Distant Threat

Until my uncle was sent to care for patients in Wuhan, the outbreak didn’t feel real to me

-  JUDY ZIYI GU

IN JANUARY, when the covid-19 death toll was still in the double digits, I thought things would blow over quickly. My extended family lives in a coastal Chinese province, around 1,000 kilometres from Wuhan, the epicentre of the virus; many people went into self-quarantine after the Wuhan lockdown even though the threat seemed far away. When my mother, whom I live with in Toronto, purchased three gallons of isopropyl alcohol and began spritzing it everywhere, like it was a refreshing home scent, I assured her she was overreacting. Two weeks later, I woke to find her crying in the kitchen. Her brother had become one of the hundreds of health care workers who were sent to Wuhan.

In a manner typical to both Asian families and my uncle’s low-key personality, he did not say a word to us about being sent to Wuhan, only telling his wife at first. We found out through social media — my mom saw her brother’s name in a post from the hospital where he works, a post in which administrators praised his team’s bravery. My grandmother saw his face, behind a mask but unmistakably her son’s, on a local newscast.