The Daily - Fear, Fury and the Coronavirus

Episode Date: February 13, 2020

Note: This episode contains strong language in both English and Mandarin. What started as a story about fear of a new and dangerous virus has become a story of fury over the Chinese government’s handling of an epidemic. Today, one of our China correspondents takes us behind the scenes of Beijing’s response to a global outbreak. Guest: Amy Qin, a China correspondent for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading: President Xi Jinping faces an accelerating health crisis that is also a political one: a profound test of the authoritarian system he has built around himself over the past seven years.China’s leader, who rarely mingles with the public, visited several sites in Beijing and spoke to medical workers in Wuhan via video conferencing.Here are the latest updates on the global outbreak.

It's a rainy day, very gloomy rainy day and it's a little loud because you have to keep the windows open. That's the recommendation in these situations. You have to keep everything ventilated. Two weeks ago, our researcher Elsie and I went down to Wuhan, which is a major city in the center of China that has been the epicenter of the recent coronavirus outbreak. By then, it had been under lockdown for about a week, and we were really curious to see

how people were faring and what was going on, especially at the hospitals there. We took the train from Beijing to Wuhan, and we got off, and what we saw was totally crazy. I mean, we'd never seen anything like it. This is a city of 11 million that had come to a complete standstill. It felt like being in a parallel reality. To see those streets completely empty was really striking. It was eerie to hear the silence, and the only time we heard anything was the occasional barking of a dog or an ambulance passing by.

We were walking around this hospital, and we walked into the courtyard in front of the outpatient department, and that's where we came upon this very jarring scene. You had 30 or so patients that were all sitting quietly in the courtyard, all hooked up to IV drips that were hanging from tree branches or in their cars. We meet this mother and her two children who are all hooked up to IVs. or in their cars.

We meet this mother and her two children who are all hooked up to IVs. The mother's name is Yang Ming. They tell me that they are actually a family of six. There's Yang Ming, there's her husband, her husband's parents, and then their son and their daughter. And they have all been staying together. And she tells us that their grandmother got sick first, and one by one, each of them has gotten infected by the coronavirus. And now her husband is the only one

that doesn't have coronavirus. And then they tell me that just one week after the grandmother started showing symptoms, the grandfather died. She tells us that after the grandfather dies, the funeral home comes to take the body away. And he is cremated immediately. And she says that he was taken away just like a dead dog or a dead pig. As she's talking, her voice is starting to carry across the courtyard outside this hospital.

And other people are starting to listen in and crowd around us. And she's starting to get more and more upset. She was so palpably angry that at one point, the mother was waving her arms around in frustration and almost ripped the IV needle out of her hand. I've been covering China for seven years, and I've heard people express frustrations with the government before,

but really only in private. This was one of the few times that I've heard such raw anger toward the government publicly. She basically says, is this really my country? Or is this some kind of fucked up country? A country that doesn't take care of anything. And then she says, what kind of government is this? And after hearing that, that made me think that something was happening that was bigger than just an outbreak of a virus.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, inside China, what began as a story of fear over the coronavirus has now become the story of fury over the coronavirus, has now become the story of fury over the government's handling of the crisis. Beijing correspondent Amy Chin on what she saw in Wuhan. It's Thursday, February 13th.

Amy, what is it about this moment that you think is making people like the Zhang family feel free to speak out about their anger and to pretty explicitly criticize the Chinese government? So for the Zhang family, this is for them a matter of life or death. And it was a common feeling I heard throughout the city. But there's another added frustration boiling across the rest of the country about how the government is handling this crisis. And for them, it's really been captured in the story of this doctor named Dr. Li Wenliang. And who is this doctor? So Li Wenliang is an eye doctor at a hospital in Wuhan. And he had heard about this virus back in December that was going around the hospitals in the city. And so he went on WeChat, which is this big social messaging platform, and sent in a private messaging group with some of his med school classmates a text message basically warning them to protect themselves.

And a few days later after he sent that message, he was actually called in by the police in Wuhan. They brought him into the police station and they made him sign a statement saying that he was spreading false and illegal information, basically that he was spreading rumors. Authorities say it is untrue and eight people were detained for spreading fake news online and no medical staff had been infected. But of course it wasn't a rumor. Chinese health authorities are still working to identify the virus behind a pneumonia outbreak in the central city of Wuhan.

By the time Dr. Li was brought into the police station, 41 people had the coronavirus. And from there it just spread. A SARS-like virus which has infected hundreds in China has now reached the United States. Now, China has announced the first death from an outbreak of pneumonia caused by an unidentified virus. 121 people are under medical observation in Wuhan. Rumors on social media alleged that the outbreak in Wuhan could be linked to SARS. The health organization says it's a new type of coronavirus.

And Amy, at this point, what is happening to Dr. Li? So after Dr. Li gets taken into the police station and forced to sign this statement, he was actually treating a patient for glaucoma. And she wasn't showing any symptoms at the time, but he ended up contracting the virus from her. Wow. And from his sickbed, he starts to speak out again. In a matter of days, Dr. Li Wenliang went from treating patients to becoming one. He gives some interviews to Chinese media,

and he starts to become this public figure. Struggling to communicate, Li spoke with CNN briefly by phone. You can hear the hospital machines pulsing in the background. He becomes known as a whistleblower. Silenced by police, calls for Li and the others to be vindicated grew online. That the government didn't act fast enough on information that they were given and that they had missed this critical window of opportunity to get the outbreak under control. China's Supreme Court even weighed in, adding, quote, it might have been a fortunate thing if the public had listened to this rumor at the time. But for many...

So he's becoming a kind of spokesperson for a lot of frustrations. Exactly. And so at this point, it just feels like there's no light at the end of the tunnel. Now the death toll and the outbreak of a new coronavirus in China has jumped to 17. Hundreds of people have been diagnosed with the deadly virus known as the 2019- Overall, there are now more than 31,500 confirmed cases worldwide. More and more people are getting sick. We're seeing the numbers just surge every day of 600 deaths. People who are confirmed cases of the coronavirus, people who are dying of the coronavirus. Has jumped to more than 700. Everything felt so

uncertain. Officials are imposing restrictions on travel out of Wuhan, China. And 13 cities in lockdown this morning. Near empty shelves line supermarkets. A need for masks and protective suits. China's health minister, Ma Xiaowei, has said that he expects infections to continue to rise. And of course, that has everyone here in the country even more nervous. Citizens are actually freaking out. China right now is being massively rocked by anger. And the State Department has said it is chartering a flight to evacuate Americans out of Wuhan. Justin, though, will not be. So foreign governments started pulling their citizens out of Wuhan. And that's when I got the

call. So it was late last week and I'd been on the phone all day with my editors and I get a final call saying you need to go to the airport. There was one flight left that was being arranged by the U.S. State Department to go back to the U.S. So I started scrambling. I leave all my masks, my disinfectant wipes, my hazmat suit, my gloves with my colleagues. And then it's about a 40-minute drive to the airport. Okay, so I am at the airport in Wuhan now, and it's been a crazy, hectic day. I think that the next few weeks in quarantine on a military base will bring its own interesting moments.

And what is the scene at the airport? The scene at the airport was a little bit frenzied. I mean, at this point, these are really some of the last flights out for these countries who are evacuating their citizens. So it wasn't just the Americans. There were also the Canadians and the Japanese. We didn't even know at that point where they were taking us to. So I'm in the airport lobby, and I'm waiting for my flight.

And then my phone starts to buzz and I'm seeing all these messages come through. And I look at them and then I see that Dr. Lee has just died. And I could sense that this was going to be a big moment because I had started overhearing people talking about it in the airport terminal. But then I just had to leave. I had to get on the flight. We'll be right back. So Amy, Dr. Lee has died from the very virus that he alerted the government to.

And you're on a plane back to the U.S. from Wuhan. So what happens once you land? So once I land, I find that I am at the Miramar Marine Base in San Diego, California. I'm carted off to quarantine. And then I turn on my phone and I start going through my messages and I see this huge upswalling of outrage over Dr. Li's death. People from every stripe of the political or social spectrum in China. So you have people who are business people, who are blue collar workers, artists, lawyers. They're all posting about Dr. Lee's death. And I've never seen people come together like this before. And people were

so upset about his death. And what are they saying? A lot of people were posting candle emojis and other kinds of remembrances for Dr. Lee. They were posting photos of him. He had taken a selfie of himself wearing a surgical mask and someone had recreated that image to replace the surgical mask with barbed wire to kind of indicate that he had been muzzled. Some people were posting the anthem from Les Mis. Do you hear the people sing, singing a song of angry men? We actually saw the hashtag I want freedom of speech trending for five hours, which of course it was quickly censored. And we saw petitions going up by Chinese academics calling for freedom of speech. And we even saw a local government social

media account posting a portrait of Dr. Li along with the lines, heroes don't fall from the sky. They're just ordinary people who step forward. So the reaction is really remarkable. I mean, even the hospital where Dr. Lee died had posted an official notice of his death, and that had 3 million reactions and 300,000 comments. And so it was so clear that this was something that had really tapped into the frustration that was happening. And what do you make of those reactions?

Because it feels like it no longer is really just about this virus and the way that it was handled. Yeah, so at this point, it is clear that this is becoming so much bigger than just the virus. This is really about the government and this social contract that the people have had with the government, where they agree to keep silent as long as the government provides for their prosperity and health. It operates under this principle of stability at all costs. Right. And in their effort to create stability, in fact, they did the opposite. Yeah. I mean, I think that there's this realization, definitely, that there's something wrong with the system. And I don't think that it means that people are going out in the streets

and calling for a revolution. But the fact that people are calling for freedom of speech, I mean, that's really what this brought out. People in China already used to a pretty high level of censorship. But when it comes to censoring a warning about public health, that goes too far. And the reaction is so overwhelming that the government quickly realizes that they need to do something. And that's when we see China's leader, Xi Jinping, come forward out of the shadows and try to take control of the situation. He comes out and makes an appearance in Beijing. He visits a community center and a hospital. He gets his temperature taken.

He talks with local residents. And he does a video conference with doctors in Wuhan. So by this point, the government has sent the nation's top anti-corruption agency to go down to Wuhan and investigate Dr. Li's death. And state media is calling Dr. Lee a hero. This feels like a real shift for a government that originally reprimanded Dr. Lee and is now sending a team to investigate why he was muzzled. It feels like a concession. It is. But at the same time, we have to remember that this is also part of the party's ethos,

which is to always try to control the narrative. And for them, the path of least resistance in this situation is to hold Dr. Lee up as a hero, but also to do it in a way that coheres with the party narrative. Erasing the parts that might challenge their legitimacy or authority, which is the fact that he was punished by the government for trying to call attention to the fact that there was this virus going around. Do you think that the people in China view the government's response as an attempt to protect them from the virus or to protect the government from the story of a situation that's out of control?

Both. People really believe that the government wants to get this epidemic under control. But at the same time, they know that the government is only going to do this in a way that does not threaten its own hold on power. And that means taking control of the narrative, sending in their own journalists to make sure that only the positive aspects of what they're doing is being highlighted. And that people who are slipping through the cracks or all the failures of the policy are not being highlighted. Amy, I'm curious, have you been able to speak to the Zhang family since you evacuated, since you took that flight from Wuhan to California? We have. The last time we checked in with them, their situation had changed. The mother and the daughter were both infected with the coronavirus and have finally

been able to get into one of the makeshift quarantine centers set up by the government. Bella, the daughter, sent us a video of the center and it just shows a huge exhibition center with beds crowded tightly together and all these sick patients in these beds. Meanwhile, Bella's brother and their grandmother are still at home back in the family apartment, sick and unable to get into a hospital. The grandmother is in very serious condition. She can barely get out of bed. And they're also still living with their father, who is the only family member who hasn't gotten infected so far,

though they all think that it will be a matter of time. So basically half the family is being cared for and the other half have been kind of abandoned. Right. And remember, their grandfather had died in their family apartment and was taken to be cremated immediately. And they still don't even know where his ashes are.

Is the reality that another death in the family could happen something that they are preparing for? Yes, they've been planning for it. something that they are preparing for. Yes, they've been planning for it. They told us that when the grandmother dies, they're not going to let her go to the crematorium. But actually, the mother said she's going to drag her body to the local neighborhood committee and just put it there on the front steps

to show them how their inaction has devastated their entire family. Do you know whether the family knows about Dr. Li's death or if they were able to watch that video of Xi Jinping in public addressing the situation? I think if they've seen it, it's barely registered. They are so consumed with just trying to survive right now, like so many other people in Wuhan, that they're just putting their heads down, trying to move forward. Amy, thank you very much.

Thanks, Michael. On Thursday, nearly 15,000 new cases of coronavirus were added to the tally of infected people in the Chinese province where Wuhan is located, the largest one-day increase of the epidemic so far. That brings the total number of cases to more than 48,000. At the same time, 242 new deaths were also reported, bringing the death toll in the province to 1,310. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today.

For the second day in a row, President Trump intervened in the prosecution of his longtime friend and advisor, Roger Stone this time by attacking the judge in the case On Tuesday, at the president's urging the Department of Justice recommended a more lenient prison sentence for Stone who was convicted of obstructing a congressional investigation

into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. That move prompted four federal prosecutors to leave the case in protest. On Wednesday, Trump claimed without evidence in a tweet that the judge who will sentence Stone is biased against the president in what Democratic lawmakers said was a clear attempt to intimidate the judge before she sentences Stone. The president ran against the swamp in Washington, a place where the game is rigged by the powerful to benefit them personally.

I ask my fellow Americans, what is more swampy? What is more fetid, what is more stinking than the most powerful person in the country literally changing the rules to benefit a crony guilty of breaking the law? In response, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called for an investigation into Trump's conduct. As a result, I have formally requested that the Inspector General of the Justice Department investigate this matter immediately. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.