By January 20, the credibility gap between the official rhetoric and reality was so wide, it was left to Dr Zhong Nanshan, 83, an esteemed and trusted veteran of the first SARS epidemic, to break the bad news to the public that the novel coronavirus pneumonia “is certainly transmissible from human to human.”
In “a 180-degree turn for the propaganda system,” he confirmed cases in Beijing, Guangdong, Shanghai, and Zhejiang, as well as abroad in Japan, South Korea, and Thailand.
The entire country was put on alert and advised to wear face masks.
Yet the Wuhan and Hubei province leadership still proceeded with New Year celebrations, inviting city residents to apply for 200,000 free passes to visit landmark sites, while the local media praised performers for continuing despite being sick.
Observing the crowded scenes and “inaction” by local authorities, Professor Guan Yi, a visiting expert on respiratory syndrome coronaviruses from the University of Hong Kong, admitted feeling “truly helpless” and “scared.”
By the time a stunned Wuhan was suddenly sealed off from the world on January 23, as many as 500,000 people had already left for the holidays.
Prof Yang’s book points to the sobering estimate in one model by Dr Zhong that if the public epidemic control measures had been implemented merely five days earlier in January 2020, China’s total Covid-19 cases would have decreased by a staggering two-thirds.
He told the Telegraph he had been driven to write the book as the pandemic ultimately impacted not just Wuhan, but billions of people globally.
“There is a lot of desire to know what happened in the early stages. In that sense, I try to be as neutral as I can be.”
Prof Yang’s long-standing interest in China’s handling of infectious diseases, including HIV, Hepatitis and TB, finds its roots in a very personal loss. His Chinese father passed away from an infection when he was just a toddler.
“It is emotional in a way, and it does help me to come to terms,” he said.
But the political scientist does not have confidence that China’s complex governance system would handle another emerging and dangerous coronavirus any better in the future.
“There is an effort to reform the disease prevention and control bureaucracy. But my sense is that those steps are really very tentative,” he said. “In a country like China with significant regional variations, it’s the weakest links that matter the most.
“So, I am not too optimistic at this point and this is why I feel a sense of mission to publish this.”
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