A sad sad story

There is a saying here in Hong Kong that life is in analogy of movie and the other way round as well meaning sometimes what happen to us is really as dramatic as the episodes in a movie and sometimes the episodes do reflect what happen on us. There are nothing more sought after than face masks in this moment in this island. There is nothing more than it which is able to catch everyone's attention here in Hong Kong. The humble face masks are even more valuable than money to people in need. People even stayed overnight in the street queuing for it. There is nothing more ridiculous than these scenarios of queuing whenever there is news about sales of face mask in a shop. Sadly this is not the episode in Steven Chow's comedy movies but is what really happening everyday on the common folk here in Hong Kong.

With inventory of face masks running out in most households so undoubtedly many people's life in this island is heavily disrupted. Classes are suspended, many social activities are cancelled, some bank branches are closed and even some government services are stopped. All but just for the sake of minimizing virus transmission due to the lack of face masks. Naturally people complain on all these inconveniences. Luckily the mortality rate remains as a single case only so the public's panic is somehow in check.

However, what is happening in Hubei province and its capital, Wuhan City, the origin of this pandemic, is far more desperate. The whole province is sealed and outbound traffic is blocked at all for more than two weeks now. Intra-cities traffic within Hubei as well as that inside each major cities are also restricted. Residents are demanded to stay at homes to avoid community spreading. Pedestrian is rarely seen on the streets so these cities are just like a ghost town as seen in the episode of Hollywood horror movies.

What even more horrible is that despite of the strict control of human traffic but in fact new infection cases as well as death toll are still coming up everyday in these cities. Along with the restriction on human traffic within the cities, all public services are literally suspended. The RTHK TV's documentary production, Hong Kong Connection, managed to interviewed two Hong Kong families got stuck in Wuhan City and in a smaller city near the provincial border, Zaoyang, respectively both said medical services are suspended due to the human traffic restriction amid the Coronavirius outbreak in the community within their cities. Hospitals denied admission for consultation disregard the patient's symptoms but just sent them back home for residential quarantine only. Their real life experience suggest that the scale of the infection in the Hebei province is so large that it goes beyond the government's capability and literally the local medical facilities just fail to cope with. The government cannot do nothing but just compulsorily quarantine all residents at home.

Quarantine perhaps is effective in preventing social contacts among households but the key point is that they do not just quarantine healthy households but those infected ones as well. Most of all, these families with infected patients are quarantined without any medical treatment or medicines. They are basically rest their lives on luck with fingers crossed that they can get well on their own, or in the worst case to die in isolation. Strictly speaking apart from the Wuhan City where the central government has dispatched a task force team to help, the patients in the other cities in Hubei province is just abandoned. Wuhan City gets the salvation due to its economic importance but less fortunate for the rest. The central government's tactic seems to be natural selection, ie, when all the sicked died then the survivors are proven to be healthy.

Apparently the strike of this virus outbreak is a setback in China's advocate of the rise of a big nation. The myth of an almighty country is broken with its vulnerability against the attack of a tiny creature. By pulling all effort from the whole nation it can save one city only but at the expenses of all the life in other cities in Hubei province.

The outbreak of this virus also revealed one of the institutional flaw in China that the whistle blower, a doctor in Wuhan City, at the preliminary stage of the outbreak was even suppressed and criticized by the local police bureau as a trouble maker and rumormonger when he alerted his acquaintance over the social media. In fact this is a typical and common reaction of the local authorities all over China that they all tend to suppress everything that might invoke vast social concern which could reveal their deficiency in public governance thus undermining their chances of career promotion. It could be a much different scenario had timely precaution and necessary preparation been in place. Unfortunately in China very often it is the common folks whom are suffered from the misbehaviour of the officials.

The underlying cause of this phenomenon revealed an even greater flaw in China's institutional structure. The bottom line is that the government as well as the ruling party is lack of people's recognition and delegation through a proper mechanism. The CCP got into power by expelling GMT regime to Taiwan through civil war but since then it runs the country with totalitarianism. Therefore the CCP regime is in dire need of social stability to avoid any social event that might rock its ruling. Their instinct is to suppress them at infancy or to cover up at the preliminary stage in the hope to avoid the public's awareness. This is exactly why the Wuhan police bureau suppressed the whistle blower whom just wanted to alert his own acquaintance only.

Unfortunately they unknowingly seeded a nightmare which they cannot contain this time out of their expectation.