Chinese feel remorse for the 8 whistle\-blowers on Coronavirus 全球新知

The outbreak of coronavirus can be dated back as early as beginning of December, 2019. If people have taken heed to the warning from the 8 whistle-blowers, who are also doctors seeing the patents first-hand at the hospital, the situation might be different right now.

Colorized transmission electron micrograph MERS virus particles (blue) found near the periphery of an infected VERO E6 cell (yellow). Image captured and color-enhanced at the NIAID Integrated Research Facility in Fort Detrick, MarylandNIAID (credit)

On December 30 2019, a doctor working in Wuhan City Central Hospital named Li Wen-Liang, first noticed the examination report of a patient with positive indexes of SARS virus, and along with other 6 patients who all have the same indexes. He wanted s to warn other colleagues about the happening, so he went on to post in WeChat, Weibo and Toutiao news that “there are 7 confirmed SARS cases”. There were total 8 doctors sending out warning.

However, the local police immediately tracked them down on January 3rd, asked them to apologize for spreading the rumor and signed a Reprimand Letter. The doctors did and returned to work, in the meanwhile the internet were condemning the rumor spreaders.

Dr. Li’s post on Toutiao news

Dr. Li recorded that he later on found himself coughing and having fever, finally ending up being hospitalized. He was wondering why the news still claimed that “the virus is not spreading between humans” while in fact, it already did.

After the coronavirus outbreak became unstoppable with more truth and evidences came out to light, Chinese citizens started to realized that the initial “8 rumor spreaders” are all doctors who witnessed first-hand, and that if their words were taken seriously, the situation would be different.

Now the Chinese netizens called them heroes and praised their brave deeds. All of the 8 doctors are working in the hospital front-lines to save lives. We wish Dr. Li a speedy recovery!

Feb 5th update: Dr. Li passed away and became another victim to the coronavirus.