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A year ago, the first experts warned of a new type of lung disease in China. A visit to the city of Wuhan, where everything started and supposedly everything ended.
Today it is the “safest city in the world”: People stroll along the banks of the Yangtze River in Wuhan in December.
Photo: Getty Images
Xinyang City is the last stop before the train reaches its end: Wuhan. It’s January 22nd. A few minutes ago, state media announced that public service workers were no longer allowed to leave Wuhan. Most of the train passengers head to their families for the New Year celebrations. You don’t seem alarmed. But if officials are no longer allowed to leave, who is not allowed to leave later? Should you get off? Follow?
The decision to go to Wuhan was made on short notice. Shortly before, a video of a hospital in Wuhan had been released. Doctors in full-body suits, a man hooked up to machines, and dozens of tubes. The authorities had admitted that they had discovered a new virus, but the government appeased, it was not so bad. But why, many people in China wonder, do doctors wear protective gear if lung disease is not supposed to be dangerous? Others are joking. A scary story in four words? “I’m from Wuhan.” On the Internet, people joke about Fluhan, the city of the flu.
