Things slowly easing up after quarantines in China
QINGDAO, China — Six weeks ago, I faced one of the biggest dilemmas of my life.
A deadly new virus was sweeping through China, and everything about it appeared to be a mystery: how it started, how it was transmitted, and — most importantly — how to defeat it. It didn’t take long for the virus, which had begun in an open market in Wuhan, to travel the roughly 600 miles to Qingdao.
Suddenly it was decision time. Do I stay here and ride it out, hoping for the best, or do I hop on a plane and go back to certain safety among family and friends in Houston?
Actually, the decision wasn’t all that difficult. I had adopted two young Chinese boys, and flying home would be like leaving them on the deck of the Titanic while I waved goodbye as I pulled away in a lifeboat. No thanks. I couldn’t live with that thought.
Let’s just wait here and see what happens.
Well, it turns out that there was no running from the novel coronavirus. And in a strange twist, China now appears to be one of the safest places to be, as the rest of the world grapples with the unchecked spread of the virus.
It has become a full-blown pandemic, with countries around the world — including the United States — scrambling to come up with coherent responses.
China is slowly returning to the way things were before the virus brought the country to a virtual standstill.
After weeks of quarantines, lockdowns and increasingly restrictive travel policies, things here have begun to ease up. Citizens who had been stranded in quarantined cities are starting to return home after almost two months of confinement. People are getting out, though their movements are still tracked by
mandatory QR code scans wherever they go.
Restaurants that have been closed for weeks are slowly reopening (though most are allowing only takeout, just as they now are throughout the United States). The Chinese Basketball Association is getting ready to resume its regular season, though the games will be played without spectators.
The reason for all these changes is that the numbers of new cases and deaths from the virus here have been falling in the past few weeks. While some — with some justification — have questioned the methods employed by the Chinese government to report the numbers, this is a situation where actions speak louder than words. By easing up restrictions, the message is clear: We’re rebounding.
Not that we’re out of the woods just yet.
Schools are still closed, and any place where people might gather in large numbers for social or recreational activities — bars, movie theaters, gyms, internet cafes — remains shuttered. There are still travel restrictions in effect, particularly from neighborhood to neighborhood.
The progress here is encouraging, but to fully appreciate where China is now, one needs to understand how this all began.
The new coronavirus was discovered in December, when a group of doctors in Wuhan observed a disease that was similar to SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), which started in China in 2002 and resulted in 8,098 cases and 774 deaths in 17 countries by mid-2003. Dr. Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist at Wuhan Central Hospital, used WeChat, a popular Chinese messaging app, to share details of the new virus with his medical school alumni group and warn of possible spread.
Li was censored by local police, who accused him of rumormongering and disturbing the social order. Hospital superiors and local officials didn’t want a public panic, so Li was forced to recant, suppressing vital information and giving the virus additional time to gain a foothold.
Soon, it became evident that a seismic medical event was occurring, and after Li died on Feb. 7 from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, the government was forced to finally realize (or accept) the enormity and gravity of the outbreak and took action.
In Wuhan, the government built two hospitals — one that featured 1,000 beds and another of 1,600 — in less than two weeks. One day after completion, patients were admitted and began treatment. China has always been able to throw resources at problems, and this was no different.
Next, the government had to address the human side of things.
For better or worse, the Chinese government has the power to impose its will on the citizens here and force compliance. In this case, it was for the better. Decisions were made, many were draconian, but the people obeyed.
Entire cities were locked down, resulting in almost 60 million people in quarantine, no small feat since the country was in the midst of Spring Festival (Chinese New Year), which annually produces the greatest mass migration in the world as hundreds of millions travel to visit families. In non-quarantined cities, neighborhoods were sealed off, creating medical containment zones, with everything from schools to movie theaters closed down.
Individual movement was tracked through QR code scans using a phone app.
Public service announcements were everywhere, in the media and on the streets, warning citizens to avoid direct contact with others, to wash hands frequently and to wear masks wherever they went. Frequent fever scans became a part of everyday life.
It appears to be working and life is returning to normal.
This is not intended to be pro-China propaganda. Even after a decade living here, I, like many other foreigners, often chafe at the relative lack of the freedoms we enjoy at home. This is simply a case of giving credit where credit is due, and recognizing that after initially bungling the issue on a local level, the government response here appears to have been effective.
So, I will sit and wait, but for different reasons than before. I had been waiting for the tide to turn here, which would allow me to take a much-needed trip back home to decompress.
But now I have to wait for the rest of the world to recover from what has already happened here. Man, 2020 has already been a very long year …