- cross-posted to:
- globalnews@lemmy.zip
- cross-posted to:
- globalnews@lemmy.zip
Citizen journalist Zhang Zhan’s search for the truth during the early days of the pandemic was seen as a threat by the authorities
A Chinese citizen journalist who has been in prison for four years after reporting on the early days of the Covid-19 epidemic in Wuhan is due to be released on Monday.
Zhang Zhan, a former lawyer, travelled to Wuhan in February 2020 to document the Chinese government’s response to what became the start of a global pandemic. She shared her reports on X (then known as Twitter), YouTube and WeChat. She was one of the few independent Chinese reporters on the ground as Wuhan and the rest of China went into lockdown.
In one video, recorded in February 2020, Zhang said: “I can’t find anything to say except that the city is paralysed because everything is under cover. That’s what this country is facing now … They imprison us in the name of pandemic prevention and restrict our freedom. We must not talk to strangers, it’s dangerous. So without the truth, everything is meaningless. If we cannot get to the truth, if we cannot break the monopoly of the truth, the world means nothing to us.”
In another video, she showed a hospital that was overflowing with patients on trolleys in the hallway.
A brave woman.
Braver than most western journalists, who regurgitate the corporatocracies narrative and manufacture consent on their behalf.
Hopefully she’s given a good job and granted asylum somewhere in the west ASAP, so she can go on with her life.
EDIT: Gotcha! What kind of smooth brain do you have to be to consider my above statements logically inconsistent, ironic, or hypocritical?
None of the wests failings prevent it from currently enabling a freer and objectively better quality of life for the vast majority. She does not face persecution in the west. In China she has, and will continue to; especially under the social credit system.
Braver than most western journalists, who regurgitate the corporatocracies narrative and manufacture consent on their behalf.
True
Hopefully she’s given a good job and granted asylum somewhere in the west ASAP, so she can go on with her life.
What?
Gotcha! What kind of smooth brain do you have to be to consider my above statements logically inconsistent, ironic, or hypocritical?
None of the wests failings prevent it from currently enabling a freer and objectively better quality of life for the vast majority. She does not face persecution in the west. In China she has, and will continue to; especially under the social credit system.
Many posters on Lemmy make clear to me china doesn’t have these types of issues. What gives?
Glad she’s out, hope she is able to leave the country, if she wishes.
Nah. You’re on lemmy.world. You won’t find many of them here.
That shouldn’t be made clear to you because it’s false, China has piles of issues of every kind from homelessness to internment camps to wealthy elite.
I’m being facetious, the overnight ml-lemmygrad-hexbear types chirp that message
deleted by creator
Even worker and labor protection issues. That’s the entire reason in fact that US companies like to go with Chinese labor. It costs far less because the workers don’t get paid as much and don’t have the labor protections that Western countries do.
Not as true as it was a couple of decades ago, they’ve been shifting to Taiwan lately, but yeah.
Don’t fall for it, there is a lot of Chinese propaganda and damage control on social media.
China has a lot issues and Chinese people are fleeing their country
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/05/11/soaring-number-risk-death-to-flee-xi-china-for-us/
And don’t forget the tragic ending suffered by the Dr (can’t remember his name) that first brought out the covid issue, and his phone messages were leaked to the public if I am not mistaken. He was left dead with no proper care by the authority.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang
I don’t think he isn’t properly treated, at least according to wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang#Illness_and_death
There is a bench in New York central park dedicated to him: https://www.westsiderag.com/2023/02/07/central-park-bench-and-gathering-honor-covid-19-whistleblower . If you are near the central park, you can stop by to pay tribute to him.
Yeah, it could be. May be the sentiment during that time made me think otherwise.
Anyway to quote NYT,
We found no evidence his medical care was compromised. But these documents, along with Dr. B’s account and experts’ analysis, reveal important new details about his illness and treatment.
and…
The experts said that based on the records, the treatment Dr. Li received, in general, followed the norms of that time for managing the symptoms of coronavirus patients
bur…
By the morning of Feb. 6, doctors wrote in the progress notes that Dr. Li was at risk of multiple organ failure. Several physicians we spoke to said that Dr. Li’s condition was so serious that his medical team should have at this point, or before it, considered intubating him and placed him on a ventilator — a higher level of oxygen support.
The records indicate that Dr. Li had earlier been given oxygen through a nasal tube and then an additional oxygen mask. His medical team also tried to use a noninvasive ventilator on Jan. 19, but wrote that “the patient could not tolerate.”
It is unclear why Dr. Li was not intubated. Some doctors are more reluctant to intubate young patients; sometimes the patients themselves refuse it. To this day, there is no consensus on when invasive ventilators should be used on Covid-19 patients.
and…
According to Dr. B, who arrived at Dr. Li’s intensive care ward around 9 p.m., about two hours after Dr. Li entered cardiac arrest, the hospital’s leadership pushed the medical team to use ECMO because it wanted to show the public that no effort had been spared.
But several doctors in the room argued that by that point it was too late for it to have been of any use, an assessment that six physicians we talked to agreed with. Dr. B also said putting Dr. Li on ECMO, given its invasive nature, would have been an “insult to his body.”
Yeah, the final ECMO was indeed controversial in Chinese community. Other than that, I have not heard any indication of mistreatment.
Given his high social status, and he said “一个健康的社会不该只有一种声音” (a healthy society shouldn’t only have only one voice), some people suspect CCP likely wanted him dead. But so far, I am not aware of any evidence that his death is man-made.
By early June 2020, five other doctors had died from COVID-19 in the Wuhan hospital, now called “whistleblower hospital”.
Was there a huge amount of doctors sick or did these guys just get disappeared?
COVID was killing a lot of medical personnel initially because they weren’t using the right PPE and got infected with a large initial viral load.
How quickly people forget how major metro hospitals in the US had rows of refrigerated semi trailers because there were too many bodies
How doctors and nurses were told to wash and reuse their N95s despite it being proven to compromise their effectiveness because supplies were so low
I hope this bird flu shit blows up even worse, maybe then these dumbasses will get the message
They’ll never learn. They told us to bang pots and pans for them, and now a few years later they’re still underpaid and overworked the world over. Same goes for every other ‘essential worker’.
Oh I never washed mine. Just kept it in a plastic bag and wore it till the straps broke.
Edit: downvotes make me laugh. For context, I was a pre vaccine nurse on a COVID unit for the duration of the pandemic. Never did catch it though from the hospital.
Also wore a plastic face shield that I washed every time I left the room with bleach. Thankfully COVID is droplet spread so that’s plenty ppe. I wouldn’t have wanted to wear that N95 in a TB room though.
But the majority of deaths were always old people.
Younger people got damaged lungs but dying was a rarity.
Wikipedia isn’t really a good source for anything ever. If you’re going to cite wikipedia then just grab the wikipedia’s source from the bottom of the page.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A Chinese citizen journalist who has been in prison for four years after reporting on the early days of the Covid-19 epidemic in Wuhan is due to be released on Monday.
Zhang Zhan, a former lawyer, travelled to Wuhan in February 2020 to document the Chinese government’s response to what became the start of a global pandemic.
But in fact, what the judge didn’t like was that she collected those materials and put them on Twitter … and received interviews from so-called enemy media,” said the lawyer, referring to publications such as the US government-funded Radio Free Asia.
Maya Wang, the associate Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said: “It’s a relief to know that Zhang is being released, given her very poor health in prison, but she shouldn’t have been imprisoned in the first place.
Sarah Brooks, Amnesty International’s China director, said: “We urge the Chinese authorities to ensure that Zhang Zhan is fully free from 13 May.
She and her family must not be subjected to surveillance or harassment, and the Chinese authorities must also ensure there are no restrictions on her access to medical treatment after her traumatic ordeal in jail.”
The original article contains 726 words, the summary contains 194 words. Saved 73%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
That’s ridiculous.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.