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Source: https://dnyuz.com/2022/10/06/how-a-c...is-final-days/
How a Chinese Doctor Who Warned of Covid-19 Spent His Final Days
October 6, 2022
snip
Taken together they show how Dr. Li spent his last 39 days going up against a deadly virus — and navigating government attempts to censor him.
An Acute Illness
In early 2020, the virus was spreading rapidly in Wuhan, the city in China where the pandemic first took hold. Dr. Li checked into the hospital on Jan. 12 with a fever, a lung infection and other symptoms. According to several of the doctors who reviewed his medical records for The Times, by the third day, Dr. Li was seriously ill and required oxygen support.
“He was infected with an early variant of the virus, so the illness started acutely, its course was life threatening and it developed very fast,” said Dr. Wu Yuanfei, a virologist at UMass Chan Medical School in Worcester, Massachusetts.
The experts said that based on the records, the treatment Dr. Li received, in general, followed the norms of that time for managing the symptoms of coronavirus patients.
A little over a week into Dr. Li’s hospital stay, his doctors wrote that he was struggling mentally and diagnosed him as being in a depressive state, a detail that has not been reported. The record did not attribute his emotional condition to any specific factors, but noted that Dr. Li had lost his appetite and couldn’t sleep at night.
He was kept in an isolation ward, allowed to communicate with his family only by video chat. He had just weeks earlier been disciplined by the police for warning friends in a private group on WeChat, a Chinese social media service, about the new virus that was spreading through the city. His employer, Wuhan Central Hospital where he worked as an eye doctor, had made him write a letter of apology, the content of which was obtained by The Times.
Despite the official warnings, on Jan. 27, 2020, Dr. Li gave an anonymous interview to a prominent Chinese newspaper, describing how he had been reprimanded for trying to raise the alarm. Eventually, he revealed his identity on social media, and instantly became a folk hero. From his hospital bed, he took more interviews and said he hoped to recover soon to join medical workers fighting the outbreak...
How a Chinese Doctor Who Warned of Covid-19 Spent His Final Days
October 6, 2022
snip
Taken together they show how Dr. Li spent his last 39 days going up against a deadly virus — and navigating government attempts to censor him.
An Acute Illness
In early 2020, the virus was spreading rapidly in Wuhan, the city in China where the pandemic first took hold. Dr. Li checked into the hospital on Jan. 12 with a fever, a lung infection and other symptoms. According to several of the doctors who reviewed his medical records for The Times, by the third day, Dr. Li was seriously ill and required oxygen support.
“He was infected with an early variant of the virus, so the illness started acutely, its course was life threatening and it developed very fast,” said Dr. Wu Yuanfei, a virologist at UMass Chan Medical School in Worcester, Massachusetts.
The experts said that based on the records, the treatment Dr. Li received, in general, followed the norms of that time for managing the symptoms of coronavirus patients.
A little over a week into Dr. Li’s hospital stay, his doctors wrote that he was struggling mentally and diagnosed him as being in a depressive state, a detail that has not been reported. The record did not attribute his emotional condition to any specific factors, but noted that Dr. Li had lost his appetite and couldn’t sleep at night.
He was kept in an isolation ward, allowed to communicate with his family only by video chat. He had just weeks earlier been disciplined by the police for warning friends in a private group on WeChat, a Chinese social media service, about the new virus that was spreading through the city. His employer, Wuhan Central Hospital where he worked as an eye doctor, had made him write a letter of apology, the content of which was obtained by The Times.
Despite the official warnings, on Jan. 27, 2020, Dr. Li gave an anonymous interview to a prominent Chinese newspaper, describing how he had been reprimanded for trying to raise the alarm. Eventually, he revealed his identity on social media, and instantly became a folk hero. From his hospital bed, he took more interviews and said he hoped to recover soon to join medical workers fighting the outbreak...
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