By JOHN RICHARD SCHROCK
This outbreak of a new coronavirus in China will result in widespreadchī kǔ [吃苦]or “swallowing bitterness.” Several thousands of years of Chinese history have seen citizens suffer plagues, wars, food shortages and starvation, warlord pillaging, and natural disasters. These tragedies that afflicted everyone had to be withstood. ---And you just moved onward. And swallowed the bitterness---chī kǔ.
Even in times when everyone was equal, as in “equally poor,” the Chinese have persevered by holding onto dreams and looking forward to the simplest of joys. That includes coming together as family once a year at Spring Festival, officially starting Jan. 25. Now the yearlong plans of Chinese in Wuhan and Hubei Province have changed. It has become necessary to lockdown transport and stay-in-place. Affluent business families, students studying far from home since their high scores allowed them entry into the best universities, and poor rural parents who came to work in factories and have only this major holiday to return and visit with their child or children being cared for by grandparent---they will all swallow bitterness.
China is not the United States. Most of its population is now literally stacked in the big cities. Put nearly five people where you see one in the U.S. And living space is less; China has more mountain ranges and deserts. In the largest cities, if everyone was down at street level at the same time, movement would be nearly impossible. Packed together, disease transmission is even more likely.
Chinese medical scientists have worked rapidly and professionally. In a CNN report, Baylor College vaccine specialist Dr. Peter Hotez praised the speed with which Chinese researchers sequenced and published the virus's genome, asserting “With SARS, it took almost a year to be able to identify and map the full genetic code. Now we're doing this in just a few weeks.” Hotez found it is likewise remarkable that scientists are able to start developing a vaccine for a virus identified less than a month ago.
According to Anthony Fauci, head of our U.S. National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, "The NIH is in the process of taking the first steps towards the development of a vaccine." But he indicated to CNN that it would take several months for the first phase of the clinical trials to start, and over a year before a vaccine might be available. That does not help the situation now.
Doctors in China are working as rapidly as possible to determine the ultimate danger of this new virus. It finally has a name, “2019-nCoV,” although the press will probably still call it the Wuhan virus. During the first weeks of the epidemic, all patients seemed to have picked it up from the local market. If those were the only patients, it would indicate that it was only transmitted from animal-to-human. But additional cases arose that were never in the markets, indicating it was now transmitted human-to-human.
Another critical unknown was how virulent this new virus was. With more patients dying, this strain of coronavirus is now recognized as a serious threat.
In the U.S., both state health departments and the CDC describe: Symptoms can include a fever and respiratory symptoms such as cough or difficulty breathing, similar to what you may feel with influenza or a bad cold. Symptoms usually start within 14 days of an exposure…. It cannot be transmitted from inanimate objects (such as items or packages purchased from China)…. This is an ongoing investigation and information is changing rapidly. For updated information on the outbreak, visit www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html.”
China’s older generations have seen emergencies before. Today’s parents have known hunger, their grandparents knew starvation. But the younger generation that has now grown up in China’s burgeoning middle and upper class, called second generation rich or “fu er dai” [傅尔戴] have not remembered remembered the need for quarantine and travel restriction. Yet in China, their great respect for family elders and their closer history to “hard times” will make this shutdown, with the heartbreak of curtailed plans held by the whole population for a year, something that they know they must do. They will swallow bitterness.
John Richard Schrock has trained biology teachers for more than 30 years in Kansas. He also has lectured at 27 universities in 20 trips to China. He holds the distinction of “Faculty Emeritus” at Emporia State University.