Running from Coronavirus (Part 2)

The Chinese New Year holiday was set to start at the end of the work day on Thursday, the 23rd of January. This day also happened to be the day that Wuhan closed it's borders. Paying attention to the news as best I could without being able to read Chinese was mostly paying attention to what was coming in through my Wechat feed on the U.S. Consulate group. Two plus years ago when I first came to China I volunteered to be an "Embassy Warden" which meant that I was one of many people in my province and city that might be called on to distribute information to other Americans or do something for the embassy such as liaison with Americans who got put in jail for a drunken brawl. I haven't done either of those things beyond distributing info orally to my small circle of friends, but my name is on a list somewhere, and the folks in the Wechat group have always posted useful information when they aren't arguing with each other. Looking back through the Wechat records, the first notice was a message relating to the virus was posted on January 7th. One of the embassy moderators posted a "Health Alert" in the feed, noting that the U.S. CDC has posted a Watch Level 1 alert for an outbreak of an unknown virus in Wuhan. Travelers to Wuhan should avoid animals and animal markets, sick people, and to wash your hands often if you had been in the area.

The chat group went about its usual mutterings about visa restrictions and how to renew passports for a few days before someone posted another warning from the WHO a few days after the first. Meanwhile, at school, the semester was getting started and bits of discussion about the virus were coming up over lunch. Our partner institution (because a foreign university cannot operate in China without the sponsorship/collaboration of a Chinese university) is located in Wuhan, so there was some concerns and first hand knowledge about the developing situation there. By the 15th of January, folks in the Embassy Wechat group were more or less only posting information about the situation in Wuhan and the international media started reporting on the story as well. Which sometimes was not entirely accurate.

An early report from NBC

On January 20th, one member in the group posted that folks should "stay at home" and wear a mask when going out. At this point, two weeks into the semester all of us at school were preparing to start the New Year break. A student in one of my classes had reported that there was a rumor going around that another student had the virus. We talked about news sources and the importance of not spreading misinformation, that you should wait to see if you hear the same news from two reputable sources before broadly spreading a piece of news. On campus that week everyone was acutely aware of the spreading infection in Wuhan and some students, faculty, and staff had begun wearing masks. At this point, the nature of the virus was still a mystery, though it had been identified and named, sometimes referred to as the Wuhan Virus and sometimes as the Novel Coronavirus.

Airport, somewhere in China

Folks in the Wechat group were talking about SARS, many of whom were in China to experience the quarantines and temperature checks of that era. During the week travel restriction were placed on people going to and coming from Wuhan. Pictures were posted about temperature checks and the police closing down Wechat groups when folks would start to post "gossip" that the State determined harmful. By Wednesday of the week before the New Year, the Embassy Group was posting news of cancellations out of Shanghai to Europe and long lines for temperature checks at the airport. One guy posted a video of a man being taken out of an airport in China in a Plexiglas box. At this point I started to receive a few emails from my family as we as friends who were in Asia but not in China, perhaps wondering what was going on, trying to see if they should start to get worried about the virus coming to their neighborhood. I wrote back, first to mom, then to my sister a day later, and then five days later, I responded to an email from friends back in the States. Thinking that I might write a lot of emails about this, I decided to just add onto the first email I wrote to my mom. So as:

The blue is the original text written last Thursday the 23rd of January , the red was written on Friday the 24th , and now this purple is what I’m writing today is Wednesday the 29th of January. Pardon the geography data and the possibly hard to read colors and incoherence. 

Kunshan is about 4 hours from Wuhan, or a little less, by high speed rail. China is big so the maps can be deceiving. BUT yes, the virus is spreading around China and this week is the Chinese new year, which means that most folks will be traveling to their home towns. The new year ended officially today, so last night at midnight there was a round of fireworks and presumably today there will another round. So, the worse is yet to come in all likelihood in terms of the virus spreading. So, much has happened since I wrote that, and as you’ve probably been reading, the infection rates have been rising exponentially. Yesterday student affairs sent out an email informing the students still on campus, the intl’ students who chose to stay on campus and Hubei province folks who could not go home, that IF students are going to make other arrangements they will need to leave by the 31st. Because I don’t know if you know, but the “break” was extended by two weeks. Such that all if off until then though administrative staff are expected to be working from home starting on the 17th. Anyway, so I chatted with the Dean of Student Affairs and VCAA about why the 31st was chosen, and essentially the logic is that when folks start coming back, the rate of infection is in all likelihood going to increase dramatically, and given a possible incubation period of two weeks, the peak of the illness may be that week before the 17th. I’ve read, though multiple sources, that Wuhan is now closed to incoming trains, buses, and planes, and they are doing screening at all the transportation hubs. Maybe you read that too. And now I've read that the cities around Wuhan are blocked too. So, 20 million people are now not permitted from travel. Which I guess is actually closer to 35 million I guess. One good thing about all the security guards is that China has lots of people that are ready to do this work. One bad thing about China is that the ability to keep 20 million people from leaving it kind of scary. Which is kind of the thing about the decision to leave or go. Originally I was planning on staying over the break, getting some work done, getting some sleep in, but with these two extra weeks and the possibility that this could go on much longer, I decided to go to Australia on Friday to visit and old friend and also, Jo and Dave are going back as well so we’ll tour Australia a bit. It’s not that I’m scared (who me?) of the corona virus, but that I’m more scared of the government here using heavy handed tactics to try and control it…worst case scenario being that I fail a temperature check and am put in a hospital for a couple weeks. Maybe that’s crazy speak, but that’s how my thinking has been going. Others that I’ve spoken too also share similar concerns. 

But, as far as Kunshan, there have been two confirmed cases near here. One is a rumor that I’ve heard, the other is officially confirmed. Six days later, 20 confirmed cases in Suzhou; 3 in SIP, 2 in Kunshan. Not sure if Kunshan is considered part of Suzhou. I think so. That hasn't changed, though yesterday I heard from one student that a DKU student who had been to Wuhan recently on a recruiting trip went to to the hospital, so as, it's possible that the virus has visited campus. That's just a rumor though and also, my friend Dave had flu like symptoms on Monday, he went to the hospital, they gave him medicine and told him it wasn't the virus, and now he's fine. You can probably just ignore the blue and red text previous to this sentence in this paragraph. Really though, after the holiday, is when it will probably be everywhere. That said, it has not arrived on the DKU campus. Officially at least. Total lock down. Noone is allowed on or off campus. One of the advantages of being in the relative middle of nowhere is that we are a bit isolated on an everyday basis from masses of people swooping in from the outside. Though, DKU’s Chinese university partner is…Wuhan University. Which means that we have a handful of folks that have been sent here from Wuhan to work, and so there is a direct connection between us and them. I keep thinking about the new years party…how many germs were shared…. Of course DKU has been very proactive and vigilant about putting information out, providing masks, and presumably, when we come back, they will be doing temperature checks at the campus gates. But we haven’t heard anything officially since Sunday. 

So everything is fine right now but most everyone is concerned. Nobody is panicking though. Though I saw a little video on the Times site taken in Wuhan and the video was quite scary. If that's what people see I'd imagine it looks bad here. The reality is that it's very quiet and raining. It’s stopped raining but the UG Faculty and Embassy Wechat feeds have been various kinds of panicked. Though have since calmed down. From Saturday until Monday it was a non-stop but since then people have seemingly chilled out. And I’m on a US embassy wechat group that so far has been one of the best sources of information for the latest news. Until people started accusing each other of rumor mongering. 

[omissions due to privacy concerns] 

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Running from Coronavirus (Part 1)

I write this splayed on a grey sectional couch on the 3rd floor of the Chauncey Square apartments in West Lafayette, Indiana. Today is a Saturday, the one day off of online teaching that I take for myself each week. This morning, now that the gym is closed, I went for a run down the hill, across the traffic intersections and the bridge, and ran along the trail that parallels the Wabash river until an reaching an impasse due to the water spilling over from the river. It happens every Spring as the Wabash swells beyond its banks, the rains from upstream draining into its massive brown body. The last time I lived here was a little less than three years ago. Since then I moved to China and now am back temporarily because my girlfriend still lives here, finishing her PhD. I left China on January 31st, spent twelve or so days in Australia and then flew to Indianapolis, arriving on February 12th.

I first heard about the virus sometime in December. Or was it early January? I don't remember. The last two months have been a marathon of travel and adjustments, reading and judging and talking and thinking and trying to anticipate where I might get stuck or where the virus might find me. At this point, with routes back to China now almost completely closed off, I've resigned myself to riding out whatever this will bring here in Indiana. Of course (of course) I wouldn't leave my girlfriend behind now that I'm here and being with her makes the existential and physical threat easier to live with. Like everyone else, "I'm not afraid of getting sick," but am more concerned about the fallout; either being quarantined indefinitely in China or trampled in a toilet paper stampede at Walmart. And then there is the master fear underlying all this movement and change, e.g. dying alone under a canopy of plastic sheets, sedated with a ventilator down my throat. Or being responsible for bringing the virus to my parents or someone else who's immune system has decided it's of the 20% (or is it 15?) that might develop significant symptoms. But that's not something one can plan around.

But even if I were planning one more trip; that is, to go back to China, which ironically or surprisingly or assuredly or obviously is probably the safest country in the world in relation to the virus (minus small island nations who have closed their borders), I'd have to undergo a two-week mandatory quarantine. I'd like to avoid that, though a rate of 300 RMB per day in a Ministry of Health run hotel (about $42.28 at the current exchange) seems not so bad a price; though, two-weeks in a big-bedded jail seems off-putting and and dangerously lonely. Plus it's unclear when my campus will open or what the day to day will be like there for the foreseeable future. Yes, things have drastically improved and opened up in China in terms of movement within and between cities, but I'd like to wait and see how China will weather the rest of the world blowing up with infection rates. Probably forcefully and without mercy as the Chinese government is wont to do. Meanwhile, here in Tippecanoe county, only two cases have been diagnosed and the governor has said that although folks should say in their homes, there is no barrier on folks going out into the world. If there is one thing that I've been learning about the virus though, it's that what happened in one place will inevitably happen in another. And so it seems to me just a matter of time before West Lafayette is in the same boat as New York or Italy or Wuhan.