Chapter 1894 - Epidemic Relapse
Epidemic Relapse
Fu Wuben donned his isolation suit and arrived at the gate of the quarantine camp's ward area wearing a stern expression.
This was the isolation zone for patients confirmed to have bubonic plague—also called Zone Two, to distinguish it from Zone One, which was reserved specifically for pneumonic plague patients. Essentially, once a patient entered Zone One, they were simply waiting to die. Patients in Zone Two at least had some chance of survival.
Whether bubonic plague or pneumonic plague, the doctors possessed no treatment methods—they could only provide supportive care and distribute placebos. Occasionally, they would brew "traditional Chinese medicine prescriptions" for testing—all of which invariably failed.
Whether a patient in Zone Two survived depended primarily on their physical constitution. But this was a matter beyond prediction. Fu Wuben had personally witnessed a young man as strong as an ox die within forty-eight hours of onset, and also seen a white-haired, impoverished, sickly old man recover and leave Zone Two. As his master always said, treating illness had both scientific aspects and elements of luck.
The guard at the door, wearing isolation clothing, checked his credentials and let him through.
The ward resembled a prison more than a hospital. Outside the bamboo and barbed wire fence walls stood several watchtowers. Pairs of sentries wearing masks stood armed with live ammunition—orders had been given that anyone crossing the warning line inside the walls could be shot.
The hastily constructed isolation camp was naturally lacking in comforts: long rows of wooden sheds roofed with reed mats and planks, with packed dirt floors beneath. The only thing that seemed "upscale" was that they were all private rooms—though this so-called privacy merely meant each bed area was partitioned and enclosed with reed mats.
The room was permeated with a powerful smell of disinfectant, noticeable even through the Wu Liande-style mask.
The ward lay silent. Some room doors stood open—not only were there no patients, but even the bamboo beds the patients had slept on were gone. Obviously these were patients who had died the night before, taken straight to cremation along with their beds.
Sunlight streamed down from glass skylights in the roof, making the room brightly lit. Fu Wuben walked through it, yet felt waves of chill.
He didn't stop until he reached the room with "Yao Hongji" written on the door sign. He had come here today specifically to question this man.
Not long ago, Guangzhou's health department had discovered that the steadily declining death toll had recently shown fluctuations. Lin Motian found this strange—he hadn't relaxed the quarantine and epidemic prevention measures; if anything, he had supervised them even more strictly. And with martial law in place, population movement had nearly stopped. Why would there suddenly be a rebound?
He believed he needed to find the cause. Fu Wuben was here to carry out this task.
Because of his master Liu San's connections, Fu Wuben maintained extensive contacts with Guangzhou's traditional Chinese medicine community. He knew quite a few doctors—from "famous physicians" to the lowest "bell-ringing doctors." Anyone who could make a living in Guangzhou, he could claim to have met.
This patient was a receiving physician at a small herbal medicine shop. He had been diagnosed with plague a few days ago. But his condition wasn't serious—he had now passed the danger period and was in the observation phase of recovery. If nothing unexpected occurred, he would be able to leave the hospital and return home in another ten days or so.
The reason Fu Wuben had come to find him was that during his investigation, he had discovered that among people who had been in contact with him, seven or eight were confirmed plague cases—an absurdly high number.
It was obvious: he had been in contact with plague patients and had transmitted the plague to others.
"Doctor Yao, quite a few plague patients have been isolated recently, and several had contact with you," Fu Wuben said to the patient lying in bed.
"Officer... With the plague raging, there's naturally no shortage of people seeking medical treatment..."
"Yes, when citizens get sick, naturally our great Elders' Council provides medicine and treatment..." Fu Wuben narrowed his eyes, his tone gradually sharpening. "Do you know what a plague patient looks like?"
Yao Hongji could see the visitor meant business. His heart sank. After thinking it over, he replied slowly: "My medical skills were passed down through my family. Some patients, according to their pathological mechanisms, don't qualify as plague..."
"So you're saying you don't recognize what plague looks like?"
Yao Hongji's heart jumped. In fact, quite a few patients afraid they had caught the plague had secretly come to see him, and he had prescribed medicine for them. If he admitted he couldn't recognize plague, wouldn't that be what the new regime called "practicing medicine illegally"? He quickly corrected himself: "Well, the Elders' Council has also... trained us. Naturally I can recognize it..."
"Since you can recognize it..." Fu Wuben's tone grew colder. "Then you should also know that when you suspect plague, you must report it immediately upon seeing it?"
"This..." Yao Hongji was sweating now. For many suspected plague patients, he indeed had not reported immediately. Instead, he first treated them with traditional medicine, collecting a consultation fee—this wasn't just him; all the doctors he knew did the same. The better ones would report to quarantine inspectors after collecting their fee; the worse ones simply ignored the matter entirely.
"Officer!" Yao Hongji rolled out of bed and began pleading: "My family also needs to eat. In past years, epidemics were exactly when we could earn a few buns' worth of money. But now everything is on high alert—the moment they see someone coughing, they immediately send them to the quarantine camp. All our patients have been lost, and we can't earn a single coin. Is the Elders' Council going to feed my whole family?"
"That will naturally be taken care of," Fu Wuben said, helping him up. "Doctor Yao, do you like the ocean?"
Yao Hongji looked at him in bewilderment, not knowing how to answer. Though the sea wasn't far from Guangzhou, he had never specifically gone to see it, let alone considered whether he liked or disliked it.
"In a few months, you'll be gazing at the ocean from the Kaohsiung Health Station. The Elders' Council will take care of your whole family's food and drink forever..."
While Fu Wuben was interrogating Yao Hongji, Lin Motian was carefully reviewing the report on newly infected persons. The sudden increase in infections and deaths puzzled him. But he quickly discovered that his speculation was accurate. Several more local traditional doctors had been infected and died in several epidemic hot zones.
He recalled reports from the past few days—it seemed there had been slightly more doctors falling ill and dying recently. This raised his alarm: the sacrifices of naturalized citizen medics, quarantine inspectors, and police were understandable, since they fought on the front lines daily, coming into contact with patients almost constantly, with extremely high risk of infection. But local traditional doctors—their business was currently very limited. Why would their morbidity and mortality rates be so high?
He had noticed this anomaly for several days and had assigned the investigation team to discover what was happening.
The information finally came back: many local traditional doctors had not been strictly following quarantine regulations. This phenomenon had actually existed all along but hadn't been prominent during the severe epidemic period. Now that the epidemic was improving daily, the impact of doctors as infection sources had become more obvious—it didn't take many; just a few doctors could cause a noticeable fluctuation in death numbers.
Lin Motian was furious the moment he heard this: The quarantine regulations clearly stipulated that all epidemic prevention activities were unified under the Health Committee's Epidemic Prevention Battalion. These people presuming to diagnose and treat such a dangerous infectious disease, concealing cases—that itself was illegal. And they dared brazenly admit it, then justify themselves with such arguments? Outrageous!
He couldn't let this slide. Lin Motian immediately wrote Liu San a memorandum, tactfully but firmly stating his position: If these traditional doctors could actually cure the plague patients in their hands, he would never interfere. But if they possessed no special skills, any doctor who dared do such things again—he, Lin Motian, would absolutely ensure that person could never practice medicine again.
Liu San examined Lin Motian's letter with some displeasure. Actually, Liu San had already heard about this matter—he just hadn't realized these doctors had caused such a significant mess. Previously, some local senior traditional Chinese doctors had requested to participate in the fight against the plague, and he and Lin Motian had politely declined. Regardless of these traditional doctors' motives—noble or otherwise—their half-baked understanding of epidemiology and modern medicine, combined with their deeply ingrained traditional medicine habits, might actually make them less suitable than blank-slate quarantine inspectors.
But wasn't Lin Motian reaching a bit too far? Public health matters could be overlooked—after all, finding someone willing to charge forward carrying the explosive pack wasn't easy. But traditional medicine was definitely under his jurisdiction. Was Lin Motian genuinely angered by those doctors, or was he using this as a pretext to eliminate traditional Chinese medicine? Liu San pondered this, thinking for a long while before finally composing a memorandum to Lin Motian that carried both self-reproach and assurance.
Integrating the city's traditional Chinese medicine practitioners was actually something Liu San had been planning for some time. His plan to implement a traditional Chinese medicine physician certification exam in Guangzhou had been drafted long ago—perhaps he could use this opportunity to formally announce it. He might even use the occasion to establish a Physicians' Association, bringing all traditional Chinese doctors and modern-trained new physicians under one umbrella. The justification was perfectly righteous: unified management, elimination of illegal practice and quarantine violations. Though more and more people were recognizing the Elders' Council's modern medicine, the mainstream view in Guangzhou remained one of suspicion and fear toward modern medicine—traditional Chinese medicine still held great potential. Lin Motian's suggestion actually presented an excellent opportunity, and it would be a shame not to seize it.
This plague war had now continued to the point where both sides had completely shown their hands. But the plague's tricks held no more secrets for Lin Motian. One side penetrated everywhere; the other remained watertight. One advanced step by step; the other defended all fronts. Under the combined resistance of modern epidemic prevention concepts and strong execution capabilities, even if the plague could temporarily gain the upper hand, it couldn't push its offensive forward endlessly.
(End of Chapter)