
Insomnia, fear and isolation: Inside one Wuhan apartment, virus toll on healthy - skmurphy
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-insomnia-fear-and-isolation-inside-one-wuhan-apartment-a-virus-toll/
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skmurphy
Key points:

On the second floor of a residential building in northwest Wuhan, John Zhu has
made his home a fortress against the virus. His wife and 13-year-old son have
not stepped out of the apartment in 46 days. He has emerged only briefly to
pick up grocery deliveries and, twice, to bring food to the family dog, A’han,
which is alone in his mother’s house.

Mr. Zhu has succeeded in keeping his family safe from the virus – and A’han
alive – even as three people in his apartment complex contracted COVID-19 and
almost 2,400 have died in Wuhan, the Chinese city at the epicentre of the
outbreak.

But weeks of isolation have poisoned Mr. Zhu’s family life, wiped out his
income and corroded his trust in the public institutions that, he believes,
failed to properly respond to the virus until it was too late – and have now
kept him locked up long after its peak.

With no income, they are eating into savings to survive, and the price of
groceries has doubled. He has only been able to bring food to A’han twice in
six weeks. A’han has grown weak and thin, but Mr. Zhu’s apartment complex has
told him he cannot bring the dog home.

He feels trapped by thoughts of the epidemic. He doesn’t read anymore and
instead passes the days watching mindless sitcoms, a stream of unmemorable
entertainment that has left his memory of time under lockdown hazy.

The mental pressure has not, however, diminished his feelings about the
measures taken in Wuhan. He offers himself as a warning to other cities and
countries contemplating the same.

“As someone who has personally experienced the whole process, I have to say
that the Wuhan lockdown might not be as positive as it has been perceived by
the outside world,” he said. It “worsened public panic and destroyed order. …
It is extraordinarily terrible.”

