Downloaded from YTS.MX
[TV static drones]
[bright tone]
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
[cheers and applause]
[bells tolling]
[soft music]
♪ ♪
- This was Wuhan in the first few moments of 2020,
celebrating the New Year like any other city.
♪ ♪
[upbeat music]
- On the morning of January 1st,
this speech by China's president was broadcast
all across the country.
Later that afternoon,
another message went out on state media.
This message faded into the background
when the whole country was celebrating.
It barely registered with people, including me.
[soft music]
I've lived in the U.S. for nine years,
and each year in January, I would return to my home
in China to celebrate the Chinese New Year
with my family.
This year, I traveled with my two-year-old son.
♪ ♪
This was the last moment I can remember
when life still felt normal.
♪ ♪
In the weeks and months that followed,
as the world plunged into chaos and confusion,
this image returned to my mind,
and the news bulletin
from that same day hung in my memory.
♪ ♪
When I look at these people now,
unaware of what was spreading between them,
I feel like we are all still standing there in that moment.
♪ ♪
On January 23rd, I left my son in China
so he could spend the holiday with my mom,
and I flew back to the U.S. for a work trip.
As soon as I landed in the U.S.,
the Chinese government announced
it was locking down Wuhan.
All 11 million people living in Wuhan were sealed off
from the outside world,
and other cities all around the country were starting
to barricade themselves
to stop the virus from reaching them.
Not knowing whether my family was safe
in our hometown 200 miles east of Wuhan,
I scrolled through the news,
trying to find more information.
On the evening of Wuhan's lockdown,
this was broadcast on national and local TV.
[applause]
While this was being broadcast on TV,
this is what was on social media.
[tense music]
- [coughing]
- People were dying on the streets.
Posts like these were deleted from social media
by government censors.
Simply filming on the street with a cell phone
became sensitive.
Finally, a family member who worked in the hospital
told me that our town had several confirmed cases,
but the government was ordering hospital staff
to keep it a secret.
I knew we had to get our son out of the country.
My husband bought the first available ticket
to pick him up.
I spent hours reading social media posts,
and I discovered a forum for people
who had tested positive but couldn't get treatment
because hospitals were overwhelmed.
Thousands of people were uploading their names,
ID pictures, phone numbers, and their X-rays
in hopes of getting some access to care.
Seeing these patients brought back memories
of a moment from when I was 11 years old.
My father was in the hospital getting treatment
for heart disease and was surrounded
by people who were dying.
[soft music]
My mom had to work nonstop to afford the medical bills,
so I stayed at the hospital taking care of my dad.
These lines of people waiting for care in Wuhan reminded me
of the lines I stood in to fill out paperwork
or get medication for my father.
I was small, even for an 11-year-old,
and people would often push past me,
and the staff would ignore me.
Not long after that, my father died
at 33 years old.
The grief and powerlessness I felt
at losing him like that,
wondering if he could have lived longer
had he gotten better care,
it shaped me into who I am
and later drove me to make documentaries.
I archived as many posts as I could,
and I tried reaching out to a few major newspapers
in the U.S. with the hope that news coverage
could somehow help these people.
♪ ♪
None of the newspapers I contacted
would pursue this story.
♪ ♪
I decided to try and contact local camerapeople
in Wuhan to start collecting people's stories.
What they sent was my first real glimpse
of what life in Wuhan looked like under quarantine.
♪ ♪
Every movement required approval from party officials.
Only people who got a special letter of permission
from the government could film at the hospitals,
and a few of them agreed to film for me,
each for different reasons.
This was some of the first footage
they filmed inside the hospital.
- [laughing]
- Oh.
Oh.
[indistinct chatter]
- [speaking Chinese dialect]
- When I noticed the camerapeople
were turning off their cameras
whenever they saw something negative,
I suggested that they put multiple cameras
in different places around the hospital
and keep filming all day long.
[monitor beeping]
[ventilator hissing]
This shot captured the cameraperson sitting down
to take a break.
I also told them to film nonstop
with their handheld cameras,
and they took the instructions very literally.
This shot of a patient's foot lasted for five minutes.
But then someone caught the cameraperson's attention.
- [sighs, voice breaking]
- This detail surprised me.
The father kept saying that he and his son were infected
in December.
This would have been a month
before the government announced the outbreak.
I wanted to interview doctors and nurses about this,
but I was told that every interview request had
to be approved by the government.
In one moment captured by a camera placed in the lobby,
the media was staging interviews
with doctors and nurses.
[indistinct chatter, laughter]
Everywhere our cameraperson filmed,
there were media crews working for the state
and local propaganda department.
I learned that the government sent hundreds of journalists
to report on the situation in Wuhan.
On TV, the propaganda department
laid out its strategy for covering the outbreak.
Positive is a word that I heard over and over on TV.
Even some of our camerapeople agreed that it was important
to portray the situation positively,
and one of them explained why.
Many doctors would only tell positive stories.
Just a few agreed to speak with me but only anonymously.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
Unable to get doctors
from state-owned hospitals to speak,
I searched and found private clinic owners.
Chen and her husband, Liu, run a small clinic
near Huanan Seafood Market, the wet market
where the first COVID-19 cases were discovered
- [speaking Chinese dialect]
[person coughing]
All of these patients came in within four days
of each other in December.
Some of them later would test positive for COVID.
On December 26th, Doctor Liu developed a fever himself.
When his condition worsened,
he tried to get treatment at a hospital.
♪ ♪
Between January 1st and January 2nd,
4 different hospitals refused to treat Liu,
and none of them offered a reason that made any sense.
I gathered every source of information I could
on the early days of the outbreak
to see if I could find an explanation.
This article published by scientists from Wuhan
in an international medical journal said
the first known case of unexplained pneumonia
was recorded on December 1st.
On December 26th, a private lab tested samples
from patients.
One of the lab technicians posted their discoveries
about the virus on his blog.
They described the virus as a subtype of SARS.
They also shared their findings
with government health officials in Wuhan.
Then on December 30th, in a private group chat,
a few doctors in Wuhan warned friends and family
about this new SARS-like virus.
One of the doctors was named Li Wenliang,
who would later die after being infected by a patient.
Screenshots of these chats were circulated
on social media, and on January 1st,
those 8 doctors ended up on the news.
On the same day that the eight doctors were punished,
Liu visited four of the hospitals
where the punished doctors had been working.
He was turned away from all of them.
Many of the doctors at these hospitals must have known
this new virus was spreading between people,
but they were afraid to say so for fear of punishment
from the government.
- [crying]
[thunder rumbles]
- For three weeks following the punishment
of those eight doctors,
the government continuously reassured the public
that the virus was contained and wasn't spreading
between people.
[lighter clicks]
♪ ♪
[fanfare playing]
♪ ♪
- During this time as health-care workers
and patients were spreading the virus in hospitals,
the annual People's Congress in Hubei Province was held
in Wuhan.
Every province holds one of these meetings
at the beginning of each year.
It's a chance for party officials
to make big speeches and set the agenda
for the coming year.
[applause]
It would not have been a good time
to announce the spread of a new virus.
The Congress lasted for two weeks,
and during that time, the government announced
each day that there were no new coronavirus cases.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
On January 20th,
2 days after the Congress ended,
the government announced for the first time
that the virus could spread between people.
♪ ♪
Three days later, the city was locked down.
Hospitals and emergency hotlines
immediately were overwhelmed.
♪ ♪
[phones ringing, indistinct chatter]
[device beeps]
[beeping]
The footage the camerapeople sent me
revealed so many families facing this exact situation.
A loved one was near death,
but no hospital would admit them.
[indistinct chatter]
♪ ♪
This shot of medics walking to pick up a patient
lasted for 15 minutes.
The roads and entrances to many neighborhoods
had been blocked during the lockdown.
It often took the medics a long time
to reach a patient.
As I watched them pass by each building,
I thought of the people who posted their chest X-rays
on the social media forum.
I wondered how many of them could have been sitting
by their apartment windows
watching the medics come closer,
only to pass their window
and disappear around the corner.
I thought the government would have wanted
to conceal moments like this from the public,
but instead, outbreak stories
were broadcast nonstop on TV.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- After watching hundreds
of these state media programs myself,
I saw a pattern of story types that were being approved
by the propaganda department--
stories that inspired confidence and hope.
One topic in particular kept showing up in the broadcasts.
[baby crying]
These stories were nationally televised
and watched by millions.
When I lived in China, I remember feeling moved
watching these kinds of state TV broadcasts
about regular people overcoming adversity,
fighting for each other.
But I don't remember ever questioning
where the adversity came from in the first place
or why the government's propaganda department
was showing it to me.
But now it's clear that when the government
is telling us where to look,
they're also telling us where not to look.
[line trilling]
I called the people on the social media forum
who had posted their X-rays and phone numbers online.
♪ ♪
[overlapping chatter in Chinese dialect]
♪ ♪
Each person I spoke to described unbearable trauma
and loss.
♪ ♪
Ding is a taxi driver.
His mother died in a hospital lobby
after waiting days for a bed.
The nurse told him not to cry or wipe his tears
because it would increase his own risk of infection.
Yawen is a college student
whose entire family was infected.
Her father and grandfather died one day apart.
Zhou Li and her husband were infected
and went to sleep on the floor of a hospital lobby
to protect their 13-year-old son from infection.
♪ ♪
Li Qiong's husband and daughter are both
U.S. citizens.
They traveled to Wuhan for the Chinese New Year celebrations.
When the lockdown started,
her husband and daughter managed to board a flight
back to the U.S., but Li Qiong stayed in Wuhan
to care for her father, who was infected.
When I first learned Li Qiong's story,
it reminded me of when I had to get my son out of China.
♪ ♪
- Once my son was home, I was full of anxiety
and guilt about being separate from my mother.
I worried about who would take care of her
if she got sick.
Li Qiong was living my worst fear.
- [sniffles, voice breaking]
- Wicinski's wife Li Qiong's father,
who's been ill with the virus, was waiting for weeks
to get a hospital bed.
He says hospital beds are hard to find.
His wife and her dad are sleeping in the parking lot
just to be first in line.
- Wicinski says with the hospitals full,
they were left to care for him alone.
- Frank Wicinski and his three-year-old daughter--
- Just as I reached out to reporters in the U.S.
to find help, Li Qiong's husband, Frank,
went to the media, hoping that the exposure
could somehow help Li Qiong and her father.
- And then now she...
- But Frank's interviews had a different impact
that neither of them expected.
- [coughs]
- Now Frank can't stop coughing,
so he takes a swig from his daughter's water bottle,
hands it back, and she continues
to drink from it, uh-oh.
- [coughs]
- This moment of him coughing went viral.
♪ ♪
Looking through the thousands of comments
on Frank's interview, I wondered,
why did so many people believe that Frank was part
of some conspiracy?
And what convinced them that the virus wasn't a threat?
- Are there worries about a pandemic at this point?
- No, not at all, and we're--we have it totally under control.
We think we have it very well under control.
- The risk to Americans is low.
- By April, you know, in theory,
when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.
- Right now don't worry about it.
Be more concerned about influenza.
- The immediate risk
to the general American public remains low.
- This is a flu. This is like a flu.
- Americans, independent of where they live in this nation,
are at low risk.
The American public needs to go on with their normal lives.
♪ ♪
- And tonight with the latest on the coronavirus outbreak,
the first confirmed case in New York City.
Governor Cuomo is reminding New Yorkers the risk
of getting coronavirus remains low.
- For the vast majority of New Yorkers,
life is going on pretty normally right now,
and we want to encourage that.
There's very little threat here.
This disease, even if you were to get it,
basically acts like a common cold or flu.
- Like most people in the U.S.,
I trusted that the risk here was low
and lived my life normally.
My mom saw the news that the virus had reached New York.
She called and told us to wear masks outside.
She sent me a video of a friend of hers
being caught without a mask in public.
He was detained the next day.
The video made me angry at the Chinese government
for overreacting.
I told my mom she was being paranoid,
and I translated and sent her videos
from American experts.
- Right now in the United States,
people should not be walking around with masks.
- You're sure of it?
'Cause people are listening really closely to this.
- Right now people should not be--there's no reason
to be walking around with a mask.
- Then in an instant, everything changed.
- Confirmed cases in New York City is now 36.
Now 53, 154, 183,
329, 814,
3,615,
5,151. [sirens wailing]
- We're going to put out an executive order today.
100% of the workforce must stay home.
[haunting music]
♪ ♪
- Just like in Wuhan, America's largest city went
from hearing that the virus didn't pose a threat
to finding itself under lockdown.
♪ ♪
I watched the news each day in disbelief.
How did I not see it coming
even though there had been so many warning signs
since I first came back to the U.S. from China?
On January 23rd, the day of Wuhan's lockdown,
when I arrived at customs,
there was no temperature check,
nobody asking where I had come from
or if I was feeling sick.
Then a week after coming back from China,
my son Jamie developed a fever.
Our first thought was that he might have been infected.
When we took him to the ER,
the doctors said he couldn't get tested
and told us not to worry.
They said the virus wasn't spreading in the U.S.
and they sent us home.
I felt surprised that he couldn't get tested,
even though he'd just come from China and had symptoms,
but I trusted the doctors.
They were the experts,
and they were following the CDC's guidelines.
- [coughs]
- We self-quarantined just to be safe,
and after a week, Jamie was back to normal.
Just a few weeks later when I looked out my window
in New Jersey, I started to see reflections
of scenes from Wuhan.
By April, the nearest testing site to my home was filling
to capacity hours before it opened.
I realized that I had fully bought into the idea
that America was too advanced
to suffer an outbreak like China's,
but every time I turned on the news,
I heard echoes of China's outbreak
all across America.
- Hospitals across the country are bracing for a surge
in coronavirus patients--
- Frontline medical workers are facing shortages
of N95 masks--
- Pictures of nurses in a New York City hospital
wearing garbage bags--
- We don't have the equipment to tackle this problem.
- Where hospitals are overwhelmed.
- Hospitals are getting close to being overwhelmed.
- Our ICU is 95% full this morning.
- This is overwhelming hospitals
and first responders.
[monitor beeping]
- When they were shutting down Wuhan,
I was really concerned about the videos
that were coming up online,
so I started asking questions in the hospital.
What are the protocols?
What are gonna be the procedures?
How are we gonna handle the situation,
and how are we preparing for this?
They told me, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're preparing."
There was nothing ever...
provided to us as far as information or training
until the first patient actually came to the hospital,
and that same day,
they were trying to train the nurses
how to don and doff the PPE,
but nothing was ever given in writing.
It's sort of like walking into a fire,
and you have nothing to stop the fire,
and here you are, raising the alarm
and trying to call for help,
and everybody's just kind of brushing you off.
I was accused of causing hysteria
and spreading rumors.
- It sounded exactly like the way doctors
in Wuhan were punished for sounding the alarm.
It was a pattern across the country.
- An emergency room physician lost his job
after publicly criticizing the hospital's response
to the coronavirus.
A nurse has been fired for posting a video online.
- He was fired after expressing safety concerns
to the media.
- Hospitals are warning them not to talk to the media.
- Nurses in one of our floors were wearing garbage bags
because they were denied gowns.
The moment you open your mouth,
you conceivably could become a target,
and then they're gonna try to take away your job.
People who were outspoken about PPE--that happened
to another nurse, I think, further north in Jersey.
- This is what they tried to make me wear.
This surgical mask is the thinnest I've ever seen.
It's like toilet paper.
I had a few N95s at home.
I would take one with me to work.
Our manager came up to me and told me
that I had to take off my gloves and mask
and that I wasn't allowed to wear them.
And then I even--I made the plea for her
to let me wear it because I had promised my son
that I would protect myself and him and my family
while coming in to the hospital.
And at that point in time, my supervisor told me
that she strongly suggests I find a different career.
- There's never been, like, a great communication
of, like, "Listen, these are our supplies.
"This is what we have.
This is how we have to ration these things," you know.
The first few weeks of it,
the CDC standards were changing almost daily,
and it was not based on science but based on supplies.
And every day you come in, and there'd be a new standard.
And so each day you're trying to understand,
you know, why is this okay today?
- When the CDC
produced their new and improved guidelines
and the CDC was saying that we didn't need
to wear masks outside,
you know, going to public places
and that we weren't protected by wearing them,
I knew initially-- I knew immediately
something was wrong.
I believe that the CDC made that guideline
to provide ample supply to the health-care workers,
but instead, they should have stated their intentions.
And now that they've altered their recommendations
based on supply, I feel that not only myself
but a lot of health-care workers are having a problem
trusting in the CDC now.
- The CDC went as far as saying that if we didn't have a mask,
just wear a scarf.
What kind of agency are you?
How can you have any credibility?
How can you ever expect that we will believe you or trust you?
This is the reflection of a broken system
that was already on the verge of death!
When I decided to speak up,
I said, "I'm gonna lose my job.
They're probably gonna fire me the next day."
But I didn't care, because it was so bad,
nothing mattered anymore.
♪ ♪
I'll never forget a patient who had,
"Do not intubate, do not resuscitate"
orders already.
They actually allowed the wife to come
and say her last goodbye to her husband,
and she came out of the room...
[voice breaking] And she just stood there,
and she looked so lost.
She was crying, so I came over...
and I said I was sorry,
and if there was anything else I could do for her.
So she just nodded no, and then she said,
"Thank you for taking care of him."
And I gave her a hug. I gave her a hug.
I probably shouldn't have done that, but...
I felt so bad for her because she--
you know, I was glad she had the opportunity
to come and see him, but she was alone,
and it was just too much.
I didn't know what to do.
I just--like, we didn't know what to do.
We tried our best to do whatever we could,
and it didn't make a difference anyway for a lot of them.
[distant siren wailing]
♪ ♪
- At the time when I spoke with Diana,
she had been isolating herself
from her husband and three kids.
She filmed video diaries to show people
what health-care workers were going through.
When I talked to health-care workers like her,
I noticed they'd often burst into tears at times
when they talked about the death they witnessed
or their separation from their families,
but also at times that seemed unexpected to me.
- I'm sorry, hold on. [chuckles]
[clears throat]
- It was then I realized how vast their trauma must be
and how invisible it still was to the rest of the world.
♪ ♪
- I just--I guess I need a second.
Um...
♪ ♪
[clears throat]
Um...
all right.
I was just talking with my neighbor today,
if I can say this, she was-- and we were talking
about how everyone is holding up...
and...
and, you know, my fear...
♪ ♪
Jesus.
[sniffles]
[clears throat] I didn't know this was in me,
like, how upset I'm getting right now.
♪ ♪
Um...
there are nurses, especially in the ICUs,
who are dealing with a lot of death
and a lot of just patients crashing.
You know, a lot of the patients,
once they're intubated, don't necessarily make it.
And I work in the ED.
We had some patients like this, but we didn't have them
to the degree and for the length
that those ICU nurses have, and...
if...
if this is how this is making me feel,
I don't know how those nurses are gonna crash
once they stop and start talking about this stuff.
♪ ♪
[monitor beeping]
♪ ♪
- More than 40,000 health-care workers
from other provinces were sent to Wuhan
to help local hospitals.
They left their own families for two months
and stayed in Wuhan until a few days
before the lockdown was lifted.
When I saw them taking off their suits,
I realized how young many of them were.
Their lives had barely started,
and they found themselves far from home,
fighting an unknown virus, surrounded by chaos and death.
On the day they prepared to leave Wuhan,
the local authorities held celebrations
to thank them.
These events celebrated the Communist Party
as much as they celebrated the health-care workers.
[applause]
I've seen ceremonies like this play out
over and over after major disasters in China.
People emerge from the trauma of these events
with even stronger patriotic sentiment than before.
[upbeat music]
♪ ♪
- [singing in Chinese dialect]
♪ ♪
[all singing in Chinese dialect]
♪ ♪
- Disasters become propaganda tools
instead of inspiring change.
These images become the official history
of the disaster.
It was another triumph for the Communist Party.
[soft music]
♪ ♪
[bells tolling]
The day Tao went to the funeral home
to pick up the ashes of his son,
our cameraperson followed him there.
♪ ♪
It was the second time our cameraperson tried
to go to the funeral home.
The first time he almost was arrested.
At the time, I couldn't understand
what was sensitive about people collecting the ashes.
I suggested that the cameraperson film
from inside the car.
♪ ♪
The government prohibited funerals
and formal ceremonies,
so many people made small traditional death offerings
on sidewalks.
By April, the official death toll
from COVID in Wuhan was 3,335.
Most victims' ashes had been held
by state-run funeral homes until then,
and when the government announced the ashes
would be released to family members,
it ordered that all remains be collected and buried
within two weeks.
[indistinct chatter]
♪ ♪
This was one of 16 public cemeteries in Wuhan.
The city has 8 funeral homes,
and all of them are run by the state.
Since the outbreak,
the government has heavily restricted reporting
on the funeral homes.
One employee agreed to speak to me anonymously.
[people chanting]
- [crying]
[people sobbing]
[crowd chanting]
all: Open California! Open California!
Open California!
- Reopen Florida! - Reopen Florida!
all: Open Illinois! Open Illinois!
Open Illinois!
[cheering]
- When do we want it? - Now!
- Not a single person do I know
that has had the coronavirus,
not one, not one, and I know a lot of people.
- They're inflating the numbers of the COVID deaths.
The CDC is actually paying hospitals
to call deaths COVID.
- I know the propaganda's out there,
and I can't stand it.
If you really want to know, I'm pissed off.
- Say no to anybody who tells you
that the most important thing for you to do is
to listen to your government, give up your God-given right.
- Any governor that's given an order
for people to stay at home or to wear face masks,
you're violating our liberty.
all: [chanting] Freedom, freedom,
freedom, freedom, freedom!
- As I watched the protesters in America,
I thought about Peien.
He said that tens of thousands died in China
because there was no freedom of speech.
I wondered what he would think
if he could see what was happening here.
- I feel like the American government is trying
to be more like China, which is a communist country,
and I feel like being free is what separates us
from other countries.
- Nine years ago when I moved to the U.S.,
it was the idea of freedom that attracted me.
I had never seen a protest until I came to the U.S.
The closest thing to a protest I had ever seen in China
was six people standing on the side of the road,
and all of them ended up in prison.
Nobody would look at these people
and say that they are free.
all: USA, USA!
- But is this what freedom looks like?
- USA! - I was born here!
You can't tell me to leave! - You're not looking at facts!
These are facts!
- You're a fascist! - I'm a fucking fascist!
[indistinct shouting]
- Right here. I got my mask under my balls.
[cars horns honking]
You got nothing to say, do you?
I didn't think so.
- I recognized the confidence the protesters had.
I felt the same way when my mom called
and told me to wear a mask.
I trusted the experts I was listening to.
- People should not be walking around with masks.
There's no reason to be walking around
with a mask.
- And I recognized that same sense of trust
in the way the protesters repeated what they heard
from people they trusted.
- You treat this like a flu.
This is a flu. This is like a flu.
- It's going to be around forever.
It's a new strain of the flu. That's what it is.
- What we have right now is a bad case
of the flu running loose,
and we've decided to close down the country.
- Mr. President--
- Mr. President, have you seen anything
that the Wuhan Institute of Virology
was the origin of this virus?
- Yes, I have. Yes, I have.
- Personally, I think it was a man-made virus.
- I would believe that they would have done that
on purpose for population control.
- I believe it started in a lab.
- Scientifically modified or manipulated in laboratories
with patents held by Bill Gates.
This is all information that's all out there.
You hold the patent, you hold the vaccine,
you hold the virus, you hold the "plandemic."
- You know, these people, they're ignorant.
This is not a political agenda.
This is something that we have to come to and unite.
We have to be united to fight this.
This is stupid.
- When I first saw the protesters,
I had the same reaction.
It was tempting to dismiss them
as crazy or brainwashed.
But as I listened more carefully,
I heard them expressing the same fear
of misinformation that I had.
- Our concern here is that now it has become political.
The most important fact is to get data
that is 100% accurate, not politically manufactured.
- Accurate information is absolutely imperative
because we have too many people that just follow the leader,
and the leader could lead 'em to the edge of a cliff,
and they would go, and that's what will happen
with our country.
- Don't accept blindly what we're saying to you.
Right now the problem is people are just blindly accepting
what the government says to 'em.
And they have to understand that when you do that,
you unwittingly sell your soul to tyranny.
- We all think of ourselves as capable
of separating truth from falsehood,
but how can we make that distinction
when misinformation comes from the people
we are supposed to trust?
all: USA, USA, USA!
- New concerns tonight as more states
break coronavirus daily case records.
As the country reopens,
former FDA commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb
is sounding the alarm.
- The worry is that they're gonna tip over
into exponential growth coming this week.
- I remember thinking back
when this whole pandemic started.
I was scared, and I just prayed.
I said, "God, please let me see my 34th birthday."
And I think a lot of people think like that now.
Doctors and nurses and firefighters
and MTA workers and...
People are just--
it got to a point, people were just dropping like flies.
♪ ♪
The funeral's really for the family,
and when you really get to meet the families
and you get the narrative about these people
who once lived like you and I...
So you get the narrative he was a teacher,
he was a doctor, he loved music,
he loved this, he loved that, she was a great mom,
a great grandmother.
♪ ♪
- Infections are soaring to new highs across the country.
- Saturday Florida broke its single day record--
- The last four weeks, the United States
has seen a 42% increase in the number of deaths.
- With a stunning number-- - A grim milestone--
- Mark the latest grim milestone--
- It's the highest total of any country in the world.
[fanfare playing]
♪ ♪
[soft music]
♪ ♪
- At the beginning of the outbreak,
I thought the public would demand greater transparency
from the government,
but several months later,
only a few critical voices remain.
[indistinct chatter in Chinese dialect]
Chen Qiushi is a human rights lawyer
and citizen journalist who livestreamed the reports
from the ground in Wuhan when the outbreak started.
He posted his videos on YouTube,
and they were viewed millions of times.
Two days after he interviewed Peien,
he disappeared.
This was the last video he posted
before his disappearance.
Since Chen Qiushi's disappearance,
more than a dozen activists have been arrested
or disappeared for documenting Wuhan's outbreak.
- A Chinese citizen journalist was arrested by police.
- Li Zehua, 25, a citizen journalist in Wuhan.
- Fang Bin went missing.
- Cai Wei and Chen Mei,
they have published censored articles
on China's handling of the Wuhan virus.
- 37-year-old Zhang Zhan was found guilty on Monday.
- Zhang Zhan was found guilty.
- Zhang Zhan has been sentenced
to four years in prison.
♪ ♪
- Hearing news of the arrests reminded me
of the news announcement from January 1st.
♪ ♪
It's hard for me to picture how all of this might end.
But I can clearly imagine
how this could have begun differently.
♪ ♪
- Chinese officials are warning
that a new infectious disease identified in Wuhan
has potential to spread widely.
The CDC is working to roll out a massive testing program.
The president is urging all Americans
to avoid unnecessary travel.
♪ ♪
[crowd cheering]
- Of course, that wasn't how all of this began.
A year later, the New Year's celebration
in Wuhan looks almost exactly the same as the year before.
♪ ♪
[bell tolling]
[cheers and applause]
The whole world seems eager to return
to a feeling of normal,
but it was circumstances we considered normal
that created the crisis we are living through now.
There will be an ending to the pandemic,
but I worry that something even more frightening
is just beginning.
- The World Health Organization
has praised China's response.
- I will praise China again and again.
- China mounted the most effective containment program
in history.
- The coronavirus may put China in a stronger position.
- Authoritarianism was already on the rise
before COVID-19.
- Authoritarian leaders are using this
to push through autocratic measures.
- It started out as a medical crisis.
It has become a test of our form of government.
♪ ♪
- I have lived under authoritarianism,
and I have lived in a society that calls itself free.
In both systems, ordinary people become casualties
of their leaders' pursuit of power.
♪ ♪
[bright tone]