Li Wenliang, a doctor from Wuhan, China, was one of the first to recognize the public health threat of coronavirus. He now has the disease himself.
A Chinese doctor who was one of the first people in the medical community to flag coronavirus as a public threat now has the virus himself — and he’s speaking out about how the Chinese government silenced him.
Not long after posting the message, Li was accused by Wuhan police of spreading rumors. He was called by hospital officials to explain how he knew about the virus and, a few days later, he was summoned to a local police station and rebuked for"spreading rumors online" and"severely disrupting social order" over his WeChat message.
The doctor went back to work."There was nothing I could do. [Everything[ has to adhere to the official line,” he said. Li ended up unknowingly treating a patient with coronavirus on January 10; he started coughing and developed a fever the next day. Li was hospitalized on January 12 and was eventually admitted to the intensive care unit and given oxygen support. He tested positive for coronavirus on February 1.
"The internet is not a land beyond the law ... Any unlawful acts of fabricating, spreading rumors and disturbing the social order will be punished by police according to the law, with zero tolerance," the police statement read. Richard Watkins, MD, an infectious disease physician in Akron, Ohio, and an associate professor of internal medicine at Northeast Ohio Medical University, agrees. “[Li] was just looking out for the public good,” Watkins tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “To punish him is absurd and very short-sighted.”
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