Epidemic

Professor Deng Xize of Sichuan University says that months into the fight against the coronavirus, strategies that countries are adopting are coalescing around two main threads — a war of annihilation or a protracted war. He cautions that these conflicting approaches are bound to generate risks on a global scale. Not only will the history of some countries take a different turn, international dynamics will also be altered. For the individual, it may become a gamble of health and luck.

Angry netizens suggest that Wuhan party secretary Wang Zhonglin’s call for gratitude for the CCP shows where officials’ allegiance truly lies. The testy mood of the public portends the zero tolerance of further grandstanding behaviour.

In his first creative writing class of the semester, acclaimed Chinese author Yan Lianke addresses the Covid-19 milieu of the times. He urges his students to remember what they have seen and heard as memory separates man from beast; memory begets truth. He says if one cannot speak loudly or even whisper, at least remember.

The current coronavirus outbreak is not the first epidemic in China. Photo collector and Taiwanese writer Hsu Chung-mao, looks at a plague outbreak in Manchuria over a century ago and the role played by a Malaya-born doctor and Nobel Prize nominee.

The recent outbreak of a mystery pneumonia in Wuhan brings back memories of the 2003 SARS epidemic. How are the Chinese authorities responding differently this time, and are people sufficiently reassured?