TAIPEI, Taiwan — A middle-of-the-night bus accident that killed another 27 people in southwestern China this week sparked a firestorm of anger online over the country’s harsh COVID-19 policies.
The initial police report did not specify who the passengers were or where they were going, but it later emerged that they were heading to a quarantine site outside their city of Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou province.
The bus with 47 other people on board crashed around 2:40 a. m. on Sunday. City officials announced several hours later that the passengers were under “medical observation,” confirming reports that they were being quarantined.
Following public anger, Guiyang fired 3 people from Yunyan district, where citizens had been arrested, the provincial government said on Monday. Guiyang Vice Mayor apologized at a press conference, bowed and observed a minute of silence.
Online, many questioned the logic of transporting other people out of Guiyang, accusing the government of moving them so that the city would no longer report new cases.
“Will it ever end? In the most common searches (on social media), every day there are all kinds of pandemic prevention situations, creating unnecessary panic and making other people nervous,” one user wrote. transporting other people in quarantine, one car at a time?”
Guiyang officials had announced that the city would succeed in the “social zero of COVID” until Monday, a day after the accident.
The word means that new infections are only discovered among other people who are already under surveillance, such as those in a centralized quarantine center or who are close contacts of existing patients, so that the virus no longer spreads in the community.
China has controlled the pandemic with a series of measures known as “zero compensation” or “zero covid”, maintained strict lockdowns and mass testing.
The technique saved lives before vaccines were widely available, as other people refrained from collecting in public and wore masks. However, while other countries have opened up and eased some of the more onerous restrictions, China has adhered to its 0 COVID strategy.
Your email is with us, we don’t spam
While China has reduced its quarantine time for overseas arrivals and said it will begin issuing student visas, the policy remains strict in the country. system.
Zero COVID also has a political problem, and at one point, many Chinese celebrated that it meant their country’s superiority over the United States, which has recorded more than a million COVID deaths.
Chinese President Xi Jinping called China a “great strategic success” and evidence of the “significant advantages” of its policy formula over Western liberal democracies.
Yet even as other countries open up, China’s pandemic humanitarian prices have risen.
Earlier this year in Shanghai, desperate citizens complained that they may simply not get medicine or even groceries due to the city’s two-month closure, while some died in hospitals due to lack of medical care due to the city limiting travel. Last week, citizens of the western Xinjiang region said they went hungry after a shutdown of more than 40 days.
According to FreeWeibo, a company that tracks censored posts on the popular social media platform, 3 of the 10 most sensible searches on Weibo were similar to the bus crash.
Many focused on photographs of the bus shared through social media users. A photo showed the bus after it recovered from the crash site. Its roof was crushed and parts were missing. Another photo reportedly showed the driver dressed in a full white protective suit.
Online users wondered how a driver can see well when their face is covered and why they drive so late at night. Many comments were censored, but some expressing discontent with the current pandemic system remained in place.
“I hope the value of this pain can drive faster change, but if that’s possible, I don’t want to pay such a high value for such a change,” the top popular observation said in an online report on the crash. the public broadcaster CCTV. ” Condolences. “
One of the bus’s passengers said its entire construction had been placed in central quarantine, according to a report via Caixin, a newspaper. Still, its construction hadn’t reported any cases, according to a friend who shared his text message with Caixin.
Another comment quoted a proverb: “These human lives are like straw.
On Tuesday, Guizhou reported 41 new cases of COVID-19 across the province. The province has been on high alert in recent weeks after finding a case in August expired. It closed its capital, the euphemism “quiet period” to describe moving, meaning other people can’t leave their homes.
___
Associated Press press assistant Caroline Chen in Beijing contributed to the report.
More people
Interchange