102 Shadow of plague – Life under COVID-19

JIAXUAN WANG

It was a cold winter night of 2019, the last night before the new year, I was at my friends place, we were all ordinary grade 9 Chinese student on New Year vacation and glad to finally get a long weekend after a busy school week and have some fun celebrating the end of 2019 together. I was playing Mario party with my friends and looking forward to seeing the gorgeous fireworks on the balcony of my friend’s house. In a few hours, 2019 will be far away from us, just like every ordinary year in our lives. At this time, the joyful atmosphere of New Year’s Eve was overflowing on everyone’s face, until the host of night news began to broadcast that an unknown coronavirus had been discovered in Wuhan on the TV turned on nearby. I was getting a little worried, since I just learned that SARS in biology class, another kind of coronavirus that caused a huge plague in 2003. I asked my friends if this one could turn into a plague like SARS, my words seemed to remind them, and everyone looked at the TV nervously until the host calmly announced that the epidemic had been brought under control in Wuhan, and that the coronavirus had no sign of spreading between people. I felt that everyone breathed a sigh of relief, and the happy New Year’s Eve atmosphere seemed to be back. As the news broadcast of the coronavirus ended, the flashing New Year countdown on my phone jumps to zero, fireworks on New Year’s Eve were lit outside the window. I still remember that the fireworks that day were a new model and were very gorgeous. The golden light of the fireworks seemed to announce the arrival of the new year, leaving all the unpleasant things in the past 2019, including the news about the new virus. Soon we forgot about the new virus and continued to watch fireworks and play games to celebrate this hard-earned New Year holiday.

Yes, this is what happened when I first saw the news about COVID-19. At that time, no one knew that this was the beginning of a super public health disaster that quickly swept across China and then conquered the world within a few months. My hometown is Lanzhou, a northwestern city located in the heart of mainland China. It is 1,100 kilometers away from Wuhan. When I heard the news, I thought that no matter how powerful the virus is, it is impossible to cross such a long distance. Moreover, I was born in 2005. I did not experience any major epidemic outbreaks at that time. The closest epidemic outbreak to me was SARS in 2003, and it was brought under control in less than a year. Therefore, my thoughts were the same as those of most people at the time. What’s the big deal? Life will still go on. It was just a small-scale public health emergency thousands of kilometers away. Now it seems that COVID is like the Grim Reaper hidden behind the fog, and his scythe will take away millions of lives in the next few years. We cannot see his appearance clearly because the fog called secrecy shrouds him. Throughout history, every plague has its own secrecy, and COVID is no exception. In fact, until today we cannot grasp all the information about COVID, such as its origin.

Life went on, just like old days before. After the New Year’s Day holiday, we still had to go to school for two weeks, and we spent every day from 9:00 to 22:00 in school. In mainland China, the ninth grade is actually a very busy period since all students at this stage will face huge pressure to enter high school. I soon forgot about the outbreak of the unknown virus in Wuhan in the endless exams and homework. Two weeks later, I welcomed the winter vacation of the ninth grade. It was snowing heavily on the day I left school. Before leaving, I took a last look at the school shrouded in wind and snow. At that time, I never expected that this would be one of the few opportunities for me to see the school in the next few years. Almost at the same time, the COVID epidemic was completely out of control. It seemed that within a few days, the news reports went from a minor outbreak and no human-to-human transmission to a complete blockade of Wuhan, then the entire Hubei Province, and then quickly spread to the whole country. The Spring Festival should have been the grandest festival in mainland China, but in 2020, the Spring Festival did not seem to exist because people were in a panic about the spread of the virus. In mid-January, I could only go out wearing a medical-grade mask. By the Spring Festival in late January, I was completely forbidden to leave the apartment because the virus was discovered in Lanzhou. The blockade had spread across the country with the virus, and the virus began to appear in every place I knew. My parents began to stockpile a large amount of food, medicine and various supplies at home, and major supermarkets were almost emptied. I found that the distance that I once regarded as insurmountable was easily crossed by COVID, just as easily as I crossed the threshold of the front door. I began to hope that the epidemic could be brought under control, because in fact, large-scale deaths had already begun to occur at this time. Although Wuhan had been fully locked down, the Chinese government had established a large number of temporary hospitals and quarantine points there and began to send doctors from all over China to Wuhan. However, these rapid measures did not seem to be of any use. Judging from some videos posted on social media, Wuhan in February had become a living hell. Those infected kept coughing until blood began to spurt out with their coughs, and then they stopped breathing and were plugged into ventilators, but they would still die of suffocation with bloodshot eyes. Soon, the major crematoriums in Wuhan were filled with bodies that had not yet been cremated. A more terrifying thing is that virus actually began to spread wildly in mainland China, including my hometown. In the foreseeable future, it seemed that all of China would become the next Wuhan, a purgatory that was lingering under the shadow of the virus.

Fortunately, the measures taken by the public health department and the government played a certain role. Something called a health QR code was invented. In the early stage, it divided people into three types according to their whereabouts: high-risk infection, infected people, and uninfected people. They are displayed in red, green, and yellow respectively. Later, the function of distinguishing according to the results of virus detection was added. This is actually a very efficient way to control the spread of the disease. In addition, almost all areas of mainland China entered a state of lockdown. People hardly went out, and supplies were stockpiled by themselves or delivered by volunteers sent by the government. Under this lockdown state, it seemed that the impact of COVID could be effectively controlled.

It was in this tense and slightly hopeful situation that I spent my winter vacation. In fact, I was supposed to go back to school in late February, but the COVID lockdown had not ended yet. This was my first time experiencing online classes, a new form of teaching. We started our semester using software such as ZOOM. In fact, no one had really used this form of teaching on a large scale, including my teacher. In the early days, there were a lot of technical problems and jokes caused by inadvertent privacy leaks. Everyone quickly got used to this approach, and online classes continued sporadically in mainland China until the end of 2022. They gradually became a part of my life, in fact, I spent more than 60% of my high school life via online classes. Speaking of online classes, like most people, I have mixed feelings about this form of class. On the one hand, we could attend classes more easily and don’t have to stay in school for nearly 15 hours a day. But in reality, online classes often mean inefficiency, because my attention is often affected by the Internet and other things at home. Online teaching also means that I cannot see my classmates and friends at school, which is not an unbearable thing for me, because I don’t like to go out. However, I know many people who are troubled by this, and some even suffer from mental illness due to being unable to go out and socialize for a long time. Therefore, I still believe that although online classes can bring a more relaxed atmosphere and a more flexible schedule, this is not a teaching method that can be sustained for a long time. The learning efficiency in school is usually much higher than in other places, and for people who like outdoor sports and socializing, online classes are a disaster that turns people into prisoners.

By April 2022, the information fog surrounding the novel coronavirus seemed to have dissipated. Television news reported the latest scientific research results every day. We knew that the virus was called COVID. We gradually began to understand its structure. Some possible treatments and effective detection methods began to be invented. As Wuhan had basically completed the control of COVID, the blockade had basically begun to weaken. Although the virus was still spreading, I thought at the time that the virus would be completely controlled within a month or two like SARS, and my life would be able to return to normal. In fact, I had received a notice from the school to officially open. However, I misjudged the secrecy of the virus. It began to mutate continuously, and the infection and spread in various places never stopped. My life never really returned to normal. My school’s notice to open in April 2020 was actually never implemented. We spent the entire semester in online classes and intermittent blockades, and I successfully entered high school. However, I found that even after half a year, humans still didn’t seem to understand this virus very well, and were even completely helpless. I saw COVID successively conquer the world, first Singapore, Indochina, Japan and South Korea, and then the United States, the European Union, Latin America and Africa. The whole world was facing the same dilemma as China in the early stage of the outbreak. Various measures seemed to have no obvious effect, and the number of deaths and infections was increasing every day.

The normal life I envisioned never came in the following two years. In fact, epidemic control and lockdown had become disgusting things. I experienced nearly 20 intermittent lockdowns from April 2020 to December 2022. The Chinese government’s lockdown measures have never been relaxed. Every time an infected person appears in an entire region, millions of people will be forced to lock down at home for at least two weeks. The health QR code system designed at the beginning of pandemic turned into technological shackles, which can be used to eliminate people’s freedom. Every day, we need to take a virus test, otherwise your health QR code will turn yellow or red, which indicates you are likely to be affected by COVID, even if you have never left home. Once this happens, you will be forcibly taken to an isolation point for 14 days of observation and imprisonment. The isolation point is a hotel or gymnasium full of possible infected people. The accommodation conditions there are usually poor and there is a much higher risk of infection. During the lockdown, any attempt to enter or leave the accommodation will cause a strict interrogation investigation, and generally will not be approved, government workers can turn your health QR code into red if you dare to leave the home city without approval. In my opinion, these measures are actually not necessary since the lethality of COVID began to weaken. Because of this forced blockade, people’s food, clothing, housing and transportation started to have problems. There was a shortage of supplies during the blockade. During the most stringent days of the blockade, the remaining food in my house was only enough for one day. We had to temporarily reduce food intake until the supplies distributed by the government arrived. This situation actually happened throughout mainland China, and there have even been extreme cases of starvation to death due to lack of food at home¹.  If you unfortunately need to seek medical treatment during this period, you actually need to go through very complicated examinations and interrogations. There have even been cases where pregnant women who were about to give birth were not admitted to the hospital because they did not pass the virus nucleic acid test, which eventually led to the death of the fetus². Every day in this lockdown, I lived with constant infection testing, the frustration of not being able to leave the house, the fear of shortages and abnormal health QR codes. This was not a pleasant experience. However, due to some political considerations, even in 2022 when most countries have stopped the lockdown, the Chinese government has resolutely implemented this policy. Although the COVID epidemic is over, this period of life in high-pressure lockdown has left deep memories for me and many others.

By November 2022, the blockade had almost worn-out people’s patience, and the huge cost made it impossible for local governments to maintain it. Finally, on November 7, 2022, this normalized blockade ended, and soon the virus began to spread wildly. Almost everyone could not escape the infection this time. On December 19, 2022, I was infected with COVID for the first time. It was not until then that I intuitively experienced the power of this virus. Although COVID at this time was already an Omicron variant with a greatly reduced mortality rate and severe illness rate, I still had a high fever of 42 degrees Celsius and a severe cough, and it took 10 days to recover. When the symptoms were the worst, I saw the terrible nightmare deep in my heart. It was the victims who had bleeding from the mouth and nose, red eyes, and blue faces due to lack of oxygen that I saw on social media at the end of January 2020. For a few moments, I thought I might end up like this. Of course, the worst situation I expected did not happen. I eventually recovered, and the vaccine and special medicine technology for COVID began to fully mature. As the infection wave receded, the World Health Organization finally announced in May 2023 that COVID was no longer an emergency health event threatening public safety. The nightmare of New Year’s Eve in 2019 finally disappeared in 2023. Unlike what most people expected, this major epidemic actually lasted for nearly 4 years before it was basically over.

Although the crisis is over, the trauma and profound impact it has brought to human society have never disappeared. In fact, COVID may be the biggest crisis humanity has faced since the end of World War II. When the wave of the virus recedes, what is left on the beach are the tombstones of millions of victims. In addition to the heavy casualties, the virus also caused a very serious economic recession that swept every major economy in the world. As of today in 2025, we have not been able to get out of the economic recession caused by COVID. In my opinion, this recession may continue for a long time. In addition to the economic recession, COVID has also affected people’s living habits. People have become accustomed to completing work, school, and even entertainment and shopping online. Contact between people has begun to decrease, and Internet culture has become more developed. Streaming platforms, online office software, and online shopping software have made great progress. COVID has also caused many far-reaching political and cultural impacts, the most obvious of which is that conservatism and anti-globalization have begun to become the main trend again, and even racism has been significantly strengthened. Perhaps, a hundred years later, when scientists and historians of later generations look back on the five-year history of COVID’s global spread like we do today, they will also lament that the harm caused by this catastrophe is so far-reaching and heavy.

Looking at the history of COVID from its emergence to its outbreak and then to its control, I think secrecy has always been the keyword of this disaster. From the initial confusion, to the invention of the first reliable detection method, the first feasible treatment method, to the later vaccines and special medicines. Human scientists were fighting COVID – the sickle-wielding death god – in the fog. Our vaccines have never been able to obtain long-term reliability in the constantly generated variants, and even the work of virus tracing has never been able to proceed smoothly. The secrecy of the virus has also brought infinite fear to everyone. Various rumors and misunderstandings about COVID still exist on the Internet and in reality today. I think the history of human beings fighting against plagues is actually a history of fighting against secrecy. We have tried hard to uncover the fog of various pathogens. Although we have never been completely successful, the facts we have mastered will one day become enough to help us successfully fight the plague.  

From the first outbreak of the virus to the final end of the epidemic, the above are all my experiences and some thoughts during this period. I hope this is an effective record of COVID.