Quote:
Originally Posted by hayden55
The man and all 7 of his buddies were booked on misdemeanors for spreading lies and false rumors. All eight of them were required to sign for their crimes and discontinue their conversations about the new virus resembling the coronavirus of 2003 which can spread from human to human. At the time the chinese government was telling everyone it was just wuhan pneumonia and that it was peak flu season. They only reversed the ruling weeks later and announced him a hero later after it was clearly diagnosed as the coronavirus at emergency level after extreme public outrage.
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I owe you an apology as well for my outburst!
I believe the definition of "booked" requires incarceration; "reprimanded" is more appropriate since there isn't punishment. It's colloquially referred to as "going for tea/coffee" at the police station in Singapore and China (and iirc it was more common elsewhere in Asia in decades past). The police tell you they're not happy and you need to stop, you confess and agree to stop and all is well, worse things happen if you don't.
The public outrage is not because he was mistreated, it's because the (technically false) rumor he started turned out to be close to the truth in severity. I think it's more accurate to say his reputation was uplifted by the central govt after the situation got bad:
https://twitter.com/caixin/status/1223264674495361024 (article behind paywall, but I had seen it somewhere else)
The politics is interesting since you have the central govt which has been seen as tightening censorship over the years using this example to attack the local govt. They pretty much have to reduce censorship in some way after this. Playing devil's advocate though, if those doctors weren't silenced, the disease would still have spread just as fast, and it's very tough to make the disruptive call for people to stay home before more is known about a disease.
China aside, epidemics are exactly when you need to rely on good ole big gov't to tell you what to do, because it's impossible to get enough people to listen to a non-official warning. The CDC here is basically saying don't worry too much, and as a result people are still out and about, even though it's in the news everyday. I actually felt pretty nervous riding the packed subway today...but I still did it.
What procedures people come up with to streamline bureaucracy to tackle epidemics faster in the future is going to be the important lesson.