UPDATED March 6, 2020, with a new cartoon – scroll to the bottom of the post to see it, along with another explanation from Benedick.
I got some interesting emails from Chinese cartoonist and freelance photographer, Benedick Bowen, with some cartoons about his experiences with China’s extreme quarantine measures to restrict the spread of the Corona Virus, COVID-19.
At first, Chinese authorities tried to downplay the threat and punished a few whistleblowers who sounded the alarm –we had the same experience his with Preisdent Trump’s comments minimizing the virus threat. Benedick writes:
“… I heard about the ‘unexplained virus’ was was told it could be controlled and not contracted from human to human, many times on the the Chinese domestic media.
When I heard the news, I heard many people were rushing to buy face masks and medical alcohol and food. Some pessimistic friends thought that the material supply shortage would keep long and may wreak famine. My father asked me to buy rice, wheat flour and oil for months use. I didn’t agree with them … but I did buy much more food than before.
Finally Beijing was quarantined. People were not allowed to go on the street at will. Employees have to ask their companies to write out a “testimony” to get a pass for an employee to leave his home for work. I am not an employee so I can not leave my house. I can only go out within 3 hours per day to buy food. My son’s kindergarten delayed the opening time few times. By now we have bought 60 kilograms rice and 50 kilograms wheat flour and many bottles of oil. “
Benedick has been suffering from the quarantine, and from not being able to ply his trade as a freelance photographer while he’s stuck in his house, because he has no employer to write a note to the authorities, he is stuck at home. (We might face Corona Virus quarantines in California too, where freelance photographers are banned under the new law AB 5, so there will be no employer excuses in the USA either.)
Here are more of Benedick’s cartoons …
UPDATED March 6, 2020
Benedick writes: “This cartoon is about the quarantine in China’s rural areas. The security guards who wear red armbands supervise the people to wear face masks and stay home. The security guards have no enforcement power so they always make violence when people don’t obey them.”
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