“Two years on, you are not forgotten. Happy new year Dr Li.” Chinese netizens flooded Dr Li Wenliang’s Sina Weibo account as 2021, another year shadowed by COVID-19 is coming to an end. They shared with him China’s progress of battling COVID-19 for the past two years, despite that he will never reply.
“Thanks Dr Li. Almost two years have passed. However, the pandemic in China is under control. The public is actively cooperating with fighting the virus and most of us got the booster shot! COVID-19 has taught us to cherish everyone around us,” commented one Sina Weibo user.
“We still have not completely conquered the virus after two years. But now, we have vaccines and China prevails over other countries in fighting COVID-19. I saw forecasts that say things will change in 2022.I am not sure about that. Anyway, we are doing all our best to live our lives,” said another netizen.
The warm and touching words left on Dr Li’s Sina Weibo account were a sharp contrast to the malicious attacks launched by Western media, under the name of Li, to attack China’s initial handling of COVID-19.
Observers noted that such a sensationalizing of Li’s death and the reaction of the Chinese public to it actually mirrors the ignorance of Western media about the Chinese people’s solidarity and contributions against COVID-19, and using Li’s death to sow discord between the Chinese people and the government has been doomed long ago.
In late December 2019, Dr Li, an eye doctor working in Wuhan, Central China’s Hubei Province, shared his concerns about an unknown, SARS-like disease with colleagues in a chat group in WeChat social media.
As member of the Communist Party of China and ophthalmologist at the Wuhan Central Hospital, where he was also treated for the coronavirus infection, Dr Li obtained a patient report suggesting signs of a possible SARS-like coronavirus on December 30.
He shared the information in a group chat, saying there had been seven confirmed cases of a SARS-like disease, according to one of his Weibo posts.
On January 3, the Wuhan police reprimanded Dr Li for spreading “online rumors” and required him to sign a letter of reprimand. He died on February 7, 2020.
Following Dr Li’s death, an investigation team sent by the central authorities on February 7 asked the local supervisory body to oversee the rectification of the matter, hold the relevant personnel accountable and announce the results in a timely fashion.
After Li’s death, his Sina Weibo account has become a “sanctuary” for many netizens to share their wishes, secrets and anecdotes. In the last post of his Weibo account on February 1, 2020, Dr Li said his COVID-19 test finally confirmed he was infected. It had attracted more than 1 million comments as of Thursday, 692 days after his death.
The majority of those comments are warmhearted and filled with positive energy. Yet, Western media have constantly used his death to attack China. For instance, Reuters on Thursday quoted experts saying that Li’s Weibo account has become a place “where people express the feelings they are not comfortable expressing elsewhere.”
However, experts said that those media failed to see the fact that most comments under Li’s Sina Weibo are positive, filled with good wishes of life and respect for medical workers. It is just one of their old tricks to portray Dr Li’s case as a geyser for public anger against the government and tried to link it with an alleged government cover-up of the early stage outbreak.
“Happy new year Dr Li, we are good despite flareups in some places. I think it will eventually disappear. Some Western countries are dragging down the global efforts to fight the virus and they will not stop smearing us,” commented another netizen.
Photo: GT
