My name is Geoff Ogden, as a long-term resident of the Lithgow and the Central West region, with many friends and colleagues in the area, it was suggested that some people may be interested in reading of my experiences of living in China through the coronavirus epidemic.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
After attending a social function in Lithgow on January 30 I departed for China the following day, trying my best to slip back into the country before the severe travel restrictions kicked in.
I had left my disabled wife in hospital there while I returned to Australia for a fortnight and I was desperate to get back. She had previously spent almost 2 years in Three Tree Lodge and requires full-time care.
It was confronting to arrive the following evening in Luzhou, a city of close to a million, to see it almost completely closed down. What would normally have been a bustling Saturday evening at the end of Chinese New Year festivities was anything but, with the streets deserted and eerily quiet - seemingly abandoned.
The only vehicles evident were taxis with the occasional motorbike; the only shops open, food outlets and pharmacies; the only people to be seen, an occasional lone pedestrian.
We are about 900 km west of Wuhan, the epicentre of the virus. Hubei Province, of which Wuhan is the capital, was completely quarantined and every city and town in China had been instructed to lock down.
Over the following couple of weeks regulations became increasingly stringent - housing complexes were cordoned in such a way that there was only one entry/exit at which the temperature of everyone entering was monitored; entry was restricted to residents only; supermarkets temperature checked everybody and denied entry to anyone not wearing a mask; intercity buses were suspended and city buses ran to a skeleton timetable; all but essential services at the hospital were closed; public open spaces were barricaded off to prevent people mixing; loudspeakers, both mobile and fixed, blurted out directives on what the regulations allowed as well as information on personal protective procedures; text messages were sent to phones and messaging on social media; all schools and colleges remained closed, with teaching resuming online.
This culminated in the most severe restrictions in mid-February when each family was issued with a pass out that allowed only one member of the household to leave for 2 hours every second day specifically to buy food.
China has the social capital, the political infrastructure and the means to implement such a response rapidly and effectively - the populous is compliant, tolerant, disciplined and resilient.
After all, China has been confronting catastrophes of various kinds for millennia and has always managed to emerge, be it epidemics, droughts, floods, typhoons or earthquakes. People remained calm, resolute, stoic - I saw no panic buying or sensed any anxiety.
To me it was apparent that most people had confidence in their government's ability to assert control and do what was necessary to limit the spread of the contagion.
And at least to date, it appears to have been successful. By late February the rules were being relaxed as the number of new cases in the city fell to zero.
Since then things have been slowly returning to normal and towards the end of last week small restaurants and tea houses were authorised to reopen; larger restaurants and mass events where many would congregate are still restricted and schools will remain closed at least into April.
It would appear that China, apart the province of Hubei, is one of the safer places in the world to be at present - in the first fortnight of March, our province of Sichuan, with a population of 83 million, has recorded only one new case, and with a total number of confirmed cases of 539, on a per person basis, is lower than Australia, and significantly less than NSW.
We can only hope it stays that way, with the rest of the world soon to follow suit.
