In 2003, Dr. Jiang Yanyong watched in disbelief as Chinese officials downplayed how SARS was spreading in China. He took the risky step of alerting the media to the cover-up.
The news Jiang made that year was exposing the Chinese government's cover-up of Beijing's outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. Just as COVID-19 would be in 2020, SARS was a deadly respiratory illness caused by a then-novel coronavirus. To Jiang, his act simply upheld"the most rudimentary standards" of his profession. It forced a collision of fact with official lies and created the space for other officials and doctors to tell the truth.
I returned to my office to read the statement more closely. It was just five paragraphs long. Jiang described how appalled he'd felt when he'd heard the health minister's statement, and then detailed why the official number of cases was an undercount. His own hospital moved a SARS patient to an infectious disease hospital, where 10 doctors and nurses fell ill. At another hospital, there were 60 cases and seven deaths.
Perhaps this was the trick of an experienced doctor, a good bedside manner, or maybe we somehow managed to put each other at ease. From there the conversation flowed smoothly. Jiang explained how he knew what he knew, his voice rising as he described how angry and frightened his colleagues were and the risk SARS posed to the general population."If I were an ordinary person and started to run a fever," he said,"I wouldn't know to go to a hospital.
For a brief period, Jiang was treated as a national hero. As Beijing's streets emptied out in what looked like a foreshadowing of 2020, Jiang's name appeared on the front pages of China's leading newspapers. Pictures of him popped up on billboards near my office. I couldn't formally interview him, but he'd occasionally ride his bike to the hotel tea house to chat. He'd bring along things he thought I should read. I'd tell him about my reporting.
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