THE MAN WHO KNEW
知情者
Dr Li Wenliang, one of the first to raise the alarm about a new coronavirus, died of it on February 7th, aged 33率先為新冠病毒拉響警鐘的李文亮醫生，於2月7日因該病毒辭世，時年33歲
李文亮經常忙得不可開交。儘管如此，這位武漢市中心醫院的眼科大夫卻從未錯過在微博上曬他的日常最愛。他特別愛分享好吃的：芥末量充足的日本料理、熱騰騰的牛肉麵、使他當年得以在廈門堅持三年的海底撈火鍋——當然，還有炸雞。火車站賣的雞腿最美味，而他也從不錯過任何一個可以大快朵頤的機會。一大籃德克士的手槍腿配著冰可樂簡直就是他的人生巔峰。
As a result he got chubby, and as a result of that he tried to do sport, but apart from a bit of badminton early on he mostly exercised by live-streaming snooker, commenting live on Weibo and energetically querying the ref’s decisions. So, though he had once been slim and was still fairly good-looking, he had strayed far away from the willowy baby-faced look of Xiao Zhan, the boy-band actor whose music he loved. But he was a husband now and a father, secure in a stable profession, a man of weight. That had been his aim since his schooldays, when he decided to leave industrial Liaoning in the north-east, where his parents were unemployed, and go to college in the south. At Wuhan Central the pay was bad and the hours punishing, but as long as his patients were satisfied, he was happy. Egg pancakes (that wonderful dopamine hit on his tongue!) got him through the grim night shifts.
他也因此把自己吃胖了。於是他嘗試運動。但除了一開始的一點羽毛球，他大部分的「活動」實則是看斯諾克比賽直播、刷微博、和質詢裁判的判決。所以，曾經又瘦又帥的他現在體型卻離他最愛的肖戰漸行漸遠。但他同時也是一位擁有穩定工作的丈夫和父親，是個有「分量」的男人。這也是自他學生時期的夢想，當時他為此離開了老家遼寧，離開了失業下崗的父母，去了南方讀大學。在武漢市中心醫院，他的薪水寥寥無幾，工作時間又長，但是只要病人滿意，他就開心。雞蛋餅（這個能激起舌尖上的多巴胺的食物）更讓他熬過了那些漫長的夜班。
Since he shared every passing observation online, it was not surprising that on December 30th he put up a post about an odd cluster of pneumonia cases at the hospital. They were unexplained, but the patients were in quarantine, and they had all worked in the same place, the pungent litter-strewn warren of stalls that made up the local seafood market. Immediately this looked like person-to-person transmission to him, even if it might have come initially from bats, or some other delicacy. Immediately, too, it raised the spectre of the SARS virus of 2002-03 which had killed more than 700 people. He therefore decided to warn his private WeChat group, all fellow alumni from Wuhan University, to take precautions. He headed the post: 「Seven cases of SARS in the Huanan WholesaleSeafood Market」. That was his mistake.
由於他經常在社交網絡上分享他的所見所聞，他毫無例外地在12月30日在網上提到了他在醫院裡所見到的一群奇怪的肺炎病例。這些病例似乎沒有病因，但是這些被隔離的病人卻都有一個相同點：他們都在那臭氣燻天，髒汙狼藉的本地海鮮批發市場工作。李大夫立刻察覺，此神秘肺炎很肯能是人傳人，即使它最初可能來自蝙蝠，或者某種其他野味。同時，這種新肺炎也立刻讓李大夫回想起了2003年的非典，和被它奪去的700多條生命。因此，他決定在一個微信群裡發消息，提醒群裡自己武漢大學的同學們採取預防措施。他消息的標題是:「華南水果海鮮市場確診了七例SARS」。他失策了。
The trouble was that he did not know whether it was actually SARS. He had posted it too fast. In an hour he corrected it, explaining that although it was a coronavirus, like SARS, it had not been identified yet. But to his horror he was too late: his first post had already gone viral, with his name and occupation undeleted, so that in the middle of the night he was called in for a dressing down at the hospital, and January 3rd he was summoned to the police station. There he was accused of spreading rumours and subverting the social order. He then had to give written answers to two questions: in future, could he stop his illegal activities? 「I can,」 he wrote, and put his thumbprint, in red ink, on his answer. Did he understand that if he went on, he would be punished under the law? 「I understand,」 he wrote, and supplied another thumbprint.
麻煩來自於他無法確定那到底是不是SARS(非典病毒)。他太迫不及待了。一個小時後，他更正了之前的發言，解釋說，雖然這是一種冠狀病毒，就像SARS一樣，但還沒有被識別出來。但不幸的是，他改正得太晚了:他的第一個消息截圖已經在網上瘋傳，他的名字和職業都沒有被打碼。當天半夜他就被叫去醫院挨罵，1月3日他更是被叫到派出所：他被指控散布謠言和破壞社會秩序。他還必須書面「回答」兩個問題。你必須至此中止違法行為，你能做到嗎？「我可以，」他寫道，並在他的答案上用紅墨水按下了自己的指紋。如果你繼續進行違法活動，你將會受到法律的制裁，你明白了嗎？「我明白，」他寫道，並按下了另一個指紋。
His birthday resolution, posted on Weibo, had been to be a simple person, refusing to let the world’s complications bother him. So much for that. At least he had not been detained, which would have consumed his family with worry. At least his licence to practise had not been revoked. In fact, he had not even been fined. Yet why should he have been? He had been right to raise the alarm. The authorities were still denying that there was human-to-human transmission, and that was just wrong. He had spoken out before, when two trains had crashed in Wenzhou in 2011 with 40 deaths, demanding on Weibo the reinstatement of a journalist who had been sacked for asking about lack of safety on the line. The truth mattered. Public safety mattered. Public power should not be used for excessive interference. In this turmoil, though silent as promised, he went back to work, and then he was careless again.
他曾經在微博上發布的生日願望是做一個簡單的人，不讓世間的混沌影響到他。這個願望算是泡湯了。不過至少他沒有被拘留，不然他的家人得多擔心？他的執業證書也沒有被吊銷。事實上，他甚至沒有被罰款。但憑什麼要？他敲響警鐘是對的。有關當局當時仍然在否認病毒存在人傳人，這明顯是扯淡。2011年，當溫州動車事故造成40人死亡時，他曾在微博上要求恢復一名因為敢問問題而被撤職的記者的職務。真相很重要；人民的安全很重要；公共權力不應被用於過度幹涉。在這次的混亂中，儘管他像答應過的那樣保持沉默，他還是回到工作崗位，一如既往，直到他再一次「疏忽大意」了。
On January 8th an 82-year-old patient presented with acute angle-closure glaucoma and, because she had no fever, he treated her without a mask. She too turned out to run a stall in the market, and she had other odd symptoms, including loss of appetite and pulmonary lesions suggesting viral pneumonia. It was the new virus, and by January 10th he had begun to cough. The next day he put an n95 mask on. Not wanting to infect the family, he sent them to his in-laws 200miles away, and checked into a hotel. He was soon back in the hospital, this time in an isolation ward. On February 1st a nucleic-acid test showed positive for the new coronavirus. Well, that’s it then, confirmed, he wrote on Weibofrom his bed.
1月8日，一名82歲的病人因為急性閉角型青光眼來到了李大夫的診室。由於她沒有發燒，李大夫沒有戴口罩。她也曾在華南海鮮市場擺攤，還帶有其他奇怪的症狀，包括食欲不振和肺部病變，表明是病毒性肺炎——是新冠病毒。到1月10日李大夫開始咳嗽。第二天，他戴上了N95口罩。為了不傳染給家人，他把他們送到了200多英裡外的丈人家，並自己住進了一家旅館。但他很快就回到了醫院，只是這次進入的是一個隔離病房。2月1日，核酸測試顯示新型冠狀病毒陽性。好吧，那就這樣吧，「塵埃落定，終於確診了，」他躺在病床上，在微博上寫道。
He was an optimistic sort. Though the household finances were pretty stretched, he felt sure he would win the big prize in the online lucky grab-bag run by LuoYonghao, the founder of the Smartisan tech company (whose products he much coveted), and got that same lucky feeling when he tried to win a pair of AirPods Pro, though he ended up with neither. When it came to this new virus, though it might take him half a month to regain full lung function, he would soon be back on the front line fighting. After all, he was the man who in2012—when the world had been supposed to end—had announced on Weibo that he was going to save it. (「Though if the sun rises as usual…don’t thank me. I’m just doing my duty.」)
他一直是個樂觀的人。儘管家庭財務狀況非常緊張,他卻有信心他早晚會在微博抽獎中贏得羅永浩旗下的錘子手機（他很喜歡錘子科技的產品），亦或是贏得一雙AirPods Pro,儘管他最終都沒抽到。就算痊癒後恢復肺功能可能需要半個月，李大夫在過去的採訪中談到疫情時，卻依然說他會第一時間回到一線戰鬥。畢竟，他是那個在2012年「世界末日」時在微博上宣布要拯救地球的人。（「如果太陽照常升起……不用感謝我，這都是應該的！」）
His fame had spread far and wide, too. Reporters, even from the New York Times, wanted interviews. These had to be done by text and via WeChat, since from late January he could not breathe on his own and was hooked up to continuous-flow oxygen. It didn’t help as much as he expected—his blood-oxygen saturation levels got no better. But online he could go on making defiant and upbeat remarks. There had to be more transparency. The truth was important. A healthy society should never have just one voice. And to the young woman reporter who wanted a selfie of him (as if he was Xiao Zhan, ever perfectly groomed, cute and slim), he sent an apology along with the photo of his masked, tubed and haunted face: sorry, he hadn’t washed his hair for a while.
一夜之間，他名聲大噪。各路記者，就連《紐約時報》，都想要採訪他。不過這些必須通過簡訊和微信來完成，因為從一月底開始，他就不能自主呼吸了，只能靠外部供氧維持生命。儘管結果並沒有他預期的那麼好——他的血氧飽和度沒有改善——他依然保持樂觀，並繼續頑強地發聲：透明度必須提高，真相很重要；一個健康的社會不應該只有一種聲音。當一位年輕的女記者想要他發一張自拍時（就像他是肖戰一樣，永遠是那麼帥氣）他發了自己戴著氧氣面罩、插著管，滿臉憔悴的自拍，並附加了一句道歉：對不起，有一陣子沒洗頭了。
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