Covid shows that in China, politics matters more than pragmatism

It is very possible that Wu Lien-teh, the father of China’s public health system, saved the world from a pandemic. Sent by the imperial government in 1910 to investigate a disease raging through China’s frozen north-east, Dr Wu identified it as the plague. After conducting China’s first autopsies, he overcame the disbelief of colleagues to insist that plague was spreading by droplets in human breath, as well as by fleas from marmots and other rodents hunted for fur. He ordered the wearing of face-masks, the isolation of the sick and a ban on outbound travel, enforced by troops. Patriots revere Dr Wu—born in Malaya to Chinese parents and educated at Cambridge University—for using Western learning to prove foreigners wrong. Scorning Dr Wu’s advice to wear a mask, Gérard Mesny, a French medic expecting to take control of the epidemic zone, caught the plague within days of arrival and died.