Corona Virus update

We’ve received a lot of worried communication from you all, regarding the corona virus.  This is a post to let you know that we’re fine.  One thing that I heard from someone is:  the difference between an epidemic and a pandemic is panic, and that certainly seems to hold true for this latest adventure.

We first heard about the outbreak, before Christmas.  It wasn’t, at that time, an outbreak, but the New York Times announced that a mysterious illness had broken out in Wuhan, and people were on the ground trying to figure out what it meant.  About two weeks later, we received a note from Dave’s mom, asking about the implications for our time in China.  We said that Wuhan is a long ways from Xi’an, so no worries. 

We then flew south for our winter vacation in Guangzhou and Hong Kong.  At that point, our biggest concern was the disturbances in Hong Kong – Should we go or should we stay in South China?  After studying the State Department web site, it seemed as though the protests were limited and easy to avoid.  They resulted in some property damage, but, as long as you weren’t a part of the demonstrations, you likely would not run into any problems.  This proved true.  We saw a fair amount of physical damage in the subway stations – many of the card readers didn’t work – but, only once did we hear a drum beat and shouts.  We were close to our  hotel, went home, took a nap and saw nothing else.  Hong Kong is a wonderful place to visit. Because there were very few visitors, we managed to see a lot of the city for the short time that we were there.

At about that time, we started to receive notifications from our students.  They saw our posts of pictures in Guangzhou, and told us that there was a disease that came from Wuhan and was spreading south.  One student in particular, warned, “You should get out now.  Buy an air ticket to the US while you can still get one.  It is very dangerous.  If you can’t get a ticket to the US, fly back to Xi’an immediately.  There are no known cases in Xi’an, whereas Guangzhou has 15.”  Dave and I responded that they were all sweet to think of us, but we were OK.  

We watched the news.  (In Hong Kong, we had a lot more access to foreign news than we do in mainland China).  CNN seemed semi-hysterical.  BBC and China Network seemed more measured.  We decided to monitor, but stay.  We saw more and more people wearing surgical masks, but no other indications that anything was amiss.  At one point, a random stranger stopped us and told us that we should wear a mask, which was more intervention then we had had with random strangers before.  We thanked her, and then went home and learned that Wuhan had been closed down. 

Distribution map that shows up in
various governmental notifications.  Notice the deep red in the middle.  That's Wuhan.
Xi'an is just north of that, but the distances are great.  It's like the distance between Iowa and Missouri.  Although they are contiguous, it is much more likely that people will travel to the bigger cities of Chicago and New York, which is why Guangzhou has more hits than Xi'an.  Guangzhou is farther away than Xi'an, Shaanxi, but it is more in the pathway of the city migrations.

A very empty airport.  This should be the biggest travel day
of the year -- the day before the end of Lunar New Year.

Affidavit signed on the airplane

This started to worry us a bit – not so much out of fear of catching the virus.  Deaths still seemed to be focused on older folks – the usual victim in flu outbreaks.  But we were concerned about getting out of Hong Kong, and then Guangzhou.  There were rumors of a lock-down on all cities.  This seemed strange and hard to fathom.  Locking-down a city is a logistical nightmare.  Locking-down a country seemed ridiculously impossible.  How would food distribution take place?  How would medical supplies be transported?  We stopped by a Watson’s (a drugstore) to see if they had masks or disinfectant.  They were all sold out.  The next day we took the train out of Hong Kong back to Guangzhou.

Completely empty airplane

We now started to get messages from our friends in Guangzhou, urging us to return to Xi’an.  Although Guangzhou had the second most infections in the country, the numbers were infinitesimal – 41 deaths in Wuhan.  Ten or so deaths in Guangzhou.  In Guangzhou the subways were open.  We contacted the airlines to see if we could change our ticket.  They told us that we had to cancel our ticket first before we could reschedule.  Given the fact that we had just 3 days in Guangzhou before we returned to Xi’an, we were unwilling to do that.  We were concerned that if we cancelled, we’d have no ticket and be stuck in Guangzhou. 

Meanwhile, we were receiving notifications from our home school that classes would likely be postponed.  Our friends in Guangzhou came by with surgical masks and disinfectant.  Although these were hard to come by most places, the wife of the friend worked in the hospitals of Guangzhou and so had access to the masks.  We all decided that, because she was working in a hospital, we wouldn’t meet up with her. Her husband told us that her WeChat account had been suspended by the government, suggesting that the government is trying to keep a lid, not just on the virus, but also on information surrounding the virus… which made me feel more panicked than I would if I just had the information!

The subway for the most busy interchange in
 Xi'an: Da Yan TA

For the remainder of the trip, we took walks through our beautiful, but deserted neighborhood, and had the odd feeling that we were the only people in the hotel.  We saw no one.

The night before we left, we changed hotels – moved up to a hotel closer to the airport.  Our friend drove us, because he didn’t think we should be using the subway.  (We didn’t tell him that we had been on the subway a couple days before, and it was quite safe because there had been no one in the cars!)  We went to dinner in the hotel restaurant… and then received notification from our travel website that our flight had been cancelled tomorrow.  Panic!  The only way to reschedule was at the ticket counter.  Happily, our hotel was adjacent to the airport.  We walked over to the ticket counter.  They asked if we wanted to leave earlier in the morning, and we of course said yes!

Ex-pat chatter

The next morning the airport was eerily empty.  Our plane had about 25 to 30 people on it.  There were fever check stations everywhere.  Our trip back to the apartment was surreal:  every subway exchange involved a temperature check, producing our passport, and affidavits saying that we’d never been to Wuhan. There were very few people.  Everyone wore masks.  A dude with a spray walked up and down the station spraying everything -- sidewalks, posts, luggage.

W're now back and have found a lot of things are closed—shops and restaurants. It may be for the Lunar New Year , or maybe the virus. 

We’ve received indication that the opening of school might be postponed again.   This makes sense.  What they’re trying to do is keep the virus from spreading, so the government wants to keep all the students home to risk spreading the disease. 

The school has closed the back gate of our little faculty village. All have to go through the front gate: sign in, leave a phone number and submit to the ubiquitous “take-your-temperature ” stations.  We're cool with the fever stations, although I always worry that their little device might be inaccurate.  What happens then?  A one-way ticket to the fever hospitals? Therefore, this makes less sense to me.  Perhaps they're trying to reassure us all that they are on it.  However, as a result, it makes it a little bit harder to get to the Vanguard grocery store, which is right outside the back gate, but about a half of mile from the front gate.  When we went to the Vanguard last night, it had plenty of food.

Instructions from our Foreign Studies department

More instructions from our Foreign Studies Department

What is more concerning is they continue to quarantine information.  I’ve had trouble accessing my VPN, which is the way I access information.   There are a number of Expat WeChat groups, and they have been sharing information.  The information is sometimes hysterical and unverifiable, and so we have to take it all with a grain of salt.

 It seems interesting and relevant to compare the way we researched our trip and decision to travel to Hong Kong vs. our trip returning home.  When we decided to go to Hong Kong, we could check the State Department web site, which provided news sites about recent uprisings and what they looked like.  The State Department, US news, Hong Kong news and other sources all told a consistent story.

 In the case of this virus, information is lacking on the Chinese sites, overblown, with inaccurate  descriptions of panic, in US websites, and little or no news in between.  Social media sites are shut down when health workers report bad news.  Our Xi'an Expat group keeps saying the subway between the airport and the city is closed.  (It isn't!)  We just got a note from one of our department heads telling us how safe things are, and at the same time a note from one of the Chinese teachers advising us to stay in Guangzhou:  "you'd better stay in Guangzhou with David and keep safe there.  I was quarantined for 1.5 days after I flew back to Xi'a from Tianjin, for a passenger on my flight had 37.9 centigrade fever was found.  Luckily she wasn't pneumonia (sic.)."  (I told her we had already returned.)  When we can access it, the NYT and NPR give us some news, but they seem to also be playing into the hysteria…  So all in all, we’re alive, doing well, have extra days to plan our classes and thinking of you.   

Edited update, 5/2/2020:  FWIW:   Here is an interesting Chinese Daily video that illustrates the way the Chinese views the relationship between China and America, these days.

Happy Lunar New Year to all!

A non-sanctioned summary of
our foreign studies department instructions...

 

Some of the morbid humor that is
 circulating on WeChat (The Chinese social media sites)