‘Politics Is Always No. 1’
As the virus spread in early January, the mayor of Wuhan, Zhou Xianwang, was touting futuristic health care plans for the city.
It was China’s political season, when officials gather for annual meetings of People’s Congresses — the Communist Party-run legislatures that discuss and praise policies. It is not a time for bad news.
When Mr. Zhou
delivered his annual report to the city’s People’s Congress on Jan. 7 against a backdrop of bright red national flags, he promised the city top-class medical schools, a
World Health Expo, and a futuristic industry park for medical companies. Not once did he or any other city or provincial leader publicly mention the viral outbreak.
“Stressing politics is always No. 1,” the governor of Hubei, Wang Xiaodong, told officials on Jan. 17, citing Mr. Xi’s precepts of top-down obedience. “Political issues are at any time the most fundamental major issues.”
Shortly after, Wuhan went ahead with a massive annual potluck banquet for
40,000 families from a city precinct, which critics later
cited as evidence that local leaders took the virus far too lightly.
As the congress was taking place, the health commission’s daily updates on the outbreak
said again and again that there were no new cases of infection, no firm evidence of human transmission and no infection of medical workers.
“We knew this was not the case!” said a complaint later filed with the National Health Commission on a government website. The anonymous author said he was a doctor in Wuhan and described a surge in unusual chest illnesses beginning Jan. 12.
Officials told doctors at a top city hospital “don’t use the words viral pneumonia on the image reports,” according to the complaint, which has since been removed. People were complacent, “thinking that if the official reports had nothing, then we were exaggerating,” the doctor explained.
Even those stricken felt lulled into complacency.
When Dong Guanghe developed a fever on Jan. 8 in Wuhan, his family was not alarmed, his daughter said. He was treated in the hospital and sent home. Then, 10 days later, Mr. Dong’s wife fell ill with similar symptoms.
“The news said nothing about the severity of the epidemic,” said the daughter, Dong Mingjing. “I thought that my dad had a common cold.”
The government’s efforts to minimize public disclosure persuaded more than just untrained citizens.
“If there are no new cases in the next few days, the outbreak is over,” Guan Yi, a respected professor of infectious diseases at the University of Hong Kong, said
on Jan. 15.
The World Health Organization’s statements during this period echoed the reassuring words of Chinese officials.
It had spread. Thailand reported the first confirmed case outside China on Jan. 13.