Chapter 11
The news first broke out on the Internet. Many people who had been ill before but were lucky enough to be cured had relapses, and the relapses were severe. One of them was a 70-year-old man. His family found that he had a fever and cough again in the morning, but they did not think about it. Although he had been ill before, he was lucky enough to be cured. After the cure, they almost never let the old man go out. So this time he fell ill, they thought he had a cold. As a result, at night, he was obviously not getting better. Finally, before midnight that night, the old man passed away.
This is not an isolated case. For two or three days in a row, the disease relapsed after recovery, and there were more and more news reports of the disease. There were also more and more true and false rumors. People who had the disease but were cured seemed to be marked by the god of death and could not escape death. Under the increasing pressure, some people even jumped off the building in despair before they had a relapse.
There was a person who jumped off a building in Mu Nan’s community. He was a middle-aged man. I heard that he was unmarried and had no children. He had been ill at an early stage before, when the situation in the hospital was not so serious, so he received corresponding treatment. Later, he recovered and went home. As a result, the disease recurred, and even though it had not relapsed, he was already in despair and could not think straight.
Mu Nan had no recollection of this incident. It might have happened in his previous life, but he didn't pay attention to it. Although it happened in their community, the buildings were a bit far apart and he couldn't go out now. He could only get some news through the community group. Once his phone was turned off, the news was naturally blocked.
Qin Huai knew the man who jumped off the building. Mu Nan was a little surprised: "You know him? Is he an old neighbor? I don't have any impression of him."
Qin Huai said: "You are still young, so naturally you don't remember much. This person is a bit mentally abnormal, so he has never had a family in his life. He even had a fight with Uncle Mu before."
Mu Nan was even more surprised this time: "Ah? With my dad? Then who won the fight?"
Qin Huai smiled and said, "Of course Uncle Mu won. I remember Uncle Mu was playing cards downstairs. I happened to pass by when I came back from school. Uncle Mu stopped me and said that Auntie was working overtime. Then he gave me a hundred yuan and asked me to wait for you to go to KFC after school. I took the money and was about to leave when the man rushed over and bumped into me. Uncle Mu gave the man a sidelong look and said he was walking without looking at the road. As a result, the man turned around and overturned Uncle Mu's card table."
There is a KFC outside their community. Mu Nan remembers that Qin Huai would occasionally take him there to eat when he was a child. This "occasionally" was when his mother worked overtime. When his mother worked overtime, his father was too lazy to cook, so he would let Qin Huai take him to KFC, and then he would order a few dishes with his card friends after playing cards and drink some wine. Especially in the summer, his father would bring back a pot of shrimps after drinking, and he and Qin Huai would sit in the living room wearing vests, watching cartoons while eating shrimps.
Now when Qin Huai talked about these things, Mu Nan felt like he was back in the old days, as if his father would come out of the elevator in the next second, stomp hard on the ground twice, light up the sensor lights in the corridor with his footsteps, open the iron door, look at them with a smile while carrying the packaged shrimps, and then shout to them: "Fragrant and spicy shrimps, does anyone want some?"
Mu Nan also smiled and asked, "Then what? Did they just start fighting?"
Qin Huai said: "Well, they started fighting right away. You know your dad has a bad temper. He even overturned the card table, so how could he not fight? Although they won, it was four against one. Later, when the man saw your dad and the others, he wanted to take a detour."
I didn't expect that they had such a past with the person who jumped off the building. Mu Nan felt sad when he heard these things.
As fewer and fewer people got sick and more and more people were discharged from the hospital, people became more and more accustomed to the smog. They went from panicking to calming down, from being locked up at home and not knowing what to do to adapt to the community group purchases, thinking about what to buy and what to eat every day. As a result, the epidemic broke out again, causing many people to panic again, and they became even more afraid of the smog outside, wishing they could lock themselves up in a place with walls on all sides and no airflow.
Although Mu Nan had experienced it once and knew that as long as he was careful not to go out and be exposed to the smog, he would not be infected, but with the second outbreak, he still carefully inspected the doors and windows on both sides every day, and then placed air purifiers in both houses. He placed two in the living room where he and Qin Huai lived, for fear that the purification would not be adequate. Although this air purifier may not be useful for this virus, with the doors and windows closed all the time, it is always beneficial to purify the indoor air slightly. Fortunately, he and Qin Huai are non-smokers.
Just when life was about to return to normal, it was disrupted again by this sudden outbreak of deaths. Although the chaos on the Internet can be seen every day, after all, it is separated by a network, and turning off the phone can reduce the impact, but the chaos around them is not so easy to stop.
At first, someone asked in the group whether those who had recovered from the disease were still contagious after the disease recurred. Someone asked the community leader whether those who had been infected and recovered had returned home. Someone hoped that people in the community who knew about the disease would publish the home numbers of those who were sick. The original intention of this request was to have the right to know and to avoid the disease. Otherwise, you don’t know if the people on the same floor as you have been infected. What if you get infected after contact?
Later, it evolved into a requirement for community leaders to move those who had been sick out of the community and move them to hotels or other places outside. In short, they should not stay in their community, because this small group of people should not be allowed to kill more people.
Some people who have become a little neurotic due to the disease are still making all kinds of noise in the group, insisting that the community leader send the person away, as if if he doesn't send him away, he will definitely be infected and die. The ugliness of human nature has begun to emerge through this second outbreak.
Of course, people in the community would not do such a thing, unless those who had been infected and recovered relapsed again. They could arrange for people to transfer these people to the centralized points provided by the hospital. But now those people are fine, have not relapsed, and are staying indoors obediently. They have no right to expose other people's information or make them leave their homes.
But if they don't expose themselves, someone else will. The first one to be exposed is the one in Mu Nan's building. There is a young couple living on the 15th floor below Mu Nan. Their child seemed to have fallen ill during the heavy rain. At that time, the disease had just shown signs and medical resources were not so tight. Although there is no specific medicine for this type of lung swelling, some drugs for treating influenza are still effective, so the young couple's child had recovered and was discharged from the hospital before the virus broke out.
Unexpectedly, while they were living peacefully at home, their family information was exposed in the group.
Mu Nan looked at the information about the family circulating in the group, even the age of the child and which elementary school he was in were exposed. He felt that it was a bit too much, so he said in the group: "The virus is very low in contagiousness. As long as you avoid contact, you will hardly be infected. There is no need for everyone to do this. Everyone has relatives and friends. Please be considerate of each other."
Unfortunately, this sentence was quickly drowned out by a wave of criticism, with some saying that he felt so sorry for the family that he might as well let them live with him, since they wouldn't be infected anyway.
Mu Nan was speechless after hearing this. He dropped his phone and muttered, "What kind of people are these?" The neighbors he usually interacted with were all very nice. Although he was not familiar with them, most of them were friendly. How come it was as if the world had changed after being separated by the Internet? This was not the difficult period when humanity would be destroyed in the future.
Qin Huai said: "The prejudice of the general environment is like this, it can't be reversed with just a few words."
Mu Nan frowned: "These people won't do anything extreme, right?"
He recalled his last life, but in his last life, he was still busy with his graduation project and comics. Because everyone was locked up at home, some online works, such as novels and comics, had a peak in traffic, so the comic editor he signed a contract with asked him to increase the update of comics. Every day, just drawing and thinking about the plot, as well as preparing for the graduation project defense, occupied all his time. At first, because he had never experienced such a thing, he was relatively concerned about the outside world. Gradually, he got used to the life of being locked up at home, so he became less concerned about some epidemic information, so that he now can't remember what happened to the family downstairs.
Qin Huai comforted him, "No matter what, there shouldn't be any radical actions now. Order has not been disrupted, and the binding force of the law is still there. Apart from attacking online, they can't do anything else."
Just as Qin Huai said, apart from criticizing online, they really can't do much. Now it feels like the air is carrying the virus. Even if they wear masks, they try not to go out. They may not have the courage to do anything extreme.
But when the family information was exposed, countless cursing text messages and phone calls every day were enough to make the young couple collapse just through the Internet. Now even the slightest movement at the door makes them nervous.
It is obvious that they are the victims of the virus, and they don't want their children to be infected. Now they are being treated like this for no reason. The male owner of the family, Mr. Li, is worried that his hair is falling out. The children are sick, the epidemic is spreading, and they can't go out and can't work. The longer they are locked up at home, the longer their family will have no income.
The house they live in is rented, and the family has some savings, but it cannot withstand the day-to-day consumption, especially when their daughter first fell ill. She was once admitted to the ICU due to difficulty breathing, and the cost, even with medical insurance, was several thousand yuan a day. They finally survived the brink of death, and now they are facing a second outbreak. Looking at their innocent and lovely daughter, Mr. Li was filled with despair, and Mrs. Li was almost on the verge of collapse. At this time, they did not receive any help or tolerance from the outside world, and were constantly attacked maliciously. Even if the door was closed and all Internet calls were turned off, those malicious intentions still found ways to attack them.
What made Mr. Li most upset was that his daughter was watching TV in the afternoon when the power suddenly went out at home. Mr. Li did not think much about it at the time, as it was normal for such old communities to occasionally have power outages. The power did not come back until very late. Mr. Li carefully turned on his mobile phone, ignored the cursing messages, and entered the community group to check, but other people's homes were fine and there was no power outage. It seemed that only their family had a power outage.
Mr. Li noticed the problem at that time, so he went out with a flashlight. When he took a look, he found that the wire of his electric meter had been cut.
At that moment, Mr. Li could no longer bear it and exploded. He went home angrily to find a pair of scissors and cut their family's electricity meter. Then everyone would be in trouble. Anyway, every household's electricity box is outside. If others can cut theirs, he can also cut others'.
Mrs. Li was also shocked to see her husband's angry look. When she learned the reason, she couldn't stop crying, but she still stopped her husband rationally: "Let's go, tell the people in the community and ask them to help us arrange to live somewhere else. Don't be impulsive. You cut off all their meters. If they come together, it will only be us who will suffer. There are only two of us with our daughter. How can we resist them? Don't make trouble. Please, husband, I'm scared, I'm really scared."
Mrs. Li cried as she spoke, and Mr. Li gradually calmed down. He couldn't help crying while hugging his crying wife. They had never hurt anyone, so why could those neighbors who used to greet them with a smile force them to this point where they had no way out?
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