Al Jazeera will today broadcast news footage of the earliest days of the Wuhan pneumonia outbreak in Wuhan, China, that was not made public, revealing how the Chinese government failed to prevent the spread of the outbreak and instead obstructed journalists from reporting on it.
Al Jazeera Investigations: 3 Days That Stopped The World, a special program scheduled to air later today, features two Chinese journalists who secretly recorded footage revealing how the 11-million-strong city of Wuhan changed overnight. Wuhan City changed dramatically overnight, from being indifferent to Wuhan pneumonia (the Chinese Communist virus) to panicking and overflowing hospitals in a matter of hours.
According to Al Jazeera’s preview, the unseen footage was shot between January 19 and 22, 2020. Naturally, the footage could not be shown in China, and Al Jazeera’s investigative unit smuggled the film out of the country. For the safety of the two journalists, their real names will not be released. The special program refers to them under the pseudonyms Yang Jun and Chen Wei.
Yang Jun and Chen Wei arrived in Wuhan a few days before the city was closed to the public when the Chinese Communist Party announced that the number of pneumonia cases in Wuhan was said to be in the hundreds. At the time, the Chinese government was keeping the true extent of the epidemic under wraps.
The two reporters traveled between increasingly full hospitals and to the Wuhan South China Seafood Wholesale Market, the likely source of the pneumonia outbreak in Wuhan, only to be repeatedly blocked by public security and security.
● The crucial days at the very beginning
When the two men arrived in Wuhan on January 19, 2020, the severity of the outbreak was still unknown, whether the virus would be passed from person to person had not been confirmed, and the people of Wuhan were relatively indifferent to the outbreak. They did not wear masks, thinking it was just a more serious disease than the flu, but not to the extent of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) of 2002 to 2004.
Yang Jun wrote in his diary, “When I arrived, the people didn’t seem to be afraid of the virus at all or didn’t care at all, some hadn’t even heard of it…One vendor told me to take off my mask, saying ‘obviously you’re an overly worried outsider, it’s fine here’.”
Al Jazeera today aired footage of the earliest days of the Wuhan pneumonia outbreak in Wuhan, China, that was not made public, revealing how the Chinese Communist government failed to work to prevent the spread of the outbreak and instead obstructed journalists from reporting on it.
Authorities were investigating the origin of the virus and the Wuhan South China Seafood Wholesale Market was closed, but officials in Wuhan and Beijing did not intend to reveal how serious the outbreak might be, leaving the public to guess. Although the World health Organization (WHO) was aware of the outbreak at the time, neither China nor WHO knew of the possibility of human-to-human transmission.
As millions of people were traveling and gathering for the Chinese New Year soon after, the Communist government suddenly declared a city closure. Public places in the city began to be closed, causing an overnight panic among an otherwise sloppy population, with almost everyone wearing a mask.
But it was too late, as millions of people were moving around the country, creating the perfect opportunity for the virus to spread throughout China and soon afterwards, the world.
Al Jazeera reported, “It is widely believed that the Chinese government’s lack of clarity and transparency in those first few days was one of the reasons the virus spread so quickly, creating the 100-year epidemic that killed more than 2 million people.”
Yang Jun writes, “In Wuhan, the lack of both staff and equipment left many infected patients without access to medical treatment. Ridiculously, the hospitals hid the truth.”
Just as millions of people were traveling and gathering for the Chinese New Year soon, the Communist government suddenly declared a city closure. Public places in the city began to be closed, causing an overnight panic among an otherwise sloppy population, with almost everyone wearing masks. (Photo taken from aljazeera.com)
● Government censorship
Footage taken and diaries written by the two journalists also reveal how the authorities are trying to obstruct the work of journalists, even though the two work for state-run media in Beijing and have obtained permission from the Wuhan government media authority.
From Wuhan’s South China Seafood Wholesale Market to different hospitals, public security officials tried to block journalists from reporting at every turn.
Yang Jun wrote, “I could not report freely. I was often followed because of government intervention. Information about the epidemic was hidden and difficult to obtain… During the three days I was reporting in Wuhan, I was often blocked by public security and hospital personnel. I understood the seriousness of the outbreak and how sensitive and difficult it was to report on the subject. It was totally beyond my imagination.”
The two journalists continued to work covertly even when police questioned them and repeatedly said photography was prohibited. In his diary, Chen Wei wrote: “There are certain subjects that cannot be reported in China, such as exploring epidemic prevention measures, diagnosis procedures, and anything related to the organization and the government’s concealment, which cannot be touched or reported.”
Since the outbreak, nine Chinese journalists have been jailed or disappeared. Zhang Zhan, a Chinese citizen journalist, was sentenced late last month to four years in prison by authorities for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.
Chen Wei wrote, “The Chinese media and social media are discussing the crisis and how desperate the world is outside of China. But no one in China dares to talk about the origins of the virus that began in Wuhan or the mistakes the Wuhan government made in the first place…The only thing that can be discussed is how well the government controlled the epidemic and how grateful Chinese people should be to the government.”
● Global pandemic
After tripping up the world for three days, Wuhan pneumonia (the Chinese communist virus pneumonia) spread from country to country, eventually infecting more than 91 million people on every continent.
Dozens of countries have started vaccination in the last few weeks. However, it will take considerable time and resources to achieve global immunity, meaning the human and economic impact of the epidemic will continue for years.
In his diary, Chen Wei wrote that, in contrast, Wuhan “people don’t want to talk about the epidemic anymore, as if that history is long gone. People feel very lucky and proud to live in China because it is the only country that has controlled the virus.”
He wrote: “That may not be true, but most Chinese people think so.”
The Chinese Foreign Ministry told Al Jazeera that measures taken in the earliest stages of the outbreak went a long way toward preventing further spread.
However, research by the University of Southampton in the UK suggests that the number of infections could have been significantly reduced if the Chinese government had acted earlier.
Al Jazeera also asked questions about freedom of the press, to which the Chinese government did not respond.
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