Ever since the coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak first occurred in Wuhan at the end of 2019, the world has been scrambling to react as the disease spread so rapidly that it was declared a global pandemic in just a few weeks.
While Australia, Europe, America and many parts of the world are now instigating measures to get the COVID-19 pandemic under control (with varying levels of success), all that furor about Wuhan has sort of dissipated since the city went into lockdown.
With China seemingly on the up and up, I spoke to some people living in Wuhan about life during and after the worst of the coronavirus crisis.
With Wuhan is on the up, the GOAT team talk about maintaining connections during the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic on ‘It’s Been A Big Day For…’ below:
With Wuhan being ground zero for the COVID-19 pandemic, you’d think that life in the city would be a chaotic mess. But after talking to four young people who lived in the city through a mutual connection (all of whom requested to remain anonymous), the reality is far less dramatic than what one what might imagine. One might even call it boring.
Following the disease outbreak, the four young people told GOAT that the process was pretty simple yet effective, albeit in a brutal way: after weeks of escalating isolation measures to contain the situation, Wuhan implemented a complete lockdown from around February 11 and it wasn’t lifted until the worst period of the pandemic was some two to three weeks later depending on the community.
People were all shut in their houses and not allowed to step outside, shops were closed, and the streets were completely empty. Unlike Australia where we’re still allowed to go to the shops for supplies, Wuhan had volunteers delivering supplies to every community so there was no issue of panic buying or hoarding toilet paper.
As for how Wuhan’s citizens handled the lockdown, well based on what the four young people told GOAT, their experience sounded a lot like what we’re going through right now with our own self-isolation: extreme boredom.
While we can still go outside for exercise and supplies (but in groups no bigger than two or if you live with the people you’re with… look it’s confusing), the people in Wuhan were stuck indoors for around two months and weren’t allowed to leave for most of it. Australians are in no position to complain.
But as brutal as this total lockdown may be, it appears to have been effective as Wuhan is slowly opening up again after two months of COVID-19 isolation and a cautious sense of normality is gradually returning.
Upon reflecting their feelings regarding the initial coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, the four young people told GOAT that the boredom and cautious sense of excitement over the city opening up again came after a period of sheer terror over the uncertainty of what was going to happen.
At the beginning of the outbreak in Wuhan, people were scared. Not strictly because of the coronavirus per se, but because the lockdown meant likely waiting for death as hospitals struggled to meet patient demand, hence why people tried to flee the city prior to the lockdown and inadvertently caused the disease to spread further.
While it’s understandable to want to flee from Wuhan, the four young people told GOAT that those who stayed in Wuhan (including themselves) did so for the greater good.
Despite severe anxiety and fear for themselves and families, they knew they had each other for support and understood that staying in the city rather than fleeing will make a difference in containing COVID-19.
With reports of China’s insidious coronavirus messaging and allegedly inaccurate death toll reports from Wuhan surfacing, I asked the four young people their thoughts about the propaganda coming from the Chinese state media and the death toll reports.
Stating that while they prefer to stay politically neutral and pay no attention to the propaganda released by China, the four young people said emotions have been running high and there were other things on their minds than Wuhan’s death toll or misleading propaganda.
They pointed out how the limited medical resources available in Wuhan at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak meant that hospitals were only able to help those who contracted the disease while others were forced to wait.
Many who died during the first few weeks of the pandemic weren’t from the disease but from other illnesses (the grandpa of one of the young people told me he died at home due to a heart attack), and these deaths apparently made up a large portion of the death toll in Wuhan. They simply don’t know if the numbers are true or not as there’s no accurate way of determining who died from the disease or something else.
However, this wasn’t exactly high up on the list of things to worry about for a lot of people in the city. While the death toll numbers in Wuhan as reported by China may or may not be true, the chaos of the COVID-19 outbreak meant that people had other things to stress and worry about (like staying healthy) than the messaging put out by the Chinese state media.
At the end of our chat, there was a sense of optimism from these young people in Wuhan. It felt like they had survived the worst of it and are ready to handle what comes next. I was aware that what these people experienced may not be what everyone in Wuhan experienced, but it gave us a snapshot on what’s going on in the city that we may not have been aware of.
While it appears that the world is tripping over themselves while figuring out how to best contain the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, it’s quite reassuring to know from those at ground zero that things will eventually get better.
With all the stress and anxiety surrounding this disease, now’s the time to stick together rather than be selfish or racist. Take heart from people in Wuhan who experienced it first-hand that if they can get back to some semblance of normality, then we can as well.
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