What the world can learn from Chinas response to the coronavirus Gary Liu
Transcriber: Ivana Korom
Reviewer: Joanna Pietrulewicz
Chris Anderson: Welcome to TED Connects.
This is a new series
of live conversations,
trying to make sense
of this weird moment that we’re in:
coronavirus.
Everyone’s suddenly changing
how they live their lives,
it’s so jolting, it’s so startling.
We’re all trying to make sense of it,
and it ain’t easy.
That much we know.
We’re trying to make sense
of this together
in the only way that we know how,
which is by having wise humans coming on,
talking to each other,
listening to each other
trying to learn from each other.
We are apart,
but we can use this moment
to build community together,
and that’s what we’re trying to do.
So this is being produced
by a virtual TED team
scattered around New York,
currently one of the epicenters
of this pandemic.
So it’s definitely a scary time
for people here.
I’d like to welcome to join me
my cohost here,
Whitney Pennington Rodgers.
She’s our current affairs curator.
Whitney Pennington Rodgers:
We’re going to be looking a little bit
at China’s response today.
When news surfaced
about a strange viral outbreak
in Wuhan, China
at the very last days of 2019,
I think a lot of people were confused
about what was going on there,
and in the months that followed,
we learned more about the disease
that’s now known as COVID-19,
we watched the situation
in China quickly worsen
and in the most recent weeks
dramatically improve.
And I think as all of us around the world
grapple with how we can contain
and control the spread of COVID-19,
there are a lot of lessons we can learn
from what China experienced
and how they responded.
So we’re really thrilled
to be joined today
by the CEO of the “South China
Morning Post,” Gary Liu,
who’s here to share
his perspective and insights.
So, welcome Gary.
Gary Liu: Thanks for having me.
WPR: Hey there, Gary,
thanks for being with us.
And I think before we dive into things,
I’d love to hear
about just how things have been
for you personally,
your loved ones, those close to you,
how have you been experiencing this?
GL: It’s complicated.
So we’re here in Hong Kong,
I’m working from home,
like much of Hong Kong.
I’m actually self-quarantined
in our apartment here in Hong Kong,
because there was a confirmed case
in our workplace.
So over the course of the last week plus,
and likely for at least another week plus,
the entire organization
has been distributed
and working from home.
You know, when Hong Kong
got its first confirmed case,
I was actually back
in the United States with my wife,
we were taking a small break
in the Rockies,
and we came back to Hong Kong
pretty soon after that
to make sure we got back into Hong Kong
before the airports shut.
And at that point,
it was all of our family
in the United States and friends
texting us and worrying
about how things were in Hong Kong
as the situation in China
started escalating,
and people were sending us,
or trying to send us, supplies.
Masks and sanitizer and stuff like that.
And now it’s the opposite.
New York City is our home,
so we certainly empathize
with what you guys
are dealing with right now
and going through in the city.
And we are seeing
our friends and our family
back home in New York and in California
and checking in on them,
trying to send equipment
and materials back to them,
so the script has flipped
actually pretty fast
over just the last couple of weeks.
WPR: And you know,
I think that’s actually
a really interesting place to start
and probably a question that a lot
of people who aren’t in China have,
you know, I think
from the outside looking in,
it seems as if what’s happened in China
is kind of miraculous.
That to go from, you know,
you have a country with more
than a billion people there,
to go from as many as 80,000 cases
to nearly zero new cases now,
you know, what can you tell us
about how this happened,
to help us understand
the current situation
and just really how China ended up there?
GL: Yeah, a lot has happened.
China has been dealing with this
for several months now.
Several-month head start,
that’s not a good thing,
but they have gone through
several different phases.
I think, Whitney, before I jump into it,
there are a couple of caveats
that are really important to make.
The first one is that we’re still
parsing what happened in China.
The information system, as everyone knows,
is still relatively closed.
And so a lot of the information
that we’re using
to piece together what happened in China
is still not fully complete.
And so with every passing day,
every passing week,
there’s more information
that allows us to retroactively
make sure that we get the picture
of what happened early on
in those early days
at the end of 2019,
get that picture right.
And there’s still a lot
that’s happening today,
even though I think
the information sharing
is much more open than it was early on,
there’s still a lot of stuff
that we need to parse.
And the second important caveat here
is that I think learning
sometimes suggests
that everything China did
was right and good,
and hopefully, other countries
can take it and apply it,
but that’s not 100 percent the case.
China, of course,
did a lot that was right,
and if we walked through the time line,
I think it would be pretty apparent
the decisions that they made
kept the coronavirus
from really exploding
across the entire country
and really limited it to one province
and mostly one city.
But there were also many, many missteps,
and those are things that I think
the world can also learn from,
most importantly, China should learn from,
because most of these –
I think those of us
who are professional observers
would call missteps,
are because they are systemic
issues with the country,
because of governance,
lack of free information flow,
stuff like that.
Those are the initial caveats,
but I think the timing
of how China progressed
from first case to now
has been fascinating.
WPR: Yeah, and I mean,
so we know now that in Hubei province
they’ve officially lifted
the two-month lockdown.
And are you getting the sense,
do you feel like this is the right
decision to make at this moment?
GL: I don’t think I’m the right person
to say whether or not
it’s the right decision.
But certainly, this has been
a progression of decisions,
and I think they’ve been sitting
on this decision for quite some time.
Wuhan itself, which was
where the pandemic started,
it was the first epicenter
and the major epicenter.
Wuhan is opening up on April 8,
that’s right now the schedule.
And this is really, what we’re in now
is the third of three phases
from the first discovery
of the virus in Wuhan.
Now, April 8 will be about 11 weeks
after Wuhan the city
got completely shut down,
and the Hubei province got shut down.
And so for those who are
in a shelter, at home
kind of situations right now
in the United States
and wondering how long
this is going to take,
in Wuhan, they’ve been
locked down for 11 weeks
and only now has the Chinese
government decided
they’re ready to start letting people
move freely around.
WPR: And to your point earlier
about some of the possible missteps
in terms of reporting,
I mean, there are still reports now
that we might not be getting
an accurate number of cases
that we’re seeing in Wuhan or beyond,
we’re hearing some people say
there are no new cases,
other people saying
that there actually are cases.
So do you feel like there is
accurate spread of information
about the current state of the virus
in China right now?
GL: Generally, yes,
with the caveat that it is based
on the Chinese government’s definition.
And this is one of the problems right now
that even the World Health
Organization is struggling with,
is that the definition
of what is a confirmed case,
what is an infection,
is different from country to country.
As an example, in China,
the folks that have tested positive
but are asymptomatic,
we understand now
that they are not included,
since February 7,
they have not been included
in the official numbers.
Or at the very least, on February 7,
they changed that definition,
and they’re not included
in those official numbers.
And that could be another 50 percent
on top of the numbers
that we’re seeing today.
So what we’ve found,
our reporters have gotten their hands
on some classified government documents
and government data
that suggests that a third of total
actual positive tests are asymptomatic,
and therefore not included
in official numbers.
Now, I don’t think that this is an example
of the Chinese government
trying to hide information.
This is a definitions issue,
which countries have been debating
and people are doing it in different ways.
But like I said,
there really have been
three very distinct phases.
We are in the third phase
that I would call recovery
and rehabilitation,
rehabilitation being
the rehabilitation of China’s image.
But the first part was discovery
and a lot of denial.
And then there was this
two-and-a-half-month period
of response and containment.
And that I think,
the response and containment part
is the most interesting
to the rest of the world.
WPR: And so maybe we can break
some of that down,
you know, thinking about China’s response.
What were some of the specific things
that you think China did right,
both as a nation,
individuals in the country,
what were some of the things
that you saw that worked really well?
GL: OK, so let me walk
through the time line,
I want to try and get these dates right,
because the dates do matter,
I think again, for context,
how many weeks it took
from one step to another.
Let me actually back up
into that initial first phase,
that discovery and denial phase.
The first time we heard
about the coronavirus,
this mysterious respiratory disease
that looks somewhat like SARS,
was on December 30.
That was the day that there was a doctor,
whose name is known all over the world
for the unfortunate reason
he ended up eventually dying,
named Li Wenliang.
And Li Wenliang, Dr. Li,
posted to a private WeChat
group on December 30.
These were some of his old
classmates from med school.
And he said, “Hey, I’m in Wuhan,
I’m at the hospital,
there is a SARS-like illness,”
SARS being the epidemic from 2002 to 2003,
“There’s a SARS-like illness
that is spreading through
these hospitals in Wuhan.”
A private message.
Somebody forwarded it,
and it went viral
across the Chinese internet.
The very next –
so that was the first time
we actually heard about something
that was going on in Wuhan.
The very next day, December 31,
was the first time
that any Chinese officials –
and on that day,
it happened to be the actual
provincial and the city officials –
acknowledged that there were 27 people,
at that moment in time,
who had been diagnosed
with this mysterious pneumonia,
and they reported the cases
to the World Health Organization.
That was also the day
that Dr. Li was reprimanded,
officially reprimanded.
So that was really the discovery,
the end of the discovery and denial phase,
because what we know now
is that back to mid-December,
several weeks before Dr. Li
wrote his blog post,
the authorities had already been notified
that a SARS-like pneumonia
was showing up in Wuhan hospitals.
And action had already started
down the chain of authority.
They have now backdated,
at least publicly backdated,
the first case to December 1.
But actually, in their confidential
and classified government documents
that again, our journalists have seen,
and we’ve published a story –
Officially, in classified documents,
they’ve backdated the first COVID-19 case
all the way back to November 17,
as the earliest example that they can find
based on symptoms
and based on retroactive diagnosis
for a COVID-19 case.
So in effect, there were several weeks
before the acknowledgment
to the World Health Organization
that that was going on,
and the first case with symptoms
was actually identified
about a month and a half
before that notice
to the World Health Organization.
Then the second phase,
which really started,
let’s say, December 31,
when the acknowledgment happened,
was response and then massive containment.
Now this phase, to be clear,
still had some denial
and a good amount of censorship
happening within the country.
So on January 1,
the World Health Organization
started working with China
on trying to identify the virus
and trying to figure out course of action.
It wasn’t until several weeks later
that Beijing, the central government,
for the first time broke its silence,
and that was on January 18.
And actually, they broke the silence
to deny that this was SARS,
and in fact to “defy rumors”
that were spreading
around the Chinese internet.
But there was a major date
that happened two days afterwards,
which was January 20.
Because for the first time,
a member of the party,
a senior government official
who is now one of the central gentlemen
that is actually leading the task force
against COVID-19,
his name is Zhong Nanshan,
he’s an epidemiologist,
he was one of the central figures
during SARS 17 years ago.
On January 20, he visited Wuhan.
And he admitted, for the first time,
that human-to-human
transmission was possible.
Now this was important,
because prior to that,
officials who had spoken up
had said that human-to-human
transmission was not likely,
was not possible.
And previous to that,
all of the cases,
the majority of the cases
were tied to this seafood
and wildlife marketplace
that was in the city of Wuhan.
But now, on January 20,
human-to-human transmission,
it’s possible, it’s happening,
and so of course, the course of action,
not only in China,
but the course of action
all over the world,
started to change.
And three days after that,
Wuhan was locked down.
It was completely, I mean,
it shocked the world
that they could lock down
that many people so quickly.
Of course, now India yesterday announced
that 1.3 billion people
are being locked down.
So we have another frame of reference now.
And then the end
of this middle second phase
I think really came in March,
around March 10.
Actually, on March 10 I should say,
because Chinese president,
Xi Jinping, visited Wuhan.
And these things, in Chinese politics,
because everything
is so well-choreographed,
matters a whole lot.
The fact that Xi Jinping visited Wuhan
signaled that the Chinese government
believed the worst was over.
The reality was that probably
about 20 days before that,
the curve had already been flattened.
So 20 days before that,
probably around February 20,
the infection rate
was around 75,000, 76,000,
and it’s effectively stayed
within a couple of thousand since then.
So on March 10,
Xi Jinping’s visit to Wuhan
kind of signaled the worst is over,
and then they moved into
the recovery and rehabilitation phase.
WPR: OK.
I mean, if I’m hearing correctly –
thank you for sharing all of that,
it sounds like, although
there was a slow period
of getting the information out initially,
eventually there was quick reaction
from the Chinese government
to respond to this, lock folks down.
And it seems like that had
a real impact on flattening the curve
in China, in Wuhan.
GL: A real impact.
WPR: Yeah and I –
GL: Absolutely.
WPR: Yes, please go ahead, Gary.
GL: The date of January 23
was not by coincidence.
Because the Chinese New Year holiday
started on January 24,
the very next day.
And the thing is,
with the Chinese New Year holiday,
is that it is, every single year,
it’s the largest human migration
that happens on Earth.
About 400 million people travel
during about a forty-day period
that would have started on January 24.
And that’s three billion trips,
it’s just people traveling
all over the country,
400 million people traveling.
Now, Wuhan is one of the most
important cities in China,
although before this,
I don’t think a lot of people
around the world knew the city of Wuhan,
but it’s extremely important.
It is considered the most important city
in the center of China
for many different reasons,
but one of the key reasons
is that it is one of the key
transportation hubs of the country.
So all of the major train lines,
the high-speed train lines,
the normal train lines,
the trade lines,
they all kind of converge on Wuhan.
So you can imagine if 400 million
people start moving around
for Chinese New Year on January 24,
a huge number of them
were going to go through Wuhan.
And of course, Wuhan itself
is an 11-million-person city.
The surrounding cities all added together,
Hubei province
has about 60 million people,
and they were also largely
going to travel.
And so if January 23
they had not shut it down,
and people had started traveling,
the likelihood would have been
that this would have been
really, really hard,
possibly, likely impossible to contain.
And even though they shut down before
the Chinese New Year holiday started,
we now also know that at least
five million people actually left
the surrounding areas and traveled.
Which is one of the reasons
why it did spread a little bit
across the country,
and then eventually spread
to other parts of the world.
WPR: And I’d like to come back
to that as well,
just thinking about
the five million people who left
and sort of where they landed today
and how that affected things,
but before we do that,
I’m interested to talk with you
a little bit more about –
you mentioned this November date
as one of the earliest cases
you discovered that was reported
was in November,
and that’s something actually
that I hadn’t heard before,
and I imagine that might be
news to a lot of people hearing this,
and so I’m curious,
when you think about the missteps
from China’s perspective,
in terms of what China did,
you know, there is, as you mentioned,
suppression of information is one thing,
one major criticism
of how China handled this.
And hearing that maybe there was knowledge
of something as early as November,
if that might have played a role
in how we were able to control
and contain this a lot sooner.
GL: I do want to clarify,
from what we understand,
officials were not notified about this
until mid-December.
It wasn’t –
So it was really a couple of weeks
between officials realizing
that there was a SARS-like pneumonia
going around
to when the first case was reported
to the World Health Organization.
It wasn’t all the way back to November 17.
That was retroactively backdated,
but that has not been made public
by the government.
We published it
because we’ve seen the data
that actually backdates the first case.
From a misstep point of view,
again, it’s a couple of weeks
compared to what happened in SARS,
which was a long time
of locking down on information.
This was much shorter,
the period of time that the government
wasn’t in complete shutdown mode.
But then, after that, of course,
there was still continued
censorship on the internet,
especially within
the Great Firewall of China,
for communications
between Chinese citizens.
And you know, surprisingly to some,
I think for a lot of China watchers
not so surprisingly,
is that the government has –
the central government –
over the course of the last several weeks,
actually, I should say probably
the last two months,
has started to change their tone
and to some degree admit
that there needed to be
better free flow of information.
They’ve changed the official narrative
of a couple of different things,
including this initial
whistleblower, Dr. Li,
who unfortunately ended up
passing away from the virus,
they actually now refer to him
as a national hero,
they have officially
removed the reprimand,
the Wuhan police have apologized
to Dr. Li’s family,
and they have actually been –
a couple of policemen –
have been punished in Wuhan
for the way that they
handled the situation.
So there has definitely been
an internal shift
and there is a lot more
sharing of data and information.
I can tell you,
from Hong Kong’s point of view,
without the open sharing of information
between the authorities,
between Hong Kong and mainland China,
I think Hong Kong’s response
would have been much more different
and I think Hong Kong would have
suffered because of that.
So that much more
open sharing of information
has benefited this city for sure.
WPR: And we have Chris here
who has a question,
I think, from the audience.
CA: Hey, Gary.
The online audience,
loving what you’re saying.
It’s so interesting,
you’re giving us
amazing new insights here.
Just in the current situation
where much of –
you know, there have been
these very few reports of new cases.
How much does it feel
like life is getting back to normal?
Do people really believe that this problem
has been successfully tackled elsewhere?
GL: I think the sentiment
in mainland China
is that yes, in China,
the problem has been tackled.
And people are looking forward
to going back to normal life.
A lot of the other major cities,
Shanghai, Beijing,
are starting to get back to work.
Many of the factories
have now been reopened.
The last stat that I saw
was that 90 percent of the businesses
that had been shut down
are now reopened in China.
So generally speaking,
life is getting back to normal.
Wuhan and Hubei are really the last places
that are still shut down,
with Wuhan being the city
that is shut down until April 8.
Hong Kong is a little bit different.
Hong Kong has actually gone back
into a second wave
of social isolation and distancing.
A bunch of different
companies, us included,
as well as the Hong Kong
government and the civil service
has now gone back to work from home.
And it’s because we
are starting to see a second wave,
but for us, honestly, is the first time
that we’ve had a spike of infections,
and it’s because of imported cases.
It’s because a lot of Hong Kong residents
who left Hong Kong prior to,
well, actually when the virus
first came into the city,
are now returning, because oddly enough,
the places they escaped to
are now more dangerous than Hong Kong.
And as they’re coming back,
a lot of them are actually bringing
the virus back with them.
And so we’re starting to see a spike.
Before this week, the highest
infection day that Hong Kong had
during the first two months of this
was 10 infections in one day.
Now the highest that we’ve seen
in the last week was 48.
So this is really the first spike
that we’re seeing,
and so Hong Kong is returning back
to a state of alertness,
to a state of caution,
and more and more people
are holed up at home.
CA: Is it possible, in mainland China,
that because of this redefinition
that you spoke about,
where if someone tests positive,
but they’re not showing symptoms,
that is not reported as a case.
That seems significant to me.
Is that part of the explanation
for why new reports have gone
nearly to zero?
GL: I don’t know
if that’s the answer to it,
but I do actually think that even with –
and remember, these are folks
that are tested,
so the data that we have
is that these folks have been tested,
the tests have come back positive,
but have not been added
to the official number of infections,
because they’re asymptomatic.
But they have still gone
through the process
that is part of China’s
containment strategy,
which has worked extraordinarily well.
Which is, first of all,
lots and lots of people have been tested.
And then once –
if there is a positive test return,
regardless of whether or not
they’re symptomatic or asymptomatic,
regardless of whether or not
they’re added to official numbers,
what happens next
is that they are quarantined,
they’re isolated,
and contact tracing happens.
Contact tracing is a key, key, key action.
And so they go and figure out
where this person has been moving,
where they’ve been,
who they’ve been in contact with,
and all those folks that they’ve been
in close contact with,
they get tested.
And if they come back
with a positive test,
then they’re also isolated
and they go through the process again.
So China has not been testing people,
finding that they’re asymptomatic
and then just releasing them
and letting them go home.
That’s not the case.
WPR: I think to that point too,
Gary, what you mentioned
about this trace-testing
and being able to figure out
who people have been in contact with
to figure out who may also
have been infected,
you know, when you look
at what’s happening
in other parts of the world,
you hear in the United States,
where Chris and I are based right now,
you’re hearing that people
who are experiencing symptoms,
have symptoms cannot get tested.
You know, how does China’s ability
to test so many people
affect the way that they can respond
to this and control this virus?
GL: It really matters.
Without the significant testing
and without the contact tracing
that comes afterwards,
I don’t think there’s a way
that China could have contained it
the way that they did.
The same thing here in Hong Kong.
If we didn’t have both of those,
as minimum requirements
in a health system,
Hong Kong could not have contained it.
And this is actually the reason why
South Korea is the only
other country besides China
that has managed to flatten the curve,
is because they aggressively tested.
I think by far the highest
per capita testing
anywhere in the world,
as far as we know right now.
And they aggressively did contact tracing.
And because of that, even though
South Korea had this huge spike,
and we thought that it was
going to get out of hand,
they were able to suppress it, control it,
and now they’re
in a much, much better place.
WPR: One thing you mentioned earlier
that I’d love to talk about, too, is SARS
and the impact of going through that
in 2002 and 2003 for China,
other countries in Asia, Hong Kong.
You know, what effect did that have
on everyone’s preparedness
in that part of the world
for the COVID-19 outbreak?
GL: It was significant.
I think the institutional
and social memory of SARS
matters a heck of a lot,
when you look at China,
Hong Kong, South Korea,
Singapore, Taiwan, Japan,
a lot of these countries in Asia
have dealt with COVID-19.
Let me use Hong Kong as an example,
because it’s the one
that I know the most intimately.
But a lot of what I’m about to say
actually does apply
to those other areas of Asia.
So for context,
SARS, November 2002 to July 2003,
very, very similar
coronavirus to COVID-19,
I think there’s about an 80 percent
similarity to those two viruses.
The global infected number
was a little over 8,000,
774 deaths.
So by percentage,
deadlier than COVID-19 is
but far less infectious than COVID-19 is.
Now here’s why it impacted
Hong Kong so much,
and why the memory is so deep,
and actually it tells you a lot
about Hong Kong’s reaction to COVID-19.
Of the 8,000 infected,
22 percent were here
in the city of 7.5 million,
and 40 percent, actually
39 percent of the deaths,
299 people died in Hong Kong.
Thirty-nine percent of the global deaths
happened in Hong Kong.
And SARS did not start in Hong Kong,
it was imported into Hong Kong
from southern China.
And so SARS, again, deep, deep memory,
but it was a massive turning point
in the Hong Kong health care system
and also the social practices of the city.
And let me walk through
some of that impact,
because you can actually still see it,
even before COVID-19,
you see it every day.
The health care system
was able to really, very quickly,
ramp up in capacity,
because of preparation post-SARS.
So after SARS,
the Hong Kong health care authorities
started preparing for greater capacity,
especially for infectious diseases.
There were new health alert systems,
warnings and treatment
protocols put in place.
I can tell you that a lot
of folks that were here before SARS
will tell you that in Hong Kong hospitals,
before SARS,
it was actually rare to see
even medical professionals
wear face masks.
And now surgical masks are ubiquitous,
not only in hospitals,
but across the entire city.
Anytime, anywhere, it seems,
especially right now.
New channels of communication and data
and information exchange were opened up
with mainland Chinese authorities,
and technology was implemented,
including now a supercomputer
that actually does contact tracing
in Hong Kong.
You could trace the existence
of the supercomputer
and this contact-tracing ability
back to changes that happened post-SARS.
On the social side,
there was also a huge change.
The first thing I have to talk about
is, of course, masks.
Now, I know that there is still not
consensus everywhere in the world
about whether or not masks
actually help in this situation.
I know that the World Health Organization
as well as governments like the US,
as well as Singapore,
say that only medical personnel
as well as people who are actually sick
and showing symptoms
need to be wearing masks.
In Hong Kong, everyone wears masks.
And the government,
even though they flip-flopped a little bit
during this epidemic,
the general,
the guidance is that everyone
should be wearing masks.
That started in SARS.
Ninety percent of Hong Kongers
during SARS wore masks,
and that habit actually stayed
with Hong Kongers,
and so generally speaking,
even outside of the pandemic,
when people are sick and coughing,
you’ll see them wear masks out in public.
On top of that,
there was – it became systemic,
or I should say systematic controls
for hygiene in social and public spaces.
So if you visit Hong Kong,
again, before all of this happened,
you would have noticed that public spaces
are constantly being disinfected.
One good example that everyone notices
is that when you go into an elevator
in public spaces, in buildings,
they will either have one of two things,
potentially both.
They’ll either have a sign that tells you
how often the elevator buttons
are disinfected,
or there will be a plastic,
piece of sticky plastic,
like a plastic sheet over the buttons
so it effectively becomes a flat surface.
When you eat out,
Hong Kong is obviously famous
for its dim sum,
and one of the most famous things
about Hong Kong dim sum
are the dim sum carts,
which are also very popular
in New York’s Chinatown, as an example.
Those dim sum carts,
they pretty much went away after SARS.
And so most dim sum restaurants
that you’ll go to in Hong Kong now,
the vast majority of them,
you have to order off of a menu,
you don’t have public carts going around
because of hygiene issues.
In most nice Chinese restaurants
in Hong Kong now
you will get, when you sit down,
two pairs of chopsticks per person.
And those two pairs of chopsticks
are different colored,
because one is used to grab food
from the center of the table
to your plate,
and the other one is for you
to take the food and put it in your mouth.
And honestly, there are hand sanitizers
and hand-washing notices
literally everywhere,
and this is just part
of the social behavior after SARS.
Safety protocols in offices,
everyone knows how to shut down an office
and control traffic really well.
Most major offices have
temperature-check machines
at the very least available,
and then, of course, social distancing.
People understand
social distancing is important,
and so the moment there was fear
of what was happening across the border,
naturally, people started
social-distancing activities
and self-quarantine became pretty normal.
So those are all the social things
as well as the health system things
that kind of changed,
and because of that,
Hong Kong was able to react
really, really fast,
not just the government,
not just the health authorities
but the people of Hong Kong,
and I think that’s the most
important part,
is that the entire city,
that the community reacted
and went into this mode
where you wore masks,
you washed your hands,
you carried hand sanitizer,
you stopped going to public places.
WPR: I’m curious then,
I think a lot of people
who are listening at home
and figuring out how can we apply
some of those things here,
and from where you sit,
and when you see what’s going on
in other parts of the world,
where maybe people are struggling
to make some of these changes.
You know, what are some
of the specific things
you think folks can adapt
in their own cultures,
in their own countries?
GL: I think communication is a huge deal.
If you talk to local Hong Kongers,
they will likely opine
that the communication
from the Hong Kong government
has not been top notch.
But thankfully, there have been
other authorities
and certainly even just
person-to-person communication
has been pretty strong.
A lot of corporates have done
an incredible job in Hong Kong
in communicating very transparently
with their employees
and insurance companies
have also been making available
all sorts of webinars and materials
and made it actually quite easy
for people to understand
how to get tested,
where to get tested, who to get tested.
And so that communication, I think,
has centralized,
to some degree, the messaging.
In a city like Hong Kong,
everyone generally
believes the same thing,
and what they believe is generally true.
Of course, there’s still
misinformation issues,
as there are everywhere.
But I think, possibly
also because of SARS,
because over the course of the 17 years,
a lot of the misinformation
has now been vetted,
everyone knows what is true,
so there is already,
sort of, an internal radar
or at least alarm bell
for things that seem to be wrong.
So I think communication
is really important,
from government, from corporates
anywhere in the world.
And I think if there is
a recommendation for health systems,
I know getting tests is really difficult.
One of the things that has made
testing in China and Hong Kong
certainly so effective,
is that there is point-of-care testing,
that still really doesn’t exist,
or at least doesn’t exist
in volume in the US.
And so they have to save these tests
and only a certain number
of people can get tested,
the triage system
then becomes overflowing.
Whereas here, generally speaking,
everyone can get tested,
and then of course, the contact tracing.
Everyone knows that if somebody
that you’ve been in contact with
tests positive,
you’re going to be called in
by the hospital authorities
and you’re going to be tested,
and then if you’re positive,
everyone you’ve been in contact with
for the last two weeks
will also be called in.
And people don’t really see it
as an annoyance,
it’s just what needs to be done.
And I think because of that, again,
the containment has been effective.
WPR: Great. And we have a question
from Chris here.
CA: Gary, it actually builds
on the point you just made,
people are puzzled online,
how is it that China avoided
the explosion of cases
in big cities like Beijing, Shanghai,
where people were coming there from Wuhan.
How on earth did some
of those cases not explode?
Was it just down to really
diligent contact tracing?
GL: I think it was
a combination of things.
First of all, the shutdown
of Hubei province certainly helped.
And then, the major cities
actually went into isolation
and quarantine as well.
Remember, it was Chinese New Year,
so there was no one working that week.
And so everyone just went home.
And generally speaking,
in most major cities,
they locked their doors
and they didn’t leave.
Now, China is very prepared for this,
because the technology stack in China,
including consumer site services,
make it really easy to lock your doors
and get everything delivered to you.
This is infrastructure
and this is consumer behavior
that is already ingrained,
especially in major cities across China.
So people just went home.
There was also a stigma issue,
which is unfortunate
for people from Hubei,
and especially from Wuhan.
But there are plenty of stories
in the other major Chinese cities
where anyone coming from Hubei
or with any connection to Wuhan
were ostracized during those early days,
especially after the Wuhan lockdown.
And so folks that might have been,
in fact, carrying the virus,
because they were from the epicenter,
they were either self-quarantined,
or they were forcibly quarantined,
because no one was going
to spend time with them anyway.
So I think for a lot of those reasons,
some of them social,
some of them systemic,
they made it so that there was
much less person-to-person contact,
especially after the authorities admitted
that human-to-human
transmission was possible.
CA: Hospitals here in New York,
there are warnings
that they’re about to get overwhelmed.
What can we learn
from what happened in Wuhan,
some of the scenes from there
were horrifying,
but there were amazing stories as well.
What should we learn
from what happened there?
GL: Well, it started off horrifying.
So in the early days, post-lockdown,
all the stories coming out of Wuhan,
we had journalists that were there
right before the lockdown,
they got out about three hours
before the lockdown happened,
and we had people what ended up
having to be quarantined,
because they were stuck in Hubei.
As well as a lot of citizen journalists
that were documenting what was going on,
and those images, like you said,
Chris, were horrifying.
There were videos showing people
literally laying on the ground.
Some were just so sick they couldn’t move,
others had already died
and they were just covered
with plastic sheets.
There were nurses and doctors
that were just crying
in front of the camera, begging for help.
And so, I think
it’s important to understand
that China’s health care system
did not just immediately become effective.
And certainly not in Wuhan.
There was not that much information,
people didn’t know
what they were dealing with.
Certainly, the authorities
were trying to help,
I think at that moment,
but again, the information flow
was not that free.
And during lockdown,
people were screaming
off of their balconies,
because they couldn’t get food,
they couldn’t even go to the hospital,
because the public transportation
systems got locked down.
Remember, this is not,
Wuhan is not a city like New York
where most of New York is walkable.
For people who don’t have cars,
and many, many of the Wuhan
residents don’t have cars,
if the buses are locked down,
then they might have to walk
three, four hours, to get to a hospital.
Maybe not that long,
but they have to walk a long way
to get to a hospital.
And so a lot of people
were just stuck at home,
and they were unable to initially
get any diagnosis or any health care.
And so it was a disaster.
But then the capacity actually ramped up.
The triage system
became extremely effective.
I think most people have heard now
that there were two massive hospitals
with thousands of beds of capacity
that were built within 10 days.
And this is true,
they came out of nowhere,
they were literally
just parking lots or flat ground,
and two major hospital
units were built up.
To be clear, also,
those were the triage units
for those who have very mild symptoms.
But that’s really important.
Being able to get people
with mild symptoms
out of the major hospital systems,
so that they’re not taking up
the resources of nurses and doctors,
they are not taking up
the diagnostic equipment
for the second confirmation tests,
and also, especially,
they are not taking up isolation wards
and ventilators.
And so the moment people started
being moved out, the mild symptoms,
the ones that were going to survive
and they just really needed
to be separate from family
and have some antiviral medication,
once they were moved out
into these new hospitals,
the main hospitals in Wuhan
and across Hubei
could deal with the primary patients,
especially those that are critical,
of the overall tested population
and do their best and try and save them
and make sure that they’re not
highly infectious.
At the same time, I think
that the health authorities in China,
especially the nurses and the doctors,
did a very good job
of also protecting themselves.
So there have been far fewer,
by percentage, infections and deaths,
of medical staff
than there were during SARS.
CA: I mean, to respond that effectively
took a kind of top-down drive.
Plus a willingness of a lot of people
to risk their own well-being
in a way for their perception
of what they had to do
for the public good.
You are well aware of the cultural
differences between China, Hong Kong
and the West.
Do you – how do you rate the chances
of, say, the US responding effectively
should things really explode here,
as they seem like they may be about to?
GL: In the health care system side,
I have every confidence
that the US health care system
is going to be able to respond well.
I have many, many friends
who are medical professionals
in the United States,
and they are raising their hands
and volunteering
and going to hospitals
to see where they can help.
So I have full trust in the system,
and the people that man those systems.
Our health care capacity
in the United States
is also significantly greater,
doctors per capita,
than in China.
And because of the fact
that also, our health care system
is not just relying on hospitals,
but there are primary care physicians
scattered all over the country,
as long as the testing capacity
and testing kits are available
across the country,
general practitioners
can actually administer those.
And it certainly sounds like more and more
med tech start-ups in the US
are now trying to create these home kits,
so that people can start testing at home.
That will help a lot.
My hope is certainly
that the citizens of the US,
that people are going to take this
very, very seriously
and realize that it doesn’t matter
that you may not feel sick,
it doesn’t matter
if you think you are young
and that you are not prone
to catching this virus,
or that you’re not in –
you may not be fearful
of dire consequences and death.
Take it seriously and stay home.
And don’t go to public spaces,
and don’t be a carrier,
because we now know
that asymptomatic folks can be carriers
and there is a possibility
that you can be infectious
as an asymptomatic carrier.
So yeah, on the cultural side –
I don’t think it’s really cultural.
I would say that
it’s because of the impact of SARS,
it’s because of the social memory of SARS
that has meant people
are a little bit more selfless,
and have just said, “OK, I will stay home,
because I might have come in contact.”
CA: Yeah, weirdly,
SARS seems to have acted
as its own kind of vaccine,
sort of just prepped the system enough
for people to be ready.
Yeah, social vaccine, amazing.
Back to you, Whitney.
WPR: OK, great, thanks so much, Chris.
And so I think it’s interesting,
Gary, to hear you talk
about some of the reactions in Wuhan
and some of the stories that you’ve heard,
especially running
the “South China Morning Post”
and running a news organization
during this outbreak.
You know, what are some of the –
First, what is that like,
to run a news organization,
to report during this outbreak?
GL: Well, running a news organization
in a moment like this,
so close to the initial epicenter
where the outbreak started,
is complicated.
We were lucky, very, very lucky
that most of our senior editors,
and certainly the most senior editors,
our editor in chief,
our masthead leadership,
they were all journalists
and they were reporters during SARS.
So there’s a lot of pattern
recognition in our newsroom.
Which meant the moment
that we got the first,
sort of, the first stories
coming out of China,
starting on December 30,
people already raising their hands
in the newsroom saying,
“Hey, we’ve got to report about this
like it’s going to be the next SARS.
There’s a high likelihood
that this is it.”
And we did send people to Wuhan
early on in January.
Like I said, we also had reporters there
right before the lockdown.
After the lockdown, we were lucky enough
to pull all of them out of Wuhan.
But we actually did change very quickly
the way that we report.
Partially to make sure
we got the story right,
to dig deeper in the places
that we knew we had to dig deeper,
but also to protect
our journalists and employees.
So one of the things that we did do,
and maybe other news organizations
would disagree with our decision,
was I think in late January
or early February,
even in Hong Kong,
we said to our journalists,
“You are not to go into hospitals.”
So no more in-hospital reporting.
Because they were –
we knew that it was highly infectious,
we were worried
that they were going to become
you know, points of spread,
and we just wanted to protect
our employees and our company,
so we did that.
We also had a business continuity plan.
Which meant that at the drop of a dime
we could shut down the entire office
and still operate
this global news business.
Some of the most interesting
stories we’ve covered
is actually how technology
has played a huge role in China
during this epidemic.
Because it frankly has changed
the way that diagnostics work,
it changed the way that containment works,
it certainly has changed the way
that consumer life works.
And of course,
there’s been a lot of instances
of really interesting censorship,
but also, more interestingly,
how the Chinese netizens
have fought that censorship
and reacted to that censorship.
And I do think that there’s
quite a lot of lasting impacts
that are likely to happen
because of technology
deployment during this time.
WPR: And so I think in talking
about some of those lasting impacts,
now that you as a country
are sort of emerging from this
and coming on into a different stage
with this outbreak,
what are some of the changes
you’re seeing to daily life,
both as society,
and maybe things that you’re hearing
that individuals are experiencing
as a result of this?
GL: Yeah, I think probably
the two most interesting changes,
actually, I should say three –
The first one is on education.
Now schools have been
shut down across China
for quite some time now
and again, this might feel
a little bit stereotypical,
or a caricature of China,
but education is extremely
important to the country
and extremely important to the citizens.
And we were actually just about
to come up to the national exams,
which these students work 18 years for.
And so online education –
very, very quickly moved online.
And part of that move online
was that courses had to be,
and classes had to be recorded.
Which means that now,
there’s this huge repository
of recorded classes.
That means potential
democratization of education material,
and significantly lowered costs
to get this type of coursework
from the top tiered schools,
whether it’s high schools,
universities or primary schools,
to the entire country.
Now whether or not
China activates on that,
we’re still not sure,
but the potential is there.
The second major shift
is really on distributed workforce.
The idea of working remotely,
office work remotely,
is not much of a concept in China
and across most of Asia.
Certainly far less
than in the United States.
And I’m from the US tech industry,
so it was pretty normal,
it’s pretty normal in the US
tech industry even before this,
in China much less so.
But because of the lockdowns,
not only in Hubei but across China,
this has become much more normal.
And people are kind of falling
into a different rhythm of work.
And most importantly,
this has given rise to a whole new set
of teleconferencing companies in China.
Because most of the teleconferencing
companies that we know of in the West,
whether it’s the Cisco systems,
Google Hangouts, Zoom,
that everyone uses,
BlueJeans, Slack video,
they’re not available in China.
They don’t work in China.
There is this mirror internet in China,
behind the Great Firewall,
and so there’s a whole new set
of teleconferencing systems
that were used,
but were not really commonplace,
certainly not for distributed workforce,
and now suddenly,
over the last few months, they are.
So it will be interesting to see
how those companies
and those services develop,
and whether or not
the workplace changes in China.
And then finally, the third thing
that is really interesting
is that there was a huge internet response
to this censorship issue in China
over the course of the last two months.
It especially exploded
after this whistle blower, Dr. Li,
died on February 7.
All over the Chinese internet
hashtags like “we want freedom of speech,”
“national hero Dr. Li,”
things like that just exploded everywhere.
And there have been –
And actually the Chinese government
has had to respond,
I think for observers,
a lot of observers believe
that Chinese government’s
change of narrative about Dr. Li
was largely driven by this reaction
from its citizens across the internet.
There have been
extremely creative examples
of people getting around censorship.
I think China is quite famous
for using emojis
to get around tech censorship.
I think most people also know
that the primary messaging app
that the Chinese internet users use,
called WeChat,
it is heavily censored,
it’s not just text that’s censored,
images are censored really effectively,
individual conversations are censored.
And so when there are specific articles
or specific posts that are
about what’s happening with the virus
that people want to share,
and the government thinks
that it is detrimental to whatever,
they will censor and it will be completely
and very effectively removed.
But this time around,
Chinese citizens used emojis again.
They translated these posts
into ancient Chinese texts
that the censoring machines
couldn’t pick up yet,
they actually translated
one version of this post
into Tolkien’s Elvish language,
I don’t even know
the name of that language,
they translated into that
and the AI couldn’t pick it up.
And then finally,
I think one of my favorite
versions of this
was they used the “Star Wars” intro,
the angled text scrolling,
it became a video,
and they had the entire post
about what was going on in Wuhan
in that format,
and that went all over the internet.
So I do think that there
is going to be an increased call.
Academics now are speaking up
about freedom of speech.
So there’s going to be
this increased volume of netizens
calling for freedom of speech.
It will be very, very interesting to watch
how the authorities
in China deal with that.
WPR: Great. And Chris,
you have a question?
CA: Yeah, it sort of picks up on that
about, you know, the stories
that could come out of this.
I mean, there are definitely
optimistic stories
that people are feeling,
that this could lead to more
free speech of a certain kind in China.
Certain things you can’t suppress.
Maybe in the US it might lead
to the government taking
scientific predictions more seriously,
not clear that’s happening yet.
And there’s hope that this whole thing,
because it’s a common enemy for the world,
will actually bring the world
together in some ways.
But I’m curious how you think about this.
President Trump started referring to this
as the Chinese virus.
I’m curious how that’s being
received in China,
and how people are feeling on this issue.
Do you think it’s increased
sympathy for other countries
or actually dialed up animosity?
GL: Well, it’s certainly not
being received well across China.
I think one thing that is still
really undercovered
is the intensity of rising nationalism
at the grassroots level across China
over the last several years.
And they’re very protective
of their country,
and their people and their history.
And President Trump’s comments
and the fact that so much
of the US government
is now referring to this
as the Chinese virus
is not received well.
You know, my fear of course,
is that even prior to the virus,
the US-China conflict was escalating
beyond anything that I think
most of us as observers want to see.
Trade, tech, military, ideology,
and now we can add information conflict
and health conflict,
health tech conflict especially,
to the list.
Of course, the hope is
that these heightened tensions
will actually dissipate
and that the two countries can actually,
at this moment in time,
choose to go down one of two paths.
Either one that further
damages the relationship
or one that actually shows
what the possibilities are
if the two largest economies in the world,
the two most powerful
countries in the world,
actually cooperate.
You know, this week,
Thursday is the G20 conversations
that are going to happen remotely.
It will be interesting to see
how US and China
actually coordinate, cooperate,
how they communicate during those talks.
CA: I think people want to know
how you think this will play out.
You’ve got a very special seat there,
you know, looking at all parts
of the world in it.
What’s your take on how this plays out?
GL: I desperately want
to be an optimist, Chris.
But I think that everything we see,
especially the data,
shows that it is going to get
far worse before it get better.
And I’m very fearful for what’s going on
in the United States.
It’s because of the amount of data we have
across all these different countries,
you can very clearly layer countries
and the way that the pandemic
has been spreading,
on top of one another,
and we know that the US
is a week and a half,
maybe two weeks, behind Italy,
and we know what happened in Italy
and what’s going on in Spain.
The US is catching up on that spike
and it’s going to come much faster,
and it’s going to be much higher
than I think most people
originally believed or hoped for.
So it will get worse.
So the hope is that,
again, this is going to be
the optimistic side of me,
that the nations will come together,
that those in charge, our governments,
will make the drastic, necessary moves,
and we will be able to come out
on the other side faster
than it looks right now.
Remember, when China went to shutdown,
on January 23,
there were only 830 confirmed cases.
And even if those numbers
are not exactly accurate,
it’s nowhere near the confirmed cases
that we have in the US right now,
that we see in the US.
So that is something
to be very, very concerned about.
At 830 they shut down.
And even after the shutdown,
two weeks later,
the cases had grown to 35,000,
two weeks after that, it was at 75,000.
So at this point, it is late in the US.
But, we, you know –
it can still be fixed.
And I think most …
experts that we talk to
believe that it can be fixed
with fast and decisive action.
CA: Yeah, people struggle
with understanding the power
of exponential growth.
And a number can seem smallish today,
but if you believe the science,
yeah, you have to act.
Gary, look, I hope somehow
you will convey to whomever you can convey
that regardless of what
some people might say,
in government or elsewhere,
there are millions,
there are tens of millions,
there are probably hundreds
of millions of people in the US,
on both right and left,
who are amazed by what happened in China.
You know, yes,
missteps early on, whatever.
But they’re amazed,
you’ve really –
you know, both the Chinese government,
the Hong Kong government,
several Asian governments,
Singapore, South Korea,
have shown astonishingly wise
and disciplined action
against this thing.
And we’re grateful,
we feel there is much
we can learn from you
and so –
People, most people want this to be a time
of bringing the world together.
I genuinely believe that,
it’s maybe the optimistic
part of me believing it.
But I believe in it,
it’s partly what these
conversations are for,
to try and make
those kinds of connections.
We want to keep in touch.
You’ve got an amazing seat there,
and I have loved listening
to every word you’ve said today here.
It’s just I’ve learned so much from you.
So thank you for that.
GL: It was a great conversation.
WPR: Thank you for your insight.
CA: And thank you
to our whole online audience,
I mean, this is a journey,
every day we’re learning something new.
And just in case anyone out there
is feeling a little bit powerless,
and afraid or you know, at the situation,
I mean, the one thing that everyone
can do right now, I think,
is we can reach out to the people we know,
we can encourage each of us
to be our best selves
in this moment.
I really think it’s what
the world is going to need,
when people are angry and fearful,
we can turn into nasty people.
But when we’re –
When we realize
how much we need each other,
and are willing to just reach out
and share stories of hope
and share what we’re feeling
and share possibilities,
we can really impact each other,
and I see so many
incredible instances of that
from around the world,
whether it’s Italians
singing to each other joyfully
from each other’s balconies,
or these sort of tales of heroism
that some of our health workers
have been engaged in
all around the world.
There’s going to need to be
a lot more of that.
And honestly, every single person
can play a part in how they are online,
what they share,
how they react.
So I don’t want to be overly,
embarrassingly Kumbaya,
but I kind of think we need
that spirit right now a little bit.
We need each other,
and TED is going to try
and play that role a bit.
So if you hate that,
maybe you don’t need to be here,
but I hope you don’t hate that.
I hope you like that
and will be part of it.
Whitney, it’s so fun cohosting these,
thanks to the rest of the amazing TED team
who are everyone in our individual homes,
they are sort of racing around,
trying to make this stuff
work technically.
We’re learning a bit each day, I hope.
Thanks so much for being part of this.
WPR: Thank you, everyone, thank you.
We’ll see you all back here tomorrow.