From February 4 to February 19, the Diamond Princess cruise ship sat moored in the port of Yokohama, Japan, undergoing a two-week quarantine. Of the more than 3,600 people on board, 621 were diagnosed with COVID-19 [1], a new type of coronavirus that spreads via sneezes and coughs and causes respiratory illness. Passengers had meals delivered to their cabins, and walked the decks a few moments a day, six feet apart, for fresh air. Some were allowed to disembark and serve their quarantine period on land. Protections for the crew weren’t so generous [2]; workers shared living quarters and bathrooms, and ate from buffets. With limited medical personnel and test kits [3], both passengers and crew members were given thermometers and told to monitor their own temperatures. As the world watched, the sick count ticked up; two people died [4]. The liner became an emblem of the virus: a zone of limited movement, scarce resources, bureaucratic nightmares, and escalating contagion.
Coronavirus has now spread to twenty-seven countries, but 99 percent of the approximately 76,000 cases have been in China, where the disease originated (probably in a Wuhan meat market) and where it has killed more than 1,500 people. Cities in Hubei province have run short of hospital beds and medical supplies; doctors have used raincoats and trash bags for scrubs [5]. Outraged citizens suspect the Chinese government might be more concerned with saving face than saving lives. When cases first surfaced in early December, Wuhan officials downplayed accounts [6] of spreading infection, insisting the virus couldn’t be transmitted between humans. President Xi Jinping avoided mentioning COVID-19 for two weeks after he found out about it.
The virus’s economic cost is high [7]: stalled tourism; interrupted supply chains; closed schools and factories. It’s no wonder China—which also initially underreported SARS [8]—wanted the illness kept quiet. State news outlets have been instructed to focus on reporting relief-effort stories [9] that reflect well on the regime. But citizen journalists [10] have defied the official narrative by using their phones to broadcast images of overcrowded hospital corridors and a bus filled with body bags. In early January, a dissident doctor, Li Wenliang, was reprimanded by police for alerting med-school classmates to the virus; when he died on February 6 [11], Chinese social media filled with candle emojis and free-speech hashtags. Those posts were removed by censors, but not before Dr. Li became a national hero.
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