Effect of Chinese Government Responses on COVID-19Effect of Chinese Government Responses on COVID-19

Creator: Ruoyu Wang ’22 Digital Media Studies and Studio Art

This big map that consists of six small maps provides a clear and direct view of showing how COVID-19 started to conquer China at the beginning of 2020. For the purpose of direct comparison, colors of different levels of confirmed cases are obviously not similar to each other even though they all belong to the red-tone family. Red often refers to danger, and it’s the reason why this particular color is chosen here to tell the story.

At the beginning of COIVD-19, the Chinese government hadn’t realized that a big issue was coming up. Instead of taking proper anti-epidemic measures, they refused to tell people the truth by blocking news and restricting freedom of speech. Such action leads people to have no awareness of the future outbreak of this pandemic. They continued their daily life, for example, they went domestic or even international traveling. As the Chinese government finally realized that the situation had gone out of their control, it had been too late. No one could stop the invasion of COVID-19, and people needed to pay for their past wrong decisions. Started from Wuhan, its surrounding cities got the first attack. Then like throwing a stone in a still pool, one city after another one, it only took 12 days to have the whole of China as the paradise of coronavirus. To cities that have a larger population and more developed, it’s easier to have a surge in the number of infections. The Chinese government’s unwise response at the beginning of COVID-19 paved the way for the unbridled spread of coronavirus through the whole of China.