promised to provide more equipment, and the local government has begun building new hospitals that it hopes to open in a matter of weeks. 

But online, many people mocked the government’s efforts.
In indications of the virus’s spread beyond China’s borders, Thailand reported 14 cases of infection, while the United States and Australia have each confirmed five cases. 

Singapore, South Korea and Malaysia each said they had confirmed four cases.

Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, which has now confirmed six cases, said that the virus had been found in the first Japanese citizen. 

The ministry said he had worked as a bus driver for two different tour groups from Wuhan. 

He had no history of traveling to Wuhan.
The man, who had driven for the tours earlier this month, first reported experiencing chills, a cough and joint pain on Jan. 14. 

He visited a clinic three days later, but was sent home. 

On Jan. 22, his joint pain and cough grew worse, and he returned to a health clinic on Saturday, when a chest X-ray showed abnormalities and he was admitted to a hospital. 

A test confirmed the coronavirus on Tuesday.
German officials said Tuesday that they had identified what they believed was the first instance of the virus spreading within Europe. 

They said a man from Starnberg in Bavaria was infected and was being treated and kept in isolation. The health ministry described him as being in “good condition” medically and said it was also monitoring his family and other people who might have been exposed, including in his children’s day care center.
“It was to be expected that the virus would come to Germany,” Jens Spahn, Germany’s health minister, said in a statement on Tuesday. 

“But the Bavarian case shows us that we are well prepared.” 

He said the risk to Germans remained low.
Japan planned to send a chartered plane to Wuhan on Tuesday night to bring back the first Japanese citizens who wish to be repatriated. 

At least 13 countries have said they would evacuate their citizens from Wuhan, where the virus is believed to have been transmitted from animals to humans.
Businesses that operate in China have issued warnings of their own. 

In a flurry of emails sent in recent days, General Motors, Honeywell, Bloomberg, Facebook and other companies have warned employees not to travel within mainland China.

A shopping area in Beijing, normally busy during the Chinese New Year, was nearly empty on Tuesday.

Honeywell, which has offices and operations across China, said it had restricted travel to some regions, but did not specify which ones. 

A spokesman for General Motors said the company had issued a global travel ban to China, with only “business-critical” travel allowed and only after clearance from a doctor. 

Bloomberg told its employees in Hong Kong and mainland China to work remotely until further notice and it restricted travel to China and Hong Kong over the next 30 days, according to an email seen by The New York Times.
The Chinese government has extended the Lunar New Year holiday until Feb. 3, with some of China’s biggest cities telling businesses not to open until the following week. 

China’s biggest technology companies went further, notifying employees to work from home until Feb. 10. 

NetEase, an internet and entertainment platform, asked employees who were returning from another city to quarantine themselves for 14 days.
Investors in Asia were gripped on Tuesday with fear about the health of the global economy for a second day, with a widespread sell-off continuing in the markets. 

Investors dumped stocks in companies thought to be most vulnerable to the effects of the virus.
“The coronavirus is the No. 1 threat to financial markets currently as global investors are becoming jittery on the uncertainty,” said Nigel Green, founder of an investment company, the deVere Group.
In Hong Kong, medical professionals called for additional border checkpoints.
“The next week or two will be a critical time for the development of the epidemic,” the faculty at the Chinese University of Hong Kong wrote on its Facebook page. 

“We must closely monitor whether there is a community outbreak outside Hubei Province, especially in Hong Kong’s neighboring regions.”

A checkpoint on the outskirts of Beijing.

As Virus Spreads, Anger Floods Chinese Social Media

The sheer volume of criticism of the government, and the clever ways that critics dodge censors, are testing Beijing’s ability to control the narrative.
By Raymond Zhong

In Beijing on Sunday, riders wearing protective masks cycle on a nearly empty street that is normally busy wih tourists.

SHANGHAI — Recently, someone following the coronavirus crisis through China’s official news media would see lots of footage, often set to stirring music, praising the heroism and sacrifice of health workers marching off to stricken places.
But someone following the crisis through social media would see something else entirely: vitriolic comments and mocking memes about government officials, harrowing descriptions of untreated family members and images of hospital corridors loaded with patients, some of whom appear to be dead.


CGTN
✔@CGTNOfficial
137 medical personnel head for Hubei from north China's Shanxi
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7:07 AM - Jan 27, 2020

The contrast is almost never so stark in China. 

The government usually keeps a tight grip on what is said, seen and heard about it. 

But the sheer amount of criticism — and the often clever ways in which critics dodge censors, such as by referring to Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, as “Trump” or by comparing the outbreak to the Chernobyl catastrophe — have made it difficult for Beijing to control the message.
In recent days, critics have pounced when officials in the city of Wuhan, the center of the outbreak, wore their protective masks incorrectly. 

They have heaped scorn upon stumbling pronouncements. 

When Wuhan’s mayor spoke to official media on Monday, one commenter responded, “If the virus is fair, then please don’t spare this useless person.”
The condemnations stand as a rare direct challenge to the Communist Party, which brooks no dissent in the way it runs China. 

In some cases, Chinese leaders appear to be acknowledging people’s fear, anger and other all-too-human reactions to the crisis, showing how the party can move dramatically, if sometimes belatedly, to mollify the public.
Such criticism can go only so far, however. 

Some of China’s more commercially minded media outlets have covered the disease and the response thoroughly if not critically. 

But articles and comments about the virus continue to be deleted, and the government and internet platforms have issued fresh warnings against spreading what they call “rumors.”
“Chinese social media are full of anger, not because there was no censorship on this topic, but despite strong censorship,” said Xiao Qiang, a research scientist at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, and the founder of China Digital Times, a website that monitors Chinese internet controls. 

“It is still possible that the censorship will suddenly increase again, as part of an effort to control the narrative.”
When China’s leaders battled the SARS virus in the early 2000s, social media was only just beginning to blossom in the country. 

The government covered up the disease’s spread, and it was left to journalists and other critics to shame the authorities into acknowledging the scale of the problem.
Today, smartphones and social media make it harder for mass public health crises to stay buried. 

But internet platforms in China are just as easily polluted with false and fast-moving information as they are everywhere else. 

During outbreaks of disease, Beijing’s leaders have legitimate reason to be on alert for quack remedies and scaremongering fabrications, which can cause panic and do damage.

Li Keqiang, center, visiting a supermarket in Wuhan on Monday.

In recent days, though, Beijing seems to be reasserting its primacy over information in ways that go beyond mere rumor control. 

At a meeting this past weekend between Xi and other senior leaders, one of the measures they resolved to take against the virus was to “strengthen the guidance of public opinion.”
Wang Huning, the head of the Communist Party’s publicity department and an influential party ideologue, was also recently named deputy head of the team in charge of containing the outbreak, behind only China’s premier, Li Keqiang.
Chinese officials seem to recognize that social media can be a useful tool for feeling out public opinion in times of crisis. 

WeChat, the popular Chinese messaging platform, said over the weekend that it would crack down hard on rumors about the virus. 

But it also created a tool for users to report tips and information about the disease and the response.
Internet backlash may already have caused one local government in China to change course on its virus-fighting policies. 

The southern city of Shantou announced on Sunday that it was stopping cars, ships and people from entering the city, in a policy that echoed ones in Wuhan. 

But then word went around that the decision had led people to panic-buy food, and by the afternoon, the order had been rescinded.
Nowhere has the local government been the target of more internet vitriol than in Hubei Province, where Wuhan is the capital.
After the Hubei governor, Wang Xiaodong, and other officials there gave a news briefing on Sunday, web users mocked Wang for misstating, twice, the number of face masks that the province could produce. 

They circulated a photo from the briefing of him and two other officials, pointing out that one of them did not cover his nose with his mask, that another wore his mask upside down and that Wang did not wear a mask at all.
On Monday, social media users were similarly unrelenting toward Wuhan’s mayor, Zhou Xianwang.
During an interview Zhou gave to state television, commenters in live streams unloaded on him, with one writing: “Stop talking. We just want to know when you will resign.”
Top authorities may be deliberately directing public anger toward officials in Hubei and Wuhan as a prelude to their resigning and being replaced. 

Many other targets within the Chinese leadership seem to remain off limits.
This month, as news of the coronavirus emerged but Xi did not make public appearances to address it, people on the social platform Weibo began venting their frustration in veiled ways, asking, “Where’s that person?”

Masks offer a visible reminder of China’s struggle with the coronavirus. A Chinese couple took a selfie while overlooking the Forbidden City in Beijing on Sunday.

But even those comments were deleted. 

So users started replacing Xi’s name with “Trump.” 

As in, “I don’t want to go through another minute of this year, my heart is filled with pain, I hope Trump dies.”Other people hungering to express frustration have taken to the Chinese social platform Douban, which has been flooded recently by user reviews for “Chernobyl,” the hit television series about the Soviet nuclear disaster.
“In any era, any country, it’s the same. Cover everything up,” one reviewer wrote on Monday.
“That’s socialism,” wrote another.
Some Chinese news outlets have been able to report incisively on the coronavirus. 

The influential newsmagazine Caixin has put out rigorous reporting and analysis. 

The Paper, a digital news outlet that is overseen by Shanghai’s Communist Party Committee, published a chilling video about a Wuhan resident who couldn’t find a hospital that would treat him and ended up wandering the streets.
Mr. Xiao, the Chinese internet expert, said the central authorities long gave such outlets special leeway to cover certain topics in ways that official media cannot. 

But the outlets should not be viewed as independent of the government, he said, calling their coverage “planned and controlled publicity” from the authorities.
Even outside the digital realm, it is not hard to find people in China who remain unsure of whether to trust what their government is telling them about the outbreak.
Chen Pulin, a 78-year-old retiree, was waiting outside a Shanghai hospital recently while his daughter was inside being tested for the virus. 

When word of the disease first began trickling out, he immediately had doubts about whether officials were being forthcoming about it.
“Even now, the government seems to be thinking about the economy and social stability,” Mr. Chen said. 

“Those things are important, but when it comes to these infectious diseases, stopping the disease should come first.”

Chinese appetite for 'warm meat' drives risk of disease

A wet market, where animals are freshly slaughtered rather than chilled was identified as the source of the coronavirus outbreak. But experts have long warned of dangers

By Michael Standaert

People buy meat at a butchers’ shop at the Bowrington Road food market in Hong Kong. 

Each evening, under cover of darkness, hundreds of live pigs from farms across China are trucked through the rusting gates of a cluster of mildew-stained quarantine and inspection buildings in the Qingshuihe logistics zone in Shenzhen.
Overnight they are checked for illness, primarily the African swine fever (ASF) that is expected to kill off a quarter of the world’s pigs, and reloaded on to ventilated trucks with dual mainland China and Hong Kong licence plates.
Before sunrise the caravan makes its way five-and-a-half miles south to the border at Man Kam To, a small customs and immigration checkpoint, where the pigs go through further visual health checks before crossing into Hong Kong.
They are bound for Sheung Shui slaughterhouse, the largest of three abattoirs in the territory. 

Once there they will be checked again before being dispatched in less than 24 hours under new rules meant to prevent the spread of ASF.
It’s a lot of effort to get fresh meat from the 1,400 pigs that cross the border each day.

Sheung Shui slaughterhouse in Hong Kong is the largest of three abattoirs in the territory. 

The appetite for freshly slaughtered ‘warm meat’
For various reasons, the Chinese prefer freshly slaughtered pig, chicken and beef over chilled or frozen meat that has been slaughtered before being shipped.
That desire is at the heart of why diseases such as avian flu in poultry and ASF have been so difficult to eradicate, with huge movements of live animals from all over the country – from farm to slaughterhouse to market – on a daily basis making controlling the spread of disease incredibly difficult.
A recent coronavirus outbreak in China has been linked to a wet market in Wuhan, eastern China. Like other respiratory illnesses, the disease was initially transmitted from animal to human, but is now being passed human to human.
But despite awareness of the issues, the markets are a huge part of Chinese life. 

On a busy morning at a so-called “wet market” in the Shajing area, the oldest inhabited and very Cantonese part of Shenzhen, hundreds of shoppers arrive soon after daybreak. 

Slabs of pork hang from the stalls and various cuts are piled on the counters amid lights with a reddish glare and the occasional buzzing of flies.
Just a few minutes away at the nearby Walmart, where there are also options for fresh, chilled and frozen meat, the customer flow at this time of day is only a trickle compared to the wet market. 

It has your average western supermarket vibe – white daylight lighting, sterile and clean.
Staff at the meat counter in Walmart and at the stalls in the wet market both say the meat comes in from the same slaughterhouse around 2am. 

So why the huge difference in foot traffic?
Molly Maj, a corporate communications representative for Walmart, says “the average customer in China still prefers fresh meat” over other options.
One reason for the demand for wet markets is that widespread refrigeration only came to China in recent years. 

While most urban homes now have refrigerators, many in rural areas and low income urban renters still do not own one, or only a mini-fridge if they do.

‘Wet’ markets are a huge part of life in China but have been linked to disease outbreaks. 

The habit of buying perishable food for daily use is still prevalent in many consumers, particularly older shoppers who grew up without refrigerators. 

They say they can tell the quality of fresh meat by its smell, colour and how it feels to the touch.
“When I’m talking with my students I say: ‘The term warm meat, fresh meat, sounds disgusting to me, I grew up [in Germany] with chilled meat, that’s all I know,” Dirk Pfeiffer, a professor of veterinary medicine at City University in Hong Kong and an expert on diseases related to animal husbandry, says.
“So I ask them why and they come up with all sorts of vague things like the soup tastes better or that it is a trust issue, knowing it is a live animal at the other end and not some diseased animal,” he says. “It’s all very subjective.”

An ‘utter disaster’ for disease
Wet markets are central to the perception that fresh meat is better, says Pfeiffer.

They evoke nostalgia among shoppers, many of whom come from rural areas where all they knew were wet markets and no refrigeration.
Where a wet market feels familiar a supermarket can seem alien and out of place.
“I actually believe that it is an important thing for the older generation to go to the wet market and chat,” says Pfeiffer. 

However, the way the animal trade operates in China is “an utter disaster”, for animal disease and welfare, he adds.

‘It is an important thing for the older generation to go to the wet market and chat’ – Prof Dirk Pfeiffer. 

A year ago, before rising concerns about the spread of ASF, nearly 4,000 pigs crossed daily with less scrutiny. 

Pigs were held in dismal conditions for as long as five days before being slaughtered on the Hong Kong side, greatly enhancing the possibility of disease transmission, says Pfeiffer.
The recent shortages due to the ASF outbreak have doubled and tripled prices for fresh pork at wet markets across Hong Kong. 

Farms in Hong Kong itself can usually supply about 300 pigs a day. 

Land use and environmental restrictions prevent any increase in production. 

The result is further worries about Hong Kong’s reliance on mainland China beyond its water and energy dependence.
“Many years ago, we had imports from all over Asia of live animals, but eventually the entire supply was monopolised by mainland China,” said Helena Wong, a member of Hong Kong’s legislative council panel on food safety and environmental hygiene. 

“They killed all their competitors and monopolised the supply of live pig and chicken.”
More than 6,000 pigs at the Sheung Shui slaughterhouse were culled in May 2019 after ASF was found among animals brought in from China. 

Hong Kong’s legislative council is now trying to figure out how much it owes traders and farmers in compensation.
Massive culls of poultry due to avian flu in imported mainland chickens in the last decade also led to large compensation bills and, eventually, to ending live chicken imports in early 2016.

Pigs about to be buried alive in a pit after an outbreak of African swine fever in Guangxi in February 2019. 

“We as taxpayers have to give that money,” said Wong. 

“So now we are in a big crisis because in the past few years we have experienced avian flu and now African swine fever.”

A future beyond ‘warm meat’ for Hong Kong
Disease outbreaks have raised wider questions about the sustainability of Chinese consumers’ appetite – both on the mainland and in Hong Kong – for what is often called “warm” meat.
For Deborah Cao, a professor at Griffith University in Australia and an expert on animal protection in China, a deeper issue driving the live animal trade is a cultural disconnect about animal welfare.
“The main problem is the indifference or perception of people who simply regard animals as food, tools, or as things that people can do anything they want to,” she said.
“In particular, there is no perception of farm animals as having feelings, or being capable of feeling pain or suffering.”Hong Kong may find it difficult to switch to a different model. 

There is almost no chance of farm expansion to support larger scale production within Hong Kong and, although the government is looking at possibilities of live imports from other Asian countries, the ports do not have adequate facilities to cope with large numbers.
“To a large extent, if we insist on fresh food, we have to rely on China,” said Wong. 

“If we can change and make certain concessions, Hong Kong has always been an open market for importing food items from many parts of the world. It is only for the provision of live animals that we are monopolised by the mainland farms.”

Chinese Killer Virus

China Expands Travel Restrictions to 2 More Cities as Outbreak Grows

• The authorities enacted strict travel bans for the central Chinese cities of Huanggang, Ezhou and Wuhan, collectively home to nearly 20 million people. 
• At least 17 people have died and more than 570 have been sickened by a mysterious illness.

By The New York Times

In addition to canceling flights and trains, the authorities also shuttered movie theaters, cafes and other public spaces.

Police officers guarding an entrance to the closed Hankou Railway Station in Wuhan, China, on Thursday.

The authorities ban travel from three cities at center of outbreak, affecting millions.
The authorities expanded travel restrictions to two central Chinese cities near Wuhan, the epicenter of a mysterious outbreak of coronavirus, hours after announcing that 17 people had died and more than 570 had contracted the disease.
The restrictions on train and other forms of travel will apply to tens of millions of people and come just days before the Lunar New Year holiday, when hundreds of millions of people travel around and out of the country.
The Chinese authorities on Thursday morning closed off Wuhan — a major port city of more than 11 million people and the center of a pneumonia-like virus that has spread halfway around the world — by canceling flights and trains leaving the city, and suspending buses, subways and ferries within it.
By evening, officials planned to close off Huanggang, a city of seven million about 30 miles east of Wuhan, and shut rail stations in the nearby city of Ezhou, which has about one million residents.
In Huanggang, public transportation and departing trains would were to stop service at midnight. Residents would not be allowed to leave the city without special permission, according to a government statement. 

In Ezhou, all rail stations were to be closed.
In Wuhan, residents said that a sense of fear was growing as the city went into lockdown.
The new virus, which first emerged at the end of December, has killed at least 17 people and sickened more than 570, including in Taiwan, Japan, Thailand, South Korea and the United States. 

It has raised the specter of a repeat of the SARS epidemic, which broke out in China in 2002 and 2003 and spread rapidly while officials obscured the seriousness of the crisis. 

That virus eventually killed more than 800 people worldwide.
Roughly 30,000 people fly out of Wuhan on an average day, according to air traffic data. 

Many more leave using ground transportation like trains and cars. 

The city is the hub of industry and commerce in central China, home to the region’s biggest airport and deepwater port.
The sudden restrictions could upend the travel plans of millions of Chinese citizens, who travel in huge numbers during the Lunar New Year holiday, which begins on Friday. 

The government said it would close Wuhan’s airport and train stations to departures, and it urged residents not to leave the city unless they had an urgent reason to do so.

Residents are nervous and angry.

A supermarket in Wuhan, on Thursday.

Across Wuhan on Thursday, residents — some wearing masks, some sniffing or coughing — visited hospitals and clinics seeking treatment. 

In interviews with a New York Times correspondent in the city, some said they were angry about the sudden lockdown. 

Others said they were confused by the restrictions.
Outside the Wuhan No. 3 Hospital, Yang Lin, said she had come to the hospital to see if a sniffling cold she had might be the coronavirus. 

She said that after a quick check, the doctors told her not to worry. 

But she was not reassured.
“They said it was just a common cold, and told me to get some medicine and go home,” Ms. Yang, 28, said. 

“But how am I to know? They didn’t even take my temperature. It’s just not responsible.”
The outbreak is testing Wuhan’s health care system. 

Several Wuhan residents said on social media websites that they had gone from hospital to hospital, waiting in lines for hours, only to be sent home with medicine and instructions to seek further treatment later if symptoms persisted in a few days.
“The government did not fulfill its duty,” Du Hanrong, 56, a retiree, said by telephone. 

“They just are doing things hastily and carelessly.”
Doctors told some patients that there was a shortage of hospital beds as well as testing kits, according to posts on Chinese social media sites.
Cheng Shidong, a doctor at the Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, said in an interview that his hospital had set up 100 beds to receive infected patients, but that it didn’t have enough protective material, such as masks and suits, for the medical staff.
In Wuhan, Ms. Yang said that while she was in a pharmacy buying medicine, another person complained that he thought he had the coronavirus but had not been isolated. 

The city’s medical system, especially its smaller hospitals, seems unprepared for the influx of patients, she said.
“I’m willing to accept that we have to stay in Wuhan, O.K., but the medical care needs to keep up,” she said. 

“You shouldn’t tell us we can’t leave, and then give us second-rate medical care. That’s unfair.”


Who are the victims?
Health workers wear protective suits at the Zhongnan Hospital in Wuhan, China, on Wednesday.

China’s health commission, which has tightly controlled news about the toll of the outbreak, released on Thursday its most detailed list of the people who have died of the disease.
The first 17 people were largely older men, many with underlying health problems. 

All died in Hubei Province, which includes the city of Wuhan.
The first confirmed death was a 61-year-old man who went to a hospital in Wuhan on December 27, weak with a fever and a cough. 

He was transferred to another hospital as his condition worsened, and he was later attached to a machine that helped oxygenate his blood. 

But his condition worsened, and he died on Jan. 9.Of the first 17 deaths, 13 were men and four were women, officials said. 

The youngest victim was a 48-year-old woman identified only by her surname, Yin, who died on Monday. 

The oldest were two 89-year-old men who died on Saturday and Sunday.
Many had underlying conditions like cirrhosis of the liver, hypertension, diabetes and Parkinson’s disease. 

Most had gone to the hospital with a fever and a cough, though at least three had no fever when they were admitted, according to the health commission.
While a full picture of the virus is still unknown, medical experts found some positive signs in the fact that the disease did not appear to be killing young and otherwise healthy people.It was a somewhat reassuring sign that “the majority of fatal cases are elderly and/or have a chronic disease that would increase their susceptibility to infectious diseases,” said Dr. W. Ian Lipkin, an epidemiologist at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University in New York.

‘I feel extremely powerless,’ says a SARS expert, raising an alarm.

Travelers arrive on Thursday at a nearly deserted train station in Wuhan.

In an unusually blunt interview, Dr. Guan Yi, a professor of infectious diseases in Hong Kong and expert on SARS, criticized the authorities in Wuhan for acting too slowly and obstructing his efforts to investigate the outbreak.
Dr. Guan, who helped successfully identify the coronavirus that caused SARS during the 2002-2003 outbreak in China, told the influential Chinese magazine Caixin that he was deeply frustrated by the city government’s response to the spread of the virus.
He and his team had visited Wuhan on Tuesday hoping that they could track the animal that was the source of the coronavirus but were shocked to find that residents at a market were not taking any precautions or wearing masks. 

No special measures were in place at the airport to disinfect surfaces and floors, either. 

This showed that the city government was being complacent despite the urgent orders handed down by Beijing, he said.
“I thought at the time, we had to be in a ‘state of war’, but how come the alarm has not been raised?” he told Caixin. 

“Poor citizens, they were still preparing to ring in the New Year in peace and had no sense about the epidemic.”
He also criticized the local authorities for disinfecting the market where many infections had been traced to, saying that made it difficult for researchers to investigate where the virus came from.
“I consider myself a veteran in battles,” he said, citing his experience with bird flu, SARS, and other outbreaks. 

“But with this Wuhan pneumonia, I feel extremely powerless.”

What is a coronavirus and why is it so dangerous?

Paramedics taking a man believed to be Hong Kong’s first coronavirus patient to a hospital on Wednesday.

Coronaviruses are named for the spikes that protrude from their membranes, which resemble the sun’s corona. 

They can infect both animals and people, and cause illnesses of the respiratory tract, ranging from the common cold to severe conditions like SARS, which sickened thousands of people around the world — and killed nearly 800 — during a 2003 outbreak.
Symptoms of infection include a high fever, difficulty breathing and lung lesions. 

Milder cases may resemble the flu or a bad cold, making detection very difficult. 

The incubation period — the time from exposure to the onset of symptoms — is believed to be about two weeks.
Little is known about who is most at risk. 

Some of the nine patients who have died also suffered other illnesses.

Chinese worry the government is underreporting cases.
A hospital worker washes the entrance to the Wuhan Medical Treatment Center, where some infected with a new virus were being treated.

There are growing concerns that the Chinese authorities are underreporting the number of people who are ill with the virus. 

Relatives of patients say that hospitals, strapped for resources as they deal with an influx of patients, are turning sick people away or refusing to test them for the coronavirus.Many people remain skeptical of the government’s official statistics, with memories of the effort to cover up the severity of the SARS outbreak in 2003 still fresh.
In Wuhan, Kyle Hui, an architect from Shanghai, said that doctors at Tongji Hospital declined to test his stepmother for the virus, even though she was showing symptoms like a cough and a fever. 

She died on Jan. 15 of “severe pneumonia,” according to a copy of her death certificate.Mr. Hui said that hospital workers treated his stepmother as if she had the coronavirus, wearing hazmat suits. 

After she died, the hospital instructed the family to cremate the body immediately. 

Mr. Hui said that after her death, doctors informed the family that they suspected his stepmother had the coronavirus.
“I’m very sad my stepmother left without any dignity,” Mr. Hui said during an interview this week in a cafe in Wuhan. 

“There was no time to say goodbye.”

Chinese state media plays down the crisis.
Health officials in Beijing take passengers’ temperatures as they arrive on flights from Wuhan on Wednesday. 

A sense of crisis is spreading through China as more people fall ill to the deadly virus. 

But you wouldn’t know it reading the front pages of China’s official newspapers.
As China grapples with one of its most serious public health crises in years, the ruling Communist Party’s most important news outlets seem oblivious to the emergency.
On Thursday, the front page of the People’s Daily featured stories about Chinese dictator Xi Jinping “visiting and comforting” villagers in Yunnan, a southwestern province, ahead of the Lunar New Year Holiday, describing a “warm and peaceful” scene. 

A photo showed New Year’s revelers aboard a train, smiling and snapping photos.
On Wednesday, China Central Television, the state broadcaster, treated the outbreak as a footnote in its evening newscast, one of the most watched television programs in China, instead focusing on Xi’s talks with world leaders.
While more commercially focused outlets, such as Caixin, a financial magazine, and the Beijing News, a newspaper, are covering the crisis extensively, the party’s flagship news outlets have been quiet.
Experts said Xi Jinping was trying to prevent a sense of panic and to limit criticism of the party’s response.“The top priority will be to keep coverage from asking more probing questions about how China’s institutions have responded, questions that might lead to criticism of the government,” said David Bandurski, co-director of the China Media Project.

A New York Times reporter travels to the epidemic’s ground zero.
Chris Buckley, our chief China correspondent, headed to Wuhan from Beijing to cover the outbreak. He is sending live dispatches from his trip.

9:25 A.M. — BEIJING
At the Beijing West Railway Station on Thursday morning there were noticeably more people wearing masks than have been seen around the city in recent days. 

Still, the number of travelers heading out for the Lunar New Year is still sizable. 

This is not the empty ghost city that Beijing became during the SARS epidemic of 2003. 

Hundreds of people lined up to take a train that passes through Wuhan and other cities on the way to Hong Kong. 

Almost all wore masks.

11 A.M. — ABOARD THE G79 HIGH SPEED TRAIN
The G79 high speed train from Beijing to Hong Kong, which stops in Wuhan, was crowded with holiday passengers. 

But few seemed to have plans to get off in Wuhan. 

The train was a hubbub of conversation, much of it about the deadly coronavirus and the lockdown around Wuhan.
Guo Jing, a worker from northeast China, was headed with two friends for a holiday in Macau. 

After some hesitation, they had taken off their masks. 

“They’re too uncomfortable inside,” Mr. Guo said. 

“My view is we have to be careful but not panic. If you’re the panicky type, then you wouldn’t be on this train.”


Chris Buckley 储百亮
✔@ChuBailiang
Time to get back onto Twitter. I’m about to arrive in Wuhan to see how the city is coping under the lockdown and the menace of the coronavirus. Also follow live updates at the Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/world/asia/china-coronavirus.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share …
1,821
6:47 AM - Jan 23, 2020

1:37 P.M. — ABOARD THE G79 HIGH SPEED TRAIN
Half an hour out from Wuhan, the train is quite crowded with passengers, most of whom are wearing masks.
I haven’t been able to find any who say they are ending their journey at Wuhan, and when I explain that I’m getting off there the reactions vary from advice — wear masks, don’t go, drink lots of water — to mordant jokes that I may be there a long time.
“You should know that they probably won’t let people out until the New Year holiday is over,” said one woman, who would only give her family name, Yang. 

I had expected that there might be checks on the train, or guards checking people who planned to get off at Wuhan. 

But not so far.

2:29 P.M. — WUHAN
Wuhan Railway Station, usually thronging with people in the days before the Lunar New Year holiday, is very empty.
An announcement playing on a loop over the speakers tells the few people here that residents cannot leave the city and the station is temporarily closed. 

But there is, so far at least, no extraordinary security around the station. 

There was a fever detector at the exit from the train platform, but I’ve seen no other steps to check people.
Many residents tried to leave the city.
The announcement that the city of Wuhan would be temporarily sealed off from the outside world starting at 10 a.m. on Thursday came while most residents were asleep at 2 a.m.
Some decided to flee the city.
Residents were seen hauling their luggage to a train station in the early hours before the citywide lockdown took effect, the Chinese news outlet Caixin reported. 

Several people said they would buy tickets for any destination as long as they could leave Wuhan, the magazine reported.
Lines of passengers in masks and down jackets, lugging suitcases, formed outside the major Hankou railway station just 20 minutes before the cutoff time, a live video by media outlet The Paper showed.
Han Zhen and Wang Mengkai, two migrant workers from Henan Province, said they had rushed to the railway station in order to leave on Wednesday night, but missed the last train out.
Both said they were frustrated by the sudden lockdown and were scrambling to find a way home.
“It’s serious but not that serious,” said Mr. Wang, who works in an electronics parts factory. 

“We’re trying to figure out how we can get home. If we can’t get out on a train, we’ll try putting together a car with a driver.”
Asked if they were motivated to leave by fear of the virus, Mr. Han said: “No, we are not scared.”
“It’s the New Year, we just have to go home,” he added.