Coronavirus: tributes pour in for Li Wenliang, the Chinese doctor who first warned of a deadly disease
- ‘I hope in the future there will be fewer dead heroes, and more normal, great, everyday people,’ social media user says
- ‘Our attention then was still on saving the sufferers, we didn’t expect that someone as young as him wouldn’t be able to survive,’ Wuhan doctor Ai Fen says
“The Huanan Fruit and Seafood Wholesale Market has diagnosed seven cases of Sars,” he wrote on social media, referring to severe acute respiratory syndrome, a form of pneumonia caused by a coronavirus, which struck the Chinese in late 2002 and Hong Kong in 2003.
“Please everyone take care,” he said.
Li never intended for his message to be circulated beyond the 150-person group chat he sent it to. But when his concerned colleagues shared the message online, it became one of the first clues to the outside word of the deadly pandemic raging in Wuhan, and an omen of the year to come.
Soon after, Li was summoned by his superiors for explanation and a dressing down, made to sign a confession of wrongdoing by the police and, eventually, succumbed to the very illness he warned his colleagues to guard against. A year on, his memory is tied to the grief of the Wuhan outbreak and anger against a system that punished a conscientious doctor.
I really should have gone to see him, to console and comfort him
In Wuhan, where Li worked, Covid-19 claimed nearly 4,000 lives, according to official figures. Some believe the number is much higher.