...here's another book selection for you, Pat:
China barred my dystopian novel about how its system enables epidemics.
In this Saturday, Feb. 22, 2020, photo released by Xinhua News Agency, medical workers wear protective suits before entering the isolation ward in Wuhan in central China's Hubei Province. Warning that China's virus epidemic is "still grim and complex," President Xi Jinping called Sunday, Feb. 23, 2020 for more efforts to stop the outbreak, revive industry and prevent the disease from disrupting spring planting of crops. (Cai Yang/Xinhua via AP)
By Max Brooks https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlo...036_story.html
Max Brooks is the author of the novel "World War Z" and the upcoming "Devolution." He is a senior, non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council and the Modern War Institute at West Point.
Feb. 28, 2020 at 12:58 a.m. GMT+7
In my zombie apocalypse novel, cases of a mysterious new disease start showing up somewhere in China. The government responds by suppressing news of the infection, threatening several doctors who try to sound the alarm. That coverup allows the virus to spread throughout the country, and then beyond its borders to the rest of the world.
Sound familiar?
I'd chosen China as ground zero for my 2006 novel, "World War ZSARS. Cases emerged in China in late 2002, but for months, the Chinese government did not warn the public about the new and deadly pathogen. Authorities forbade newspapers from reporting on it, undercounted cases and were slow to share information with the World Health Organization. By the end of the outbreak in July 2003, the pathogen had shown up halfway around the world, infecting 8,000 people and killing 774.
As of this writing, a new strain of coronavirus has infected more than 80,000 peoplehave praised what China learned from SARS: It established a nationwide system for hospitals and clinics to report outbreaks, for example, and officials in China have issued public statements emphasizing the need for greater transparency, as well as its rapid response to this new epidemic. But that centralized power also helped enable the outbreak.
There might not have been a need for rapid hospital construction and mobilization if the authorities hadn't played down the severity of the coronavirus and silenced early whistleblowers like Li Wenliang, a doctor in Wuhan who tried to share news about the new virus. His posts were censored, and the police forced him to sign a letter stating that he'd made "false comments." That's not so different from what happened to my fictional first responder in "World War Z," Kwang Jingshu: He was gagged by those in power.
Unlike Kwang, however, Li eventually died of the disease he tried so hard to stop. His death sparked an online outcry among outraged Chinese citizens, who called for freedom of speech. They were also silenced, their posts removed and hashtags deleted. In recent weeks, state-run media has been instructed to cover only positive stories about the relief efforts, and Internet platforms have been more vigilant about removing articles critical of the government.
How can we trust any government that values control more than public safety? Of all the countries I write about in "World War Z," the most mysterious is North Korea. In my book, the entire population disappears underground. They might all be safe. They might all be undead. We don't know. In the real world, Kim Jong Un has claimed that there are no coronavirus cases in North Korea. Is that true? We don't know. Meanwhile, Iran has reported the largest number of deaths from the virus outside China. Its mortality rate, 14 percent, is so much higher than in other countries that critics have questioned whether the number of infections has been underreported or whether the government has suppressed information about the public health crisis.
In the United States, we have a free and open society that lets us protect ourselves. But that freedom doesn't mean freedom from responsibility. In "World War Z," the zombie plague infects America because Americans are too distracted by greed, apathy, gullibility; they reject science and willfully embrace an incompetent president. Does that sound familiar? On his trip to India this past week, President Trump called the coronavirus "a problem that's going to go away," and at a press conference, he claimed that "the risk to the American people remains very low." The good news is that he's not the only one with a voice. We can turn to more qualified sources, like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which warns that "disruption to everyday life may be severe.and it willprotect ourselves, we need to listen. When civil servants tell us what it will cost to strengthen our institutions, we need to pay up. Lastly, when we hear our fellow citizens surrendering to rumors, gossip or any unscientific fearmongering, we need to push back as if they were coughing in our face.
I was prevented from publishing my book in China because the government did not want to confront its own flaws, even when heavily fictionalized. But if we admit ours now, and work together to correct them, we can ensure that World War Z remains firmly in the realm of fiction.
Max Brooks
Max Brooks is the author of the novel "World War Z" and the upcoming "Devolution." He is a senior, non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council and the Modern War Institute at West Point.
China barred my dystopian novel about how its system enables epidemics.
In this Saturday, Feb. 22, 2020, photo released by Xinhua News Agency, medical workers wear protective suits before entering the isolation ward in Wuhan in central China's Hubei Province. Warning that China's virus epidemic is "still grim and complex," President Xi Jinping called Sunday, Feb. 23, 2020 for more efforts to stop the outbreak, revive industry and prevent the disease from disrupting spring planting of crops. (Cai Yang/Xinhua via AP)
By Max Brooks https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlo...036_story.html
Max Brooks is the author of the novel "World War Z" and the upcoming "Devolution." He is a senior, non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council and the Modern War Institute at West Point.
Feb. 28, 2020 at 12:58 a.m. GMT+7
In my zombie apocalypse novel, cases of a mysterious new disease start showing up somewhere in China. The government responds by suppressing news of the infection, threatening several doctors who try to sound the alarm. That coverup allows the virus to spread throughout the country, and then beyond its borders to the rest of the world.
Sound familiar?
I'd chosen China as ground zero for my 2006 novel, "World War ZSARS. Cases emerged in China in late 2002, but for months, the Chinese government did not warn the public about the new and deadly pathogen. Authorities forbade newspapers from reporting on it, undercounted cases and were slow to share information with the World Health Organization. By the end of the outbreak in July 2003, the pathogen had shown up halfway around the world, infecting 8,000 people and killing 774.
As of this writing, a new strain of coronavirus has infected more than 80,000 peoplehave praised what China learned from SARS: It established a nationwide system for hospitals and clinics to report outbreaks, for example, and officials in China have issued public statements emphasizing the need for greater transparency, as well as its rapid response to this new epidemic. But that centralized power also helped enable the outbreak.
There might not have been a need for rapid hospital construction and mobilization if the authorities hadn't played down the severity of the coronavirus and silenced early whistleblowers like Li Wenliang, a doctor in Wuhan who tried to share news about the new virus. His posts were censored, and the police forced him to sign a letter stating that he'd made "false comments." That's not so different from what happened to my fictional first responder in "World War Z," Kwang Jingshu: He was gagged by those in power.
Unlike Kwang, however, Li eventually died of the disease he tried so hard to stop. His death sparked an online outcry among outraged Chinese citizens, who called for freedom of speech. They were also silenced, their posts removed and hashtags deleted. In recent weeks, state-run media has been instructed to cover only positive stories about the relief efforts, and Internet platforms have been more vigilant about removing articles critical of the government.
How can we trust any government that values control more than public safety? Of all the countries I write about in "World War Z," the most mysterious is North Korea. In my book, the entire population disappears underground. They might all be safe. They might all be undead. We don't know. In the real world, Kim Jong Un has claimed that there are no coronavirus cases in North Korea. Is that true? We don't know. Meanwhile, Iran has reported the largest number of deaths from the virus outside China. Its mortality rate, 14 percent, is so much higher than in other countries that critics have questioned whether the number of infections has been underreported or whether the government has suppressed information about the public health crisis.
In the United States, we have a free and open society that lets us protect ourselves. But that freedom doesn't mean freedom from responsibility. In "World War Z," the zombie plague infects America because Americans are too distracted by greed, apathy, gullibility; they reject science and willfully embrace an incompetent president. Does that sound familiar? On his trip to India this past week, President Trump called the coronavirus "a problem that's going to go away," and at a press conference, he claimed that "the risk to the American people remains very low." The good news is that he's not the only one with a voice. We can turn to more qualified sources, like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which warns that "disruption to everyday life may be severe.and it willprotect ourselves, we need to listen. When civil servants tell us what it will cost to strengthen our institutions, we need to pay up. Lastly, when we hear our fellow citizens surrendering to rumors, gossip or any unscientific fearmongering, we need to push back as if they were coughing in our face.
I was prevented from publishing my book in China because the government did not want to confront its own flaws, even when heavily fictionalized. But if we admit ours now, and work together to correct them, we can ensure that World War Z remains firmly in the realm of fiction.
Max Brooks
Max Brooks is the author of the novel "World War Z" and the upcoming "Devolution." He is a senior, non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council and the Modern War Institute at West Point.
Comment