In the third year of COVID-19, why are the internet violence against infected people still continuing?

This is a common story during the new crown pandemic, overnight, an ordinary person, just because of the virus, suddenly became a paragraph on the Internet, and because of those imaginary paragraphs, fermented into a certain degree of "public enemy of the city".

Two weeks ago, he was a very ordinary Shenzhen worker.

Last year, on the twenty-third day of the lunar month, I asked the company for leave to go home for the New Year. On the twenty-fifth day of the lunar month, nucleic acid test, negative, self-driving home for the New Year. On the twenty-sixth day of the month, he returned home with his mother and aunt in their 60s.

Then, I met some friends, ate with relatives, and stayed in hotels in the county.

On the third day of the Lunar New Year, he received a text message from Guangdong reminding him that he had stayed in a medium- and high-risk area, and that the health code was given a "yellow code" and listed as a health screening object. In the afternoon, go to the local people's hospital, take a sample, positive.

He became Xu Moumou in the circulation report, the first infected person to be found in this surging Guangxi Baise epidemic.

On the Internet, some people call him "poison king", and some people say that he "stole love to trigger the new crown epidemic", and the WeChat chat records spread on the Internet outlined the story of a Guangdong boss who spread the virus to his lover who opened a house in the county town...

On February 7, the local health commission came out to refute the rumors, and it was not true that the "poison king" of Guangxi Debao had opened a room with his lover. On February 9, Xu Moumou himself stood up and spoke out, saying that he was "not married, and it is a rumor that the hotel secretly triggered the epidemic." "Staying in a hotel is "because there is no place to sleep at home and there is no water to cool down".

Xu Moumou said that his body felt fine, but after the infection, personal information was sent to the Internet, and he also received a lot of harassing phone calls, and his heart was particularly broken.

This is nothing more than a mechanical repetition of numerous cyberburst incidents.

Image from Visual China

Just after New Year's Day, Xiao Bai, the first infected person in the Dalian epidemic, was interviewed by the media, mentioning that he was "subjected to Internet violence" - "a succession of various people added me WeChat", accused of "don't shame college students" and "go home to harm your family"...

Further on, in December last year, during the epidemic in Xi'an, a female nurse who was diagnosed early was rumored to have "opened a room" with another confirmed person.

……

In mid-September last year, during the epidemic in Harbin, Case No. 1 was made up into a group of ridicule for going to the script killing shop for three consecutive days, and some people pulled out her identity information and photos, and some people sent text messages to harass... A relative argued for her: going to the script to kill was to investigate the market.

At the beginning of September last year, the Fujian epidemic, case No. 1, Lin Moujie, who returned to Fujian from Singapore, received a large number of abusive harassing phone calls and text messages, questioning him: "Why do you stay abroad and come back to die" and "Why do you want to come and harm people"...

The COVID-19 pandemic has entered its third year, and the situation of frequent online violence by infected people has hardly improved. For people infected with the new crown, from the positive diagnosis to the information leakage to the Internet violence, it has almost become a fixed trilogy, and the plot of the Internet storm has become an essential link in almost every infection event.

A mainstream media video program director who has long been concerned about epidemic reporting told Eight Point Kenwen: At the beginning, reporters reported online violence, they could still pass, and later every epidemic was attacked by the Internet, and we did not do this angle, because it was not news.

According to the statistics of "Half Moon Talk", since November last year, there have been at least 10 leaks of circulation in Shijiazhuang, Chengdu, Shenyang, Hangzhou and other places, causing secondary injuries to infected people, and human flesh searches and online violence have caused many patients and even close contacts to "mentally collapse".

Sometimes, information leaks and cyberbullyings are initiated before they can be diagnosed.

On January 15, Guangzhou reported that the results of the initial screening of the new crown nucleic acid test of a volunteer tester were abnormal, and then the name and address of the eldest sister and the family of three who were abnormal in the initial screening were widely disseminated in the WeChat group. Although in the end, the CDC's review and resampling test results showed negative, the information of the elder sister who was not infected had already spread in the name of new crown.

Internet violence is a kind of "anger"

As for the whole society's malice toward the infected, Jia Ping, executive director of the public health program of the independent think tank, tends to attribute this behavior to a large extent: "anger".

"Epidemic prevention policies have to pay a cost, and this cost is often borne by the public itself – tens of thousands to tens of millions of people line up to test nucleic acids; Small shopkeepers can't open their doors, have no income, but continue to pay rent; ordinary white-collar workers can't travel, and their incomes are reduced...

People are angry, go to the scapegoat, and blame the person who "brought" the epidemic here: "If you don't run around, how can we be like this?"

According to a psychologist who is studying the stigma of COVID-19 infected people, according to their research, in such incidents, "the so-called patient No. 1, that is, the first infected person, suffered the brunt of the impact." ”

In the two years of the epidemic, the angle of Internet violence has also begun to change slightly, from the past peeping life, inferring other people's private lives, becoming more concerned about whether the behavior of the infected person is compliant, once it is found that the infected person is not a perfect victim, the unlucky egg is enough to become the "public enemy of the city", and the Internet storm is naturally launched.

The psychologist told Eight Points that their research also shows that "whether the infected are responsible for infection and transmission partly determines the intensity of stigma." ”

In the past two years, as the epidemic has persisted and the prevention and control measures have been increased layer by layer, the true and false information flowing out from legal or illegal channels has become more and more skilled in people holding a magnifying glass to find violations of the infected, and the interest in standing at the highest point of morality to criticize has become more and more sufficient.

Therefore, after the news that the first infected person in Dalian mentioned that he had suffered from the Internet storm, some locals mentioned that "large supermarkets and restaurants" were sealed, and citizens had to brave the cold wind to do nucleic acid, and some people mentioned, "Dalian locals have the fifth round of epidemic, and in November alone, they did 5 rounds of nucleic acid for all employees..."

Someone asked: "Since they are all quarantined at home, why should the barbecue shop owner also quarantine?" Why should shopping malls be closed? Didn't she go anywhere? ”

Another person asked: Why not centralize quarantine? Why not apologize?

However, in the excitement, no one noticed, just in a video interview, the girl once mentioned: after contacting the community, "considering the internal arrangement between them, let's stay at home ..."

Similarly, no one noticed that Dalian, a city with an increasingly skilled and sensitive epidemic prevention system due to "wheel accompaniment", mentioned in the announcement after the positive detection that "in view of the high contagious characteristics of the Aomi Kerong variant, Dalian City has carried out promotion and control of all close and sub-close contact personnel."

An insider who had contact with the first infected person in Dalian revealed to Eight Points that the infected person himself "did not know why these places were closed", that she and her mother "neither of them went out", and even her mother "took leave of absence from work" after contacting her daughter, "stayed at home together, had relatives deliver meals to the door", and "did not go to shopping malls and barbecue restaurants"...

Under the boiling mood of the public, the efforts of the infected to prove their innocence have become more and more pale, and apart from anger, almost no one realizes that the infected people themselves are victims of the epidemic.

In September last year, Lin Moumou, an infected person in Fujian, said: "If I am really the source, it must be my bad, apologize to everyone." I hope that everyone will be more understanding and tolerant of my family. ”

The infected girl in Dalian in January entrusted a friend to tell Eight O'Clock Kenwen: "I'm really sorry, I'm causing trouble for everyone." However, I really don't know why. ”

Xu Moumou of Guangxi Baise said, "I feel very sad. If I had known I had contracted the virus, I wouldn't have come back. ”

In the third year of COVID-19, we still can't do anything about cyberbullying

On the one hand, the lack of self-justification, on the other hand, the resentment accumulated between the epidemic for more than two years, even though the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress passed the Personal Information Protection Law in August 2021, but at the practical level, we are often still powerless against the problem of Online violence.

At present, for the Internet violence of infected people, the law usually targets information leakage, rumor-mongering and other links, and pursues information leakage that infringes on privacy or rumors that infringe on personality rights.

However, a lawyer mentioned to Eight Points that most of the responsibility for privacy only goes to the institution, and it is difficult to be specific to the individual, and most of its handling is reflected in the punishment within the institution.

In the winter of 2020, the Chengdu girl who was tested positive was rated as a "transition queen" and suffered serious slut humiliation due to the one-night transfer of 3 nightclubs in the trajectory, running through half of Chengdu.

It was almost the most serious internet violence against the new crown infected people that year, and its final treatment was only "the man Wang Mou who leaked Zhao's privacy was found by the police and given administrative punishment." However, who Wang Mou was, what profession he had, and why he could get such information, none of which were announced in the news at the time.

Is there a need for special legislation for cybercrupts targeting infected people?

A number of legal circles told Eight Points that this is an old problem, and the existing regulations are enough to solve this problem.

It has been explained that legislation on Cyberbullying may be like the current legislation on domestic violence, which only supplements some remedies. As for the current online call for internet violence legislation, some people believe that the current call may stem from "the severity of the sentence does not meet the standards in people's minds."

In the article of "Half Moon Talk", one of the reasons for information leakage was mentioned - the participation of non-professionals in the circulation; one of the reasons for the lax punishment - "the law enforcement departments are not strict and timely, and there is even a 'law does not blame the public' mentality, and some places think that this is negative public opinion to 'cover the lid'." ”

Jia Ping also mentioned that for the protection of the information of infected people, training, education, supervision and punishment are needed, and there must be a perfect system, "this is really a comprehensive management problem, because a piece of information will flow into the hands of many different people", and punishment alone cannot solve the fundamental problem.

Jia Ping also mentioned ethics in the prevention and control of infectious diseases. For example, the World Health Organization's Guidelines on the Management of Ethical Issues in Infectious Disease Outbreaks stipulate that health care workers should protect the confidentiality of patient information to the greatest extent possible in a manner compatible with legitimate public health interests. The mainland can systematically formulate ethical operational guidelines for epidemic prevention and control, and integrate ethical principles such as respect for people, fairness and justice, mutual assistance and assistance and support for vulnerable groups into every operational detail of the ethical operation guidelines, so as to provide detailed assistance to governments and management departments at all levels and for people affected by diseases when formulating, implementing or facing epidemic prevention and anti-epidemic policies, so as to enhance the effectiveness of accurate epidemic prevention, maintain social justice during the pandemic to the greatest extent, and create a kind of face to the epidemic in the whole society." A sense of solidarity and community" to eliminate the "soil" on which Internet violence depends for survival.

Shi Jiayou, a professor at the Law School of Chinese Min University, explained that what needs to be grasped in the prevention and control of infection is the balance between privacy and personal information protection and public interests, for this practice, China has some experience in AIDS and hepatitis B, but "the strong infectivity and wide range of the new crown make the conflict between the prevention and control of the new crown and the privacy of the infected become different from the previous infectious diseases." ”

However, in any case, Shi Jiayou told Eight Point Jianwen that the privacy and personal information leakage of infected people "belong to the scope of the law that should intervene and intervene, and the relevant victims should quickly report and take rights protection measures." ”

However, in the real world, for various reasons, most of the victims of cyber violence under the new crown have remained silent.

In December 2020, the Chongqing Yubei Court ordered a marketing company to apologize in writing and compensate the plaintiff for 1 yuan for moral damages. The reason is that after the company tested positive for the new crown in the outer packaging of imported shrimp in Shapingba District, Chongqing, it disclosed the names, home addresses, ID card numbers, mobile phone numbers and other detailed personal information of more than 10,000 people in chongqing districts and counties who purchased imported white shrimp without authorization.

Among the more than 10,000 innocent residents whose information was leaked, only one purchaser surnamed Zhao took the company to court and finally received a compensation of 1 yuan.

Interestingly, the marketing company's excuse for releasing this information was that "at this time is an extraordinary time, nothing is more important than safety and life", "the purpose is to hope that the people involved will actively cooperate with the authorities".

Li Shanshan and Zhang Yuqi | writing

Xu Zhuojun | responsible editor

This article was first published on the WeChat public account "Eight Points Health" (ID: HealthInsight)

Respect the original copyright, unauthorized reproduction shall not be reproduced, infringement responsibility at your own risk