I hope it’s not, but yesterday when I walked on the streets, I felt I was a minor character in a horror film. 

This week I planned to write about the disinformation in China, but the Wuhan virus outbreak changed everything. When I first read the news about the Wuhan virus that emerged from a seafood market in Wuhan city, I didn’t pay attention to it. Just one patient, and Wuhan is far away from where I live, and last— how can a fish kill humans? (I thought the virus came from a fish, no, a wild animal instead.) I was wrong. Until now (2020-1-22), for one month, this virus has spread to 4 countries, infected 440 people, and killed 9 people. The news update in 2~3 hours, showing us how the number of infected changes, usually, it doubles. Lots of the infected are doctors and nurses. It sounds cliche, but they are battling with death now; they are the soldiers on the battlefield, have no other choice but go ahead. (I have no experience in the medical field and have no doctor/nurse friend, but I think this is so cruel: they know they may die, and everyone knows they are risking their lives, but they are still taking their jobs, with people yelling “Jiayou! You are heroes! We support you!” It’s their responsibility, but it’s unbearable heavy.)

It was the day before yesterday when the public attitude towards the virus dramatically changed. That day, before Chinese ate dinners, national news agencies include People’s Daily broadcast a breaking news, which contains only four lines: 

Xi Jinping made important instructions on the pneumonia epidemic of the new coronavirus infection, stressing that the safety of the people’s lives and physical health should be given top priority, and the spread of the epidemic should be resolutely curbed.

In China, it is common sense that “the shorter a new is, the more influential it is.” Not only it’s short, but it’s directly transferred from Xi, which hints more bad news has happened. 

After that, the whole country is in a frightened atmosphere. My relatives are talking about “how to avoid crowded places”, “how to wash hands in the right way” in the family chat group. My parents went to various pharmacies to buy masks but found all stores ran out of it. And more news, bad news, coming from national news accounts, medical blogs, and personal bloggers, telling us how severe the situation is. The Wuhan Virus invokes the memory of SARS, a nightmare epidemic we experienced in 2003, which, according to WHO, infected 8098 people and killed 774.

How many people will be killed by the Wuhan Virus? I don’t know, and can’t imagine it. Wuhan Virus spreads against the backdrop of the Spring Festival Travel, which is a period of travel with extremely high traffic throughout the whole country. Last year, the total number of shipments is 2.98 billion times, so this year the number will be similar. Workers and students depart from big cities to their hometowns, like red blood cells flow from the heart to billions of vessels. There may be potential dan… no, there must be potential dangers, but who can stop them? They just want to reunite with their family and spend Spring Festival together.

I hope the consequence will not be as catastrophic as I imagined. Please.