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Some good Wuhan news

Here’s another useful PSA on the virus from theprepared.com

Judging by the forums and private Facebook groups we follow, the most terrifying feature of the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak so far has been the Chinese government’s aggressive response — whole cities and tens of millions on sudden lockdown in their homes, public gatherings banned, internal travel by road cut off with roadblocks.

Why would China take such disruptive and expensive measures to stop the spread of a virus with well under a hundred deaths and a few thousand infections (per the official count)? It doesn’t add up, and the internet has noticed, giving rise to the theory that Chinese are trying to cover up how catastrophically deadly this outbreak really is.

But newly published migration data suggests a far less terrifying logic behind China’s aggressive response: it seems an astonishing five million people bugged out from Wuhan in the days before intercity travel was banned. Some portion of that was due to planned holiday travel, but it’s clear many people left (or left earlier than planned) due to the virus news.

Our Chinese reporter in Beijing explains it this way:

  • SARS is still fresh in the minds of many Chinese.
  • Modern Chinese people are already wary of weird food sources as a possible epidemic spark — in this case, it looks like a mix of bat and snake at the local Wuhan food market is to blame.
  • There’s a degree of mistrust towards the government, so people expect party leaders to downplay legitimate concerns.
  • Local people were glued to their phones for instant updates very early in this process.
  • Every social media post that could even seem related, such as a person collapsing at a hospital, instantly spreads.
  • That combination of predisposed fear, viral media, and modern on-demand transportation networks meant millions of people “bugged out” of Wuhan very quickly.
  • So the governments only way to contain the spread was to use fast and heavy lockdowns.
  • But even with such a heavy response, it was too late, and the virus left Wuhan.

This level of sudden, coordinated action across a population of this size in response to breaking news was unthinkable in the days before social media.

But it’s likely now the new normal in societies as connected as China. That new reality makes China’s “shock and awe” response look less like a desperate measure to stop Black Death 2.0 and more like a logical effort to arrest a set of social-media-driven, “flash mob”-style mass migrations before centrally planned containment measures could be put in place.

While initial reports indicated that over a hundred thousand people left Wuhan by rail in the single day before the quarantine, the Times has now reported that including the entire leadup and all travel modes, the true figure was closer to five million people — about 45% of the population of Wuhan.

With so many Wuhan citizens spread to every part of the country, the move to lock down public spaces across the country as a whole makes a certain amount of sense; any measure intended to be effective at arresting the epidemic’s exponential spread would have to be carried out nationwide to be effective.

In addition, this explains the intercity travel ban being put on Wuhan despite the “cat [being] out of the bag”: if a precedent were established that affected cities would empty entirely, as Wuhan may have done, the migrations may have become even more destabilizing as active propagation of the virus began to hit other major cities.

For me, the scariest aspect of this virus was the extreme Chinese response. It indicated that it was likely far worse than what we were being told. This explanation makes sense. With millions fanning out across the country due to hearing about it on social media, well, they really had no choice even if the virus was much more contained than they may have thought.

And the authors of this post are right. This will likely be the standard response going forward. Nobody believes the government, any government, and panic will likely follow social media if something like this happens in any country.

As Tom wrote this morning, this is yet another fallout from the assault on reason and lack of trust in institutions and authorities and even common sense. On the other hand, we as individuals can cultivate trusted sources and keep our heads in these situations. It’s a good idea to be ready.

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