The information society may magnify human ignorance and helplessness
——Thought of by SARS and New Crown (fire + ba, pronounced pā) The mystery of the sick dwarf
Text/Jing Yongxiang
The new crown virus in the past three years, like the SARS virus many years ago, came and went in vain. Where exactly it came from, all kinds of experts and scholars around the world have no basis for their words.
Prior to this, human beings had been harassed by various epidemics at a certain time, in a certain region and in certain groups of people, all coming and going with the wind. Later, many viruses were conquered by humans and no longer occur. Some viruses become mysteries after a flash in the pan.
Either way, those viruses have limitations when they are rampant.
Even the emperor was not spared when smallpox flooded in ancient China, but it didn't matter much that most of the people in the country didn't know about it.
The Black Death in medieval Europe may have been the greatest plague disaster on record, but humans on other continents continued to do so.
I don't know if the total population of Europe died more or less in the ravages of the Black Death, anyway, there were no deaths, and there were still many people alive!
The Black Death survivors and their descendants painfully reminded, enlightened their minds, searched for the truth, and finally figured out the ins and outs, completely subdued this demon, and at the same time promoted the great progress of human science and technology culture.
Despite this, human beings have not fully understood what "God" does in the human body and in nature, let alone what "God" may do more.
This sudden new crown epidemic occurred in the period of highly developed information and transportation in human society, and it quickly attracted the high attention or excessive panic of all mankind as soon as it first appeared, and all mankind struggled to resist, and all kinds of scientists around the world were in a hurry, saying that this demon still loomed from time to time, one after another, and came and went freely.
Of course, I do not blame the information society, I and the general public are the beneficiaries of the information society, and we are all eager to pay attention to information and hope for a savior in ignorance and helplessness.
The key issue is that in the face of a rapid and widespread but not cookie-cutter flood of information, there should be a calm and rational scientific attitude, and there should be no blind confidence or blind panic.
I sincerely hope that this demon will not come back after walking away like SARS, and I sincerely hope that scientists from all over the world will work together to find and subdue this demon as soon as possible!
I, a layman, am so arrogant because I went through this pandemic and remembered what I encountered decades ago.
I performed very well in this epidemic, just after knowing that there were some Yang people in the city, I took the initiative to isolate, canceled gatherings with relatives and friends in other places, refused visits from relatives and friends, and did not even participate in the group nucleic acid examination, for fear of being implicated and misunderstood. Later, after there was a time limit for nucleic acid testing, in order to keep the green code, I chose fewer people to check nucleic acid at the deadline. During the lockdown period, I even complied with the control, but fortunately I had a place to grow vegetables in my house and turn the soil to see the flowers breathe, and I didn't have the irritability of being imprisoned.
Since I was a child, I have believed in vaccination, and in addition to breeding cowpox, I took the initiative to get vaccinated after being bitten by a dog twice. From the perspective of various epidemic information and human anti-epidemic history, I believe and thank scientists for their efforts, but they are all based on human medical knowledge on emerging virus research and exploration, there is no and impossible to identify the epidemic in a short time and verify that this new devil has been conquered by humans, all vaccines can only be called experimental products.
While I was still unclear about this new devil, I didn't want to add something unclear to my body.
This worry is mainly because I am prone to skin allergies, and during this time I have allergic symptoms again, I went to the place where the vaccination was prescribed to consult the doctor, and the doctor agreed that I would not be vaccinated and promised not to cause me trouble.
But for unknown reasons, there were still some people with different identities who called me many times to inquire about advice, and I first thanked them for their concern, and asked them to check my skin allergy symptoms or I sent them photos on WeChat, got their tolerance and understanding, and did not come to the door to take care.
Another interesting fact, once I received a call at home, saying that because of where I have been, I want to change the code and restrict my driving, I said that I didn't even go out of the house, how could I go somewhere! He asked my name to find out that I had a friend and family card that my son gave me on my phone. As soon as they heard about the Friend and Relatives Card, they raised their hands to me, saying that it caused a lot of misunderstandings.
I don't remember many of the epidemic prevention slogans at that time, but I know that this is called "precise prevention and control".
No matter how accurate, no matter what measures are used, the ghostly epidemic demon still breaks through layers of defense, forcibly breaks into the house, and sneaks into the human body!
The consequences need not be elaborated. Many of the neighbors in this unit and in this hospital who cherish their lives have passed smoothly, and many elderly people who were originally tenacious to survive have died in an unknown cluster.
And I, a mid-range senior, have nothing! The epidemic prevention package provided by the community was untouched, and I didn't eat any medicine, but I was still alive and well!
Of course, I haven't been positive or can't say that I did well or didn't get vaccinated. What exactly is the reason, only "God" knows.
These encounters made me wonder, if it was in the ancient society or in the closed and backward social environment before the reform and opening up, would there be such a big turmoil?
Reportage, No. 9, 1986
Reportage, No. 9, 1986
In 1985 of the last century, I went to Zizhong County, Sichuan Province, and accidentally heard that there were a group of peculiar dwarves in the countryside of Guide District in the county, and immediately went to write "Dwarves in Guide District" for publication in Sichuan Daily. Yao Zheneng, then editor-in-chief of Sichuan Daily, immediately called me to his office to discuss it in detail. Of course, he was also very interested in the situation of these dwarves, but he mainly said that he would combine the changes in the words of the dwarves with the spirit of the Third Plenum of the Central Committee, so that the readability and policy of the article would be well combined, and he also said that he wanted me to go to the Department of Journalism of Sichuan University to introduce my writing experience. Later, I published "The Mystery of the Dwarf" in the Beijing Reportage Magazine and compiled it into the monograph "The Mystery of Bashu". When the publisher sent the book, it also gave another copy of "The Unsolved Mysteries of Man". At that time, many readers learned that there was such a thing in the world.
Sichuan Daily published reporter Jing Yongxiang's "Why do dwarves in Guide District not grow tall?" 》
Reportage: The 9th issue of 1986 published Jing Yongxiang's "The Mystery of the Dwarves"
Decades later, if there was no pandemic, I would have forgotten these things about it.
In the thirties and forties of the last century, a mysterious virus known as "(fire + ba, pronounced pā, dialect, meaning weak body, or weakness) disease" invaded the countryside in Guide District, causing hundreds of children to have their bones and joints stunted and stopped growing taller. These people were all about fifty years old when I visited, only about one meter tall, and the shortest was eighty-three centimeters tall.
How high these children are when they develop the disease, they will always be so high after that.
Country dwarves and normal people
Guide District is a remote rural area, and when "(fire + ba, pronounced pā) disease" appears, the locals may not know that it is a virus, and the village doctors are helpless, and there are no prevention and control measures.
Strangely, within two or three years, this disease came and went quietly. Since then, the "(fire + ba, pronounced pā) disease" no longer appears in the countryside in this area. These children are normal in all aspects of their development except that they do not grow tall, and when they become adults, they engage in all walks of life like normal people, and the dwarves who work in the countryside use special agricultural tools suitable for their height. Whether a dwarf marries a dwarf or a dwarf marries a tall, the children born are normal development.
For this peculiar phenomenon, before and after liberation, experts and scholars investigated and studied from many aspects, excluding non-viral factors such as the natural environment and human heredity, and only said that it was a virus but did not know what kind of virus. Fortunately, this virus is gone, it is still relatively polite to humans, and no one has studied it anymore.
Dwarves and normal people chatted intermittently
In the sixties of the last century, when I was a teenager, I was most afraid of leprosy, in fact, I had never seen a leper, and its contagious and harmful nature came from some legends in remote mountainous areas. I heard the old people say that the deep mountains and old forests dozens of kilometers away from my house are leprosy areas, where no one dares to buy eggs and fruits, and lepers there rush to the market town, so frightened that people on the streets flee everywhere.
By the end of the seventies of the last century, when the rumors of leprosy had diminished, I walked with the secretary of the county party committee through the deep mountains and old forests to the so-called leprosy area for examination, and the local township cadres said that there were only a few leprosy patients that year, and they were sent to the leprosy hospital specially established by the state to be cured, and no new cases appeared. The most impressive thing about this trip was seeing mountains full of broken rocks in the primeval forest, and I was curious about the origin of these gravel, but I didn't know if the experts could explain it.
"The Mystery of Bashu" includes the dwarf story
Later, it was also learned that the sister of General Liang Guanglie, former Minister of National Defense, had married from the countryside of Santai County in Sichuan Province to this deep mountain and old forest during the famine of the sixties of the last century. I don't know how Liang Guanglie survived the famine years when he was a teenager, but his sister also bravely and strongly challenged the famine like a soldier and married into the deep mountains and old forests that were mysterious and terrifying in the world at that time! It was also during that period that some girls on the edge of Jiangyou County married into the sparsely populated mountains and old forests where there were rumors of diseases and pests in order to avoid the harm of the ultra-left line to agriculture.
Until the beginning of the agricultural reform in the last century, when I went to Tongjiang County, a remote and impoverished mountainous area of Sichuan Province, to investigate the situation of agricultural contracted production to households, a district party secretary told me that there was a production team that was nominally collectivized, but in fact because of the scattered residence, it was contracted to households, and leprosy had occurred there. I listened and decided to visit there.
Since they had been notified in advance, when the secretary of the district party committee and I arrived there, the whole team had already gathered and even set off firecrackers and shouted: "Welcome the provincial newspaper reporter"! They not only advocate the policy of parcel production, but more importantly, they hope that I will vindicate their place and hope that their people here will not be discriminated against outside.
Many young people now do not know what leprosy is. People who wish to be born decades later would not know about this noisy global pandemic.
The first person to expose the "Sea Lantern Myth", the first party to a news lawsuit in China, and the first person to shoot at the god-making movement after the reform and opening up - Jing Yongxiang
【About author】Jing Yongxiang, a native of Jiangyou, Sichuan, former senior reporter of Sichuan Daily, a famous news figure in China, the first person to expose the "Sea Lantern Myth", the first party to a news lawsuit in China, and the first person to fire a cannon at the god-making movement after the reform and opening up.