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February 7, 2020 7:50 AM

Posted: February 7, 2020 7:50 AM

Doctor Li Wenliang sounded one of the first warnings on the Wuhan coronavirus, and was silenced by Chinese authorities. CNNs David Culver reports.

Speaking to state media in late December, one of Chinas top medical officials hailed eight residents of Wuhan who had attempted to blow the whistle on the coronavirus outbreak now devastating the country.

In retrospect, we should highly praise them, said Zeng Guang, chief epidemiologist at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CCDC). They were wise before the outbreak.

One of those whistleblowers, detained for spreading rumors as the citys government continued to downplay the dangers of the virus, was Li Wenliang. A young doctor in one of Wuhans main hospitals, Li posted in a private group chat about the spread of a SARS-like virus.

I only wanted to remind my university classmates to be careful, he told CNN this week.

Li was speaking from his hospital bed, having succumbed to the virus himself. In the early hours of Friday morning, his condition worsened, and the 34-year-old died, becoming one of hundreds of fatalities from an outbreak that has spread well beyond Wuhan, affecting all of China and dozens of countries around the world.

If Lis initial arrest was an embarrassment for the authorities, his death is a disaster.

The reaction on the Chinese internet as news of Lis death spread was immediate and almost unprecedented.

Countless young people will mature overnight after today: the world is not as beautiful as we imagined, one commenter wrote. Are you angry? If any of us here is fortunate enough to speak up for the public in the future, please make sure you remember tonights anger.

As the grief and rage poured out, those in charge of Chinas vast censorship apparatus, the Great Firewall, seemed at a loss over what to do. Topics relating to censorship itself, usually absolutely verboten, trended for several hours before being deleted, rare evidence of indecision and confusion.

On Weibo, a Twitter-like platform, two hashtags The Wuhan government owes Dr. Li Wenliang an apology and We want freedom of speech attracted tens of thousands of views, before being deleted. Another hashtag, I want freedom of speech, drew more than 1.8 million views in the early hours of Friday morning, before it too was censored.

The anger over Lis death was made worse by an apparent clumsy attempt to control the narrative, one that was highly reminiscent of the overreaction that led to his initial arrest.

Multiple state media outlets reported Lis death late Thursday night, citing friends and doctors at Wuhan Central Hospital, only to subsequently delete them without explanation. The hospital claimed efforts to resuscitate Li were underway, but later issued a statement that he had died.

While it is possible that this was a mistake and Chinese media wouldnt be the first to misreport someones death the suggestion that the censors hands were involved was enough to spark fury online.

A doctor had to die twice, wrote one user on the popular social media app WeChat. That is national humiliation.

Others pointed to the timing of the eventual confirmation, suggesting the authorities had tried to push the announcement until most people would be in bed so they could better control the reaction.

I knew you would post this in the middle of the night, wrote one user. You think weve all gone to sleep? No. We havent.

The fury and the pushback against the censorship apparatus itself has not been seen to this extent since the Wenzhou train crash in 2011, when authorities rushed to cover up the causes of a high-speed rail collision, even abandoning the search for survivors while many were still alive.

That incident became a lightning rod for frustrations about poor safety standards in China and the uncaring attitudes of the authorities, just as it appears Lis death will be a conduit for anger over a host of issues beyond the virus.

Lis death and the authorities clumsy handling of it has exacerbated a crisis that is already shaking the very foundations of the Chinese state.

Since the transition from socialism to state capitalism and the brutal suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen Movement, Chinas government has based its legitimacy on its ability to grow the economy, keeping its people safe and successful.

The Wuhan conronavirus threatens this social contract in two ways. The utter failure to contain the outbreak has put hundreds of millions at risk of a potentially deadly virus; while at the same time, the outbreak and efforts to tackle it have delivered yet another hit to an economy already struggling with structural issues and the US-China trade war.

Making matters worse is the evidence that it was the Communist Party system itself, which does not reward speaking out or risk taking, that likely led Wuhan city officials to initially downplay the virus and attempt to control the narrative.

Revelations about how Wuhan government functionaries handled the early weeks of the outbreak especially the news that Li and other whistleblowers had been detained led to considerable anger, but the central authorities were largely able to keep this focused on local officials by allowing a rare amount of transparency and giving Chinese media a relatively free hand in covering the outbreak.

In the past week or so, however, the central authorities have tightened their grip on the flow of information, as increasingly draconian methods of control are put in place nationwide to stop the virus spread. Most of the country is on voluntary or mandatory quarantine, and the economic toll of such measures is starting to bite.

In response, state media has been emphasizing positive stories of resilience and heroism, and it seemed like Li might have fit into this new narrative, fulfilling a role similar to that of Jiang Yanyong, a retired military doctor and whistleblower during the 2003 SARS pandemic. Perhaps Li could have been reframed as someone fighting the pointless formalities and bureaucratism that state media has been inveighing against all week.

Lis death has thrown this out of the window, and in doing so has exposed the cold reality at the heart of the Chinese social contract: when it comes down to it, individuals are absolutely expendable if the stability of the Party is at stake. Chinese authorities make a big point out of the country being a collective that pulls together in a crisis, unlike the individual-focused societies of the West, but ultimately people know that it is the Party, not the country, that comes first.

Chinas censorship apparatus is built on this principle. Anything that threatens the Party, from open dissent to simply organizing outside of official structures no matter how innocuous the topic is not tolerated and must be erased.

The need to maintain stability is what will dominate the response to Lis death. An outpouring of grief is fine, even some anger is acceptable, provided it can be focused on individuals and not the system at large, and some scalps may be offered to help this along. What the authorities cannot allow is for the Party or the central government to become a target, even when the Wuhan crisis and Lis death have exposed their many shortcomings.

Whether they will be successful in doing so remains to be seen. Lis sheer normality makes his death resonate all the more with the public. He was not some Party cadre or police officer of the type lauded in state media, noble and personality free, but a relatable and ordinary person, who posted on social media about loving fried chicken and ice cream, complained about work, and commented on pop culture.

He is every person whos felt unloved by the Chinese bureaucracy, and hes infinitely more sympathetic than the steely-eyed men and women trying to control the narrative around his death.

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China's censors tried to control the narrative on a hero doctor's death. It backfired terribly - YakTriNews KAPP-KVEW

Just what is it about potential pandemics that scare us so? While the odds of dying from a car accident or heart disease are greater -- at least in the United States -- rare infectious diseases still loom larger in our collective nightmares.

The truth is, the odds don't factor into what frightens us. Our rational minds aren't calling the shots here -- our irrational fears are. There is something supremely unsettling about the invisibility of germs and viruses and the way they spread that invokes our deepest, most primal survival instincts.

But here is a quick reality check: While the Wuhan coronavirus (2019-nCoV) has produced a dozen confirmed cases in the US (mostly involving people who recently traveled to Wuhan, China, where the virus originated), the common flu has affected approximately 19 million Americans and killed about 10,000 people so far this season.

Anxiety can sometimes be a constructive response, as it inspires caution and careful analysis of a situation before jumping in. But as anyone who has experienced overwhelming anxiety can attest, it is not likely a response based on logic, facts and figures, or realistic threat levels.

The public may respond with panic, fear and suspicion-- and sometimes even outright superstition, paranoia or moral judgement when it comes to unfamiliar illnesses. The victims, even after recovery, may be shunned and discriminated against. Communities, even families, can be torn apart.

People who are fearful may follow not only the guidelines recommended by health experts, but go far beyond them: My children can't be in a classroom with your children, we don't want a clinic in our village, you aren't allowed entry back into the country under any circumstances.

When the 1918 influenza killed 759 people in Philadelphia in one day alone, John Barry, who chronicled the pandemic in his 2004 book The Great Influenza, wrote, 'Fear began to break down the community of the city. Trust broke down. Signs began to surface of not just edginess but anger, not just finger-pointing or protecting one's own interests but active selfishness in the face of general calamity.'

Dangerous misconceptions can emerge out of this pervasive fear, anxiety and ignorance -- the less people know, the more they might panic. The results can be deadly. We saw this around victims of AIDS, SARS, and Ebola. Indeed, health workers and responders battling the latest Ebola outbreak suffered more than 300 attacks in 2019 by armed groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo, leaving at least six dead and 70 wounded.

Outbreaks can, indeed, be terrifying, and often involve mass casualties. And there's no denying that some diseases have the potential to kill in horrific ways. In their relentless march from host to host, infectious diseases seem to underscore what we know, but -- whistling past the graveyard -- try to ignore. We are vulnerable, we are mortal, we will all die.

But when our emotions and fears take over, we have difficulty making rational decisions. We become anxious or angry and unable to process information. Experts might be trying to get out the facts in a clear and concise manner, but if you're already in an emotionally vulnerable place, you might not be hearing them. Public health professionals have long recognized the importance of acknowledging people's feelings and reassuring them with facts.

One helpful resource is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which presents the latest confirmed statistics and gives scientifically valid advice on preventing the spread of respiratory diseases like coronaviruses, including: washing your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds or with alcohol-based hand sanitizer; avoiding touching your eyes, nose and mouth with unwashed hands; and staying home when you are sick.

Facts do win out in the end, although this may take years. When was the last time anyone except for the most alarmist among us worried that the person sitting next to us on the subway or serving our salad had HIV/AIDS? And yet, there was a time when 'AIDS hysteria' was commonplace, and a Florida family, whose three young sons were infected with AIDS, were subjected to bomb and death threats and a school boycott before their house burned down in a suspicious fire.

We all live in a world with random, indiscriminate threats: terrorist attacks, plane crashes, unexpected losses and unexplained illnesses.

In the face of a perceived threat, try to listen calmly -- with an open mind and an open heart -- to the facts. And rather than run from your fears or get stuck in them, try to be present with your anxieties and transform your fears. Use them to make yourself more cognizant of your surroundings and to do what is appropriate to take care of yourself and those around you.

I assure you, misguided decisions based on fear can be just as dangerous as the original threat itself.

Read this article:
Excessive fear of the Wuhan coronavirus can be dangerous - KEZI TV

And social media has been more than a vehicle for information: It has also spawned more journalism and a greater variety of voices in recent years. Some of the deeper coverage of the coronavirus crisis has come from nontraditional, online-only news sites, like Tengxun and Sohu, which officially arent allowed to carry out independent reporting, and so-called self-media (zi meiti in Chinese), self-operated social-media accounts that produce anything from entertainment to political commentary. Some of these platforms are now profitable, run by former journalists, and feature citizen journalism.

But the window for critical reporting in times of crises tends to be quite narrow, and it opens and shuts rather unpredictably. This is partly because officials practice what I have described elsewhere as guarded improvisation: With social stability as their ultimate aim, the authorities try to strike a fragile balance between political control and curated transparency, alternating between censorship or propaganda and allowing the media, or its surrogates, to press for accountability.

I found, for example, that news investigations into the earthquake in Wenchuan, Sichuan Province, in 2008 more than 69,000 dead were allowed only for a few weeks. After accounts revealed that poorly built schools had contributed to the death toll, the government blocked independent inquiries into the disaster.

Once a crisis seems like it could cause social instability especially when public blame appears to shift from the local to the central authorities the government starts reining in the media and tries to co-opt it into delivering a unified, official message. Even Hu Xijin, the editor of the nationalistic Global Times, has called out the Wuhan government for silencing whistle-blowers in the early days of the coronavirus outbreak. On the other hand, some critical articles about the epidemic though not necessarily the hardest-hitting ones have already vanished from the internet.

There is no telling how much longer Chinese journalists and concerned citizens will be able to report on and raise hard questions about the crisis. But its worth remembering that authoritarianism also is the mother of creativity. Chinas efforts to steer, muffle or control the media have produced alternative news sources that subtly, indirectly skirt restrictions. And this, the authorities tolerate, to a point. Even under President Xi Jinping, the government is sensitive and somewhat responsive to bottom-up pressure from the people their need to know, their calls for accountability. In China, too, as the coronavirus epidemic reveals, there is a social contract between the public and the party-state.

Maria Repnikova (@MariaRepnikova) is an assistant professor of Global Communication at Georgia State University and the author of Media Politics in China: Improvising Power Under Authoritarianism.

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The Subtle Muckrakers of the Coronavirus Epidemic - The New York Times

Updated February 07, 2020 13:34:48

Doctors reprimanded for "spreading rumours".

Multiple accounts of families in Wuhan with deceased relatives who never got tested.

An army of state media workers being sent to the epicentre to help "guide" public opinion about the outbreak.

They're the signs that have fuelled concerns that, 17 years after the Chinese Government's disastrous cover-up of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak, authorities may be engaged in similar practices.

It's the question people abroad ask me the most.

The evidence shows that in the initial weeks of the outbreak authorities in Wuhan reprimanded whistleblowers including at least one doctor who contracted the virus for alerting others to the danger.

Officials also downplayed the severity of the virus, disastrously telling people it likely couldn't be transferred between humans, when they already had cases that strongly suggested it could, including the infection of 14 hospital workers.

But since those early missteps, it has become trickier to pinpoint efforts to downplay or obfuscate the severity of the outbreak.

China's top investigative journalistic outlets have been allowed leeway to report from the epicentre, and the whistleblowers have even been receiving some praise in state media.

A shortage of test kits and numerous reports of patients turned away, untested, from hospitals that were already full has helped form a general consensus on the ground that the official figures aren't keeping up with the real number of infections.

But even as testing has improved and the number of confirmed cases has skyrocketed, no-one believes authorities can accurately document new diagnoses for such a fast-spreading virus in real time particularly one where some patients have spread it before showing symptoms.

The Chinese Government's centralised control for distributing the statistics is certainly playing a role in slowing down the release of information, a factor noted by the embattled Wuhan Mayor in an interview.

In messages seen by the ABC, a specialist doctor who works in a major Beijing hospital warns people in an encrypted chat group that the outbreak in the capital is more serious than is being reported.

His choice of a foreign encrypted messaging app instead of the far more popular WeChat reflects rules that could see him disciplined for disseminating information through non-approved channels.

While such regulations could be seen to stifle and suppress information about the outbreak, they're not new, but a standard part of China's tightly controlled information system.

More intriguing is the announcement, trumpeted by state TV, that the Communist Party's Central Propaganda Department has dispatched 300 journalists to Wuhan and Hubei province.

According to state media, China's leader Xi Jinping has tasked them with "clear requirements" for "education and public opinion guidance", to "help win the battle to control the epidemic".

Again, "public opinion guidance" is a standard directive for journalists in China, but the fanfare around this media group has many wondering if information coming from non-government sources in the epicentre might start facing a clampdown.

On Wednesday, a local health commission official in Hubei described the outbreak as not just a disaster, but a "man-made" one, quoting conversations with doctors in Wuhan.

The post received 340,000 likes on the Twitter-like platform Weibo before disappearing.

It spread further in private groups on WeChat before being censored.

The concern about censorship is heightened because China's Government is now less than one month away from its carefully crafted annual political showpiece the National People's Congress, an event that brings thousands of delegates from across the country to the capital.

In the current crisis it's unthinkable that it could go ahead on time, but in normal circumstances it would be unthinkable that anything could be important enough to derail it.

We'll see in the coming days whether the brave journalists of relatively independent media outlets Caijing, Caixin and others continue publishing investigative reports from Wuhan.

Or if the Communist Party's instinct for control of the narrative takes priority.

Jeremy Fernandez will host a 30-minute special on coronavirus on Friday, February 7 from 7.30pm AEDT on News Channel, featuring a guest panel, explainers on how the virus unfolded and myth-busting the misinformation. The special will be repeated on ABC TV at 10pm

Topics:world-politics,respiratory-diseases,diseases-and-disorders,government-and-politics,health,travel-health-and-safety,china

First posted February 06, 2020 16:34:01

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The question I get asked the most: How much of what China is reporting on coronavirus is actually true? - ABC News

Anyway, it was always obvious to anyone who really paid attention that people like Paul Ryan were fiscal hypocrites, who would suddenly lose all interest in deficits as soon as a Republican occupied the White House. And thats what they did.

As I said, the budget deficit has exploded past $1 trillion under Trump, up from less than $600 billion in Obamas last year. Most of that rise can be attributed to Trumps policies, mainly a tax cut rammed through Congress using exactly the hyperpartisan tactics Obama balked at in 2009.

In a way, the surprising thing about Trumps deficitpalooza is that it hasnt boosted the economy even more, a shortfall that can be attributed to bad design. After all, the corporate tax cuts that were the biggest driver of rising deficits did nothing to increase business investment, which has actually declined over the past year.

And while the Obama stimulus included significant investments in the future, helping in particular to jump-start revolutionary progress in green energy, Trump has never delivered a penny on his promise to rebuild Americas infrastructure.

Still, Trumps deficits have given the economy and Trumps political fortunes a lift in the short term. And that fact should bother you, a lot.

Put it this way: Republicans used the pretense that they cared about fiscal responsibility to engage in de facto economic sabotage as long as a Democrat was in the White House. Then they abandoned the pretense and opened up the spending taps as soon as one of their own was in power. And far from paying a price for their duplicity, they are being politically rewarded.

The implications for party strategy are stark: Maximum cynicism is the best policy. Obstruct, disrupt, and hurt the economy as much as you can, deploying whatever hypocritical excuses you think the media will buy, when the other party holds the presidency. Then abandon all concerns for the future and buy votes once youre back in control.

For whatever reason, Democrats havent been willing or able to behave that cynically. Republicans, however, have. And if Trump is re-elected, that asymmetric cynicism will be the main reason.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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The Triumph of Fiscal Hypocrisy - The New York Times