Dystopian Society: A senior official in the Chinese government has instructed authorities in Wuhan, the city where the ongoing coronavirus outbreak originated, to round up the sick and quarantine them in isolated hospitals and shelters. The vice premier leading the government’s response to the 2019-nCoV epidemic, Sun Chunlan, has instructed Wuhan officials to go door to door, according to The New York Times. She told them to check residents’ temperatures and investigate anyone who came in contact with known patients. “Set up a 24-hour duty system,” Sun said, according to the NYT. “During these wartime conditions, there must be no deserters, or they will be nailed to the pillar of historical shame forever.”
It’s an extreme, authoritarian move: rounding up and isolating thousands of residents in makeshift shelters that are being hastily assembled per the government’s order. Family members and neighbors are encouraged to report anyone that they suspect may have symptoms…even it’s a member of their own family. Some of the shelters, which are being assembled in sports arenas and other large facilities, opened up on Thursday. Social media posts are already showing grim, cramped situations, the NYT reports. Doctors and medical supplies are reportedly in short supply. It’s difficult to be optimistic that this roundup will improve conditions within the city, which has been under lockdown for weeks. – Futurism
Chinese authorities in Wuhan Thursday (Feb 6.) said that they will conduct door-to-door home searches for people potentially infected with the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) and corral the sick into massive, makeshift quarantine camps around the city, according to a report in the New York Times. These latest extreme outbreak control measures are on top of already draconian travel restrictions and shutdowns of public transit, which have effectively isolated Wuhan—a city of 11 million where the explosive outbreak began—as well as other highly populated cities in the Hubei province. Overall, the lockdown has made it difficult to get food and supplies to Hubei’s 50 million residents, contributing to a humanitarian crisis that is now swelling from Wuhan in the wake of the virus.
Vice Premier Sun Chunlan is in charge of the nationwide response to this virus, and she has identified four categories of people that need to be taken to the camps… Ms Sun demanded four types of people in Wuhan be put into mandatory isolation in quarantine stations: confirmed cases, suspected cases, people who have close contact with the former two, and those who have fever. Ms Sun called on a ‘people’s war’ against the coronavirus epidemic in a meeting on Tuesday. –Yo News
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