NYT VIDEO: China's Healthcare system: Patients examine specialists board
Narrator: They scan the board of available specialists, selecting one based on their best self-diagnosis.
So now we’re going back to the people who were in line.
Just like everywhere in the world, if you want to specify a doctor, you can do it. That’s what the board is for - to request a specific doctor. If you don’t want to request a specific doctor you don’t have to, you can just walk in and see any doctor. Or you can go to a specific department. Or you can go to the counter and say “I don’t know who to see, my leg hurts.” It’s a hospital. It’s really not that hard to understand.
NYT VIDEO: Patients examine specialists board, people walk outside
Narrator: If they’re lucky, the one they choose will have time to see them.
Just because you choose to see a particular doctor doesn’t mean that they magically have time to see you. I feel like I’m explaining things to a baby now.
If they don’t have time to see you, you can just see another one, or make an appointment at the kiosk. I mean, did you just send some interns wandering around in a hospital to film everything that confused them? Where is this crisis you’re talking about?
NYT VIDEO: People in line entering the building
Narrator: For those who choose wrong, the cycle will begin again tomorrow.
If you chose a specialist and you didn’t get to see him, you can just see another doctor that same day. The only way you would need to requeue is if you somehow didn’t know about all the millions of other ways to go and book an appointment, totally ignored the appointment kiosk, and when they told you the doctor didn’t have enough time you said “I’m not seeing any other doctors, that’s the only one I will see. I’m coming back tomorrow to wait in line and I’m not making an appointment no matter what you say.”
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So far in this video they’ve introduced the son (while leaving out important information about him), and they interviewed some people waiting around in line and lied several times about what they said, and made China’s social security card seem like a post-apocalyptic nightmare even though it’s literally about as exciting as State residence. Then they showed how little they understand China by parroting irrelevant statistics, and then tried to say a lady was screaming at people in a hospital because the bill was too high. But as hard as this is to imagine, it actually gets worse from here.
Finally the video will introduce the lady I brought up in the intro.
She’s speaking a regional dialect in this video so we reached out to a friend of mine who is from her actual city to help us translate this part. The person did not know anything about this project or article. He only had the audio and we have confirmed the translation with multiple sources.
To remind you, when they filmed this she had already been fighting lung cancer for 6 years. She got surgery, took Traditional Chinese Medicine, got biotherapy, turned down chemotherapy and radiation therapy, and took Iressa before eventually giving up. Let’s see what they show us.
NYT VIDEO: Roof tops, intense zoom in
Lady: “…说我那更好了. 我都说我 不放疗 不化疗” ([context missing for first sentence]. I told the doctors “I’m not doing chemo therapy or radiation therapy.”)
Caption: I didn’t want to do chemo or radiation therapy.
Note: The first sentence requires previous context to be understood but it is not included in the video. In other words, they cropped the clip too early for their caption but not early enough to understand the extra sentence.
So here she is, mentioning that she didn’t want chemo or radiation therapy. After receiving so many treatments already, she didn’t want to reduce her quality of life as she felt she was too old. That is her right.
NYT VIDEO: Roof tops, intense zoom in
Lady: “人家医生 主治医生 还说啦 老太太 你这情（况） 你回去 带着点药 你把那身体养壮点 不用 放疗和化疗” (The doctor…the main doctor said , “Old gram, your situation, you take some medicine back and try to make your body stronger, OK, fine - no radiation, no chemo.”)
Caption: The physician in charge told me, “Ma’am, your cancer is not yet severe. You can take some medicine, go back home and get some rest. You will be fine.”
Note: At the end the lady says “不用 放疗和化疗” (don’t need chemo or radiation therapy) which the New York Times has misinterpreted as “不用 放疗, 会好” (don’t need chemo, you’ll get better). This part of the mistranslation appears to be accidental, as only a native speaker of this dialect detected this.
So, you notice it just shows her talking about how she got sent home with medicine but it doesn’t mention any of the other treatments that she had before this moment. It’s just making it seem like she went into the doctor’s and said “I have cancer, what should I do?” and they just said “go home lady, you’ll be fine,” which is not at all what happened. She tried multiple treatments and turned down multiple treatments before this moment when she was prescribed, paid for and took a lung cancer medicine.
But why would the doctor tell her that she will be fine? Well, he wouldn’t. He didn’t.
That’s not what she’s telling the New York Times at all, and yet that’s what the New York Times is telling you.
They say she said “The physician in charge told me, ‘Ma’am, your cancer is not yet severe. You can take some medicine, go back home and get some rest. You will be fine.'” But as you guessed, that’s not what she said at all.
What she said was “The doctor…the main doctor said , “Old gram, your situation, you take some medicine back and try to make your body stronger, OK, fine - no radiation, no chemo.”
The doctor is accepting her decision to not do chemo or radiation treatment, and insisting she at least take medicine and get rest. In what appears to be the first honest mistake of the video, The New York Times apparently used a non-local translator for this conversation because they have misunderstood or mistranslated the last words to be “you’ll be fine.”
They may thought her trailing off while saying “和化疗” was her saying “会好.” But either way, we’ve confirmed this translation with multiple sources. Even if they made one honest mistake, it doesn’t excuse all the obviously deliberate ones, and on top of that, they should have gotten a local translator.
New York Times Lies about China
