Bird-Flu Cover-Up? Chinese Social Media Out Possible Cases of Deadly Disease

[Time]

A foreign journalist covering China has little choice but to get familiar with the basic habits of respiratory viruses. The country's southern swath has been the historic incubator of many of the world's new strains of influenza, a product presumably of humans and their food (pigs, chickens and various other creatures) living cheek by jowl by claw. Now, just as the weather warms in the northern hemisphere, easing annual worries of an influenza pandemic, a new strain of avian influenza called H7N9 has begun to claim lives in China. As of April 2, seven people from Shanghai and the eastern provinces of Jiangsu and Anhui had been confirmed to have the disease. Two died in early March and five are currently in critical condition, according to the Chinese state press. The fact that a deadly strain of influenza has hatched in China isn't surprising. But what is new this time is the level of scrutiny the Chinese themselves are giving to the H7N9 virus. China's state-controlled press is limited by daily guidelines on what it can and cannot print. Yet Weibo, a local social-media service that has become phenomenally popular over the past couple of years since Twitter is banned, has allowed the Chinese public to express itself in unprecedented ways. Weibo is still censored but it's impossible for government minders to filter all that clutters its information thoroughfares. In recent weeks, the Weibo community, which is estimated at some 500 million strong, was seized by the surreal news that around 16,000 carcasses of diseased pigs had floated down a river that provides much of Shanghai's water supply. The municipal government's reaction to the river of dead pigs was laughable; the city's water quality, officials maintained, was still within acceptable standards. Weibo users howled. (MORE: Bird Flu Is Back in China) When the cases of H7N9 were announced in the official press on April 1, Weibo speculation mounted as to whether there might be a link between floating pigs, avian flu and sick humans in eastern China. By April 2,

Via: TIME GlobalSpin