[Chinese
citizens are overcoming a lack of reporting on the crisis in the state-run
media by sharing their own videos and information about the coronavirus
outbreak.]
By Daniel Victor
 |
|
Waiting
outside a hospital in Wuhan, China, on Wednesday.
Credit
Reuters TV
|
HONG
KONG — While China’s
state-run media has urged calm and praised the official response to the
coronavirus outbreak, a different story is playing out across the country’s
tightly controlled social media networks.
In the digital world, China’s citizens are
expressing panic and frustration. They are overcoming a lack of reporting in
the official media by sharing their own videos and information — sometimes
inaccurately.
Some are even evading censors, who commonly
stifle criticism of the government, to register complaints about how officials
have handled the crisis. They have criticized officials for failing to contain
the initial outbreak in Wuhan, the capital of the central province of Hubei;
for limiting residents to overcrowded facilities in the region; and for not
visiting the affected areas.
“Let’s not interrupt the leaders while they
listen to songs and go abroad for interviews,” one commenter wrote
sarcastically.
Though some barbs have slipped through, the
censors are still scrubbing material critical of the government, or information
deemed alarming. It has detained at least eight people for spreading what the
government has called “rumors.”
CORONAVIRUS CRISIS Read the latest
developments in the outbreak in China.
But residents are still using social networks
and messaging platforms to offer on-the-ground accounts of the crisis that are
difficult to find elsewhere.
Users have shared experiences of waiting in
lines at hospitals for hours, shuttling sick loved ones from hospital to
hospital, only to be sent home without being tested for the coronavirus. Some
videos, like one taken on an unknown date at Wuhan No. 7 Hospital, have made
their way from China’s closed-off internet onto networks like Twitter.
Several hospitals in affected cities have
sent out pleas for donations online, saying they were running short of surgical
masks, gloves and other supplies. Some health workers spoke of the challenge of
getting to hospitals in cities where public transportation has been shut down
and taxi services suspended.
Videos circulating in chat groups and social
networks show patients in Wuhan being loaded into an ambulance by workers
wearing full-body protective suits outside a primary school, or transported in
a plastic tube in Huizhou, a city in the southeastern province of Guangdong.
Several videos have emerged of a patient being wheeled through an airport in a
sealed-off cage.
The videos often lack crucial identifying
information, including when they were filmed, but many have spread rapidly in
recent days among Chinese internet users in the absence of more official
information. The state-run media has largely played down the crisis, focusing
instead on the encouragement of government officials and the heroism of medical
workers. Only a few news outlets have reported critically on the handling of
the outbreak by the health care system and the government.
In the vacuum, misinformation has flourished.
One article claimed to cite a health expert as recommending that people counter
the virus by rinsing their mouths with salt water, but the expert never said it
and the tactic is ineffective. Another widely read but completely false post
claimed that setting off fireworks would sterilize germs in the air.
China’s National Health Commission even went
so far as to debunk popular reports saying that drinking a traditional Chinese
medicine herb known as indigowoad root, mixed with smoked vinegar, could
prevent infection by the coronavirus.
Still, the digital networks have proven
useful in conveying the human toll of the virus.
“Save my life, doctor, I have the fever too,”
a woman in a mask wailed in a widely circulated video, as hospital workers in
protective suits walked in and out of what appeared to be a crowded waiting
room.
Tiffany May and Elaine Yu contributed
reporting.
