Social Stability – Page 74

Public Opinion: Intellectuals in China Started Raising Their “Five Demands”

The night of February 6, 2020, saw the death of Dr. Li Wenliang, a Wuhan physician who alerted others about novel coronavirus a month ago. He then contracted the virus when working on the front-line treating patients. There was an outcry among intellectuals within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) establishment. They cried out for freedom of speech.

Citizen News, a social diversity advocate news outlet based in Hong Kong, published an open letter signed by leading Chinese intellectuals with five demands:

The Designation of February 6 as National Freedom of Speech Day (Dr. Li Wenliang Day).
Starting now, fully implement the Chinese people’s right to freedom of speech granted by Article 35 of the Constitution.
Starting now, no political forces or state machine should infringe on the Chinese people when they form associations or communicate among each other. The state organs must immediately stop censoring or blocking the content of social media.
Grant equal rights to citizens in Wuhan city and Hubei province, the epicenter of the coronavirus. All coronavirus patients should be able to receive timely, proper, and effective treatment.
Call for the National People’s Congress to convene an emergency assembly to discuss how to protect citizens’ freedom of speech and do not allow any police force to stop the planned meeting (China holds the National People’s Congress in early March every year).

Scholars associated with China’s leading universities, including Renmin University, Peking University, and Tsinghua University, have signed the open letter. South China Morning Post reported on February 12 that hundreds of Chinese, led by academics, have signed the petition.

China’s Human Rights Attorney Association also called for designating February 6 as “National Truth Day.”

On February 7, a “Notice to All Chinese” was sent out from “a group of Tsinghua University Alumni” with five appeals:

Resolutely oppose putting political security above all else; that is the goal of an extremely selfish group.
Resolutely oppose blocking discussion groups and individual accounts on social media.
Resolutely oppose the current maintenance of the stability mentality and practice; oppose treating the people as the enemy.
Resolutely oppose making this disaster a grand party to praise the party; going after the accountability of the officials and the system is a must.
Resolutely oppose going backward; adhere to the abolition of the lifelong term of leaders that Deng Xiaoping started.

Death Count: (Unconfirmed) Huoshenshan Hospital Has Emptied 200 Rooms Every Day

People are concerned about the accuracy of the Chinese government’s postings about the death count from the Coronavirus. An unconfirmed self-posting suggested that there could be 400 deaths at the Huoshenshan Hospital every day. The hospital, along with the Leishenshan Hospital, were two high-profile hospitals that Beijing built in Wuhan in 10 days to host the novel coronavirus patients. The People’s Liberation Army manages the hospitals.

The person (who made the posting) said that he is a doctor at the Huoshenshan Hospital. He made two postings at the 4chan.org website, an anonymous English-language imageboard website. There were grammar errors in his English but Chinascope left his original posting as is. He mentioned that the deaths were not counted as pneumonia death but rather as sudden deaths, and that also the hospital emptied 200 rooms every day (there were two beds per room).

On February 7, 2020, he posted:

“I am a lab technician at Huoshenshan hospital in Wuhan.

The situation is so much worse than you know. Reported death of coronavirus are just those of sudden type, not pneumonic. Daily removes pneumonic patients to not return, whole sections of hospital 200 rooms each and not recorded. They are filled immediately with new pneumonic.

Please know we are trying but there is simply too much.”

After people questioned the validity of the information, the author posted a note on February 8 with “4chan 2020-2-8” in his hand to prove it was true. His posting said: “Is this? I only know little of site, hard to access often.”

[Editor’s Note: The freeing up of rooms is likely due to death. Leishenshan Hospital might have similar death rate. Death count from these two hospitals is likely not part of the corpses collected by funeral houses, as these hospitals are ran by the PLA, outside the civil process.]

Death Count: Funeral Home Interviews Suggested 500 Corpses Incinerated in Wuhan per Day

As people are concerned with the accuracy of the death count from the Coronavirus that the Chinese government posts, Epoch Times reporters called funeral homes in Wuhan to inquire about the count of incineration each day. The following are the highlights of the report:

1. The interviewee said that both corpse transportation and incineration at his funeral home were four to five times the usual workload.

2. His funeral home has 9 cars to transport corpses. On February 3 alone, his funeral home took in 127 corpses and incinerated 116.

3. Among the 127 corpses, 8 were confirmed coronavirus deaths and 48 were suspected cases. However, since 116 corpses were incinerated immediately, they were likely to be coronavirus deaths, also. in the cases where the death is normal, the family members of the deceased may need more time to coordinate the incineration time.

4. 38 percent of the corpses were from hospitals and 61 percent were directly from people’s homes. This would indicate a large number of patients and deaths occurred outside of the hospital system.

5. Hankou funeral home incinerated more than the funeral home mentioned above. Since Hankou funeral home had 16 cars, it could incinerate 225 corpses, if operating at the same capacity.

6. Another funeral home said that they incinerated 30 corpses in one day. Assuming four other funeral houses incinerated at the same rate, that would be a total of 150 per day.

[Editor’s Note: The funeral’s death count combines natural deaths and coronavirus deaths. There can be two methods to estimate the coronavirus death count.

Method 1: Assuming 116 out of 127 deaths were coronavirus deaths, that’s about 90 percent of the total deaths. The total death count from above was 127 + 225 + 150 = 502; 90 percent of that would have been coronavirus deaths, which was 451.

Method 2: The total death count was 502. The normal incineration rate was 122 per day before the epidemic outbreak (see Chinascope posting “Death Count: Wuhan Incinerated 122 Corpses before Coronavirus Outbreak”). That leaves 380 coronavirus deaths per day in Wuhan.]

As of February 10, China reported a total of 909 coronavirus deaths, among which 871 were from Hubei Province (including Wuhan City).

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