The Covid-19 Whistleblowers

As we end this unusual year, I thought it would be worthwhile to give some attention and thanks to the whistleblowers.  Those people who stuck their necks out to deliver revelatory truths about the pandemic.  A whistleblower is a person who informs or makes disclosure on a person or organization engaged in an illicit activity.  In most cases, they just speak out about a wrongful practice that could result in personal attacks against themselves.  The following spoke out and even though they were ridiculed and humiliated by others, they did so with the interest of righting a wrong.  In my mind, these are some of the unsung heroes of this pandemic.

Dr. Li Wenliang

Last December while working as an eye doctor at a hospital in Wuhan, he sent a message to fellow doctors warning them of a virus he was seeing in the hospital that looked a lot like the SARS virus from 2003.  Soon after this, he was investigated by police for “spreading rumors” and told to “stop making false comments”.  He later died in early February from Covid-19 at the age of 34. When he died, hundreds of thousands of people turned his Weibo page (like Facebook), into a public outpouring of both sorrow for his fate and anger towards Chinese officials for their unfair portrayal of his actions.