Sometimes tragedy can show true bravery.
From Episode 156 of Heart Health Radio:
The Chinese society wants to keep things quiet. That’s the problem. There is something…I’m half Chinese so I can say this, It’s called saving face and that means not getting embarrassed that there is something wrong. So, they arrested him. The police came and said, don’t you dare let us lose face and think that Wuhan is an infected site.
Dr. Frank Wefald: Well, the Chinese government after the outcry. They got him and let him out. He went back to work and the sad thing is he died of Coronavirus.
Dave Alexander: Dr. Li Wenliang.
Dr. Frank Wefald: And I think we all should say, tip our hats and say a prayer of thanks because this man had the guts to blow the whistle. Not only that, go back and risk his life to try to save some of these other people.
There is a terrific tribute on this page. The video features his mother speaking (we assume) Mandarin. You can hear the pain in her voice. She and Li Wenliang’s mother should also be proud of their son. — Dave
Dr. Frank Wefald: But it’s not going down. They do not have a handle on it. It’s a lot worse than I thought it was going to be. I did. Because you know Ebola, it got contained. A lot of people suffered but you know they don’t have any treatments that are for sure, but you know what they’re testing? They’re testing Tamiflu along with HIV drugs.
The Johns Hopkins website mapping the coronavirus is here. As of this writing (2/9/2020) there were officially 814 deaths and more than 37,000 cases worldwide.
People’s Daily, the official newspaper of China’s Communist Party, reported that he said on social media before his death: “After I recover from the disease, I will work on the front line of the battle. The virus is still spreading, and I don’t want to be a deserter.”
Li is now being hailed as a hero in China, with posts seeking justice for him and calling for freedom of speech trending on Weibo. Many were removed from the site, which often complies with government demands to censor politically sensitive content.
The top two trending hashtags on Weibo on Friday were “Wuhan government owes Dr. Li Wenliang an apology” and “We want freedom of speech,” the BBC reported. It said that hours later those hashtags had been removed and “hundreds of thousands of comments had been wiped.”
According to the BBC, one comment on Weibo said: “This is not the death of a whistleblower. This is the death of a hero.”
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