A community service employee sprays disinfectant on a local resident on Feb 19 in Wuhan, Central China’s Hubei Province, which is also the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak. The city government has launched door-to-door visits of every household and imposed strict quarantine measures in residential communities. Photo: Cui Meng/GT

An audio clip of a woman in Wuhan slamming grassroots community officials and a local supermarket went viral for its outspoken expression voiced in a Wuhan accent. 

The emotional catharsis received netizens' applause, illustrating how public opinion supervision has had a positive impact on Wuhan. Meanwhile, as both positive and negative examples exist along with hope and anxiety, experts have called for greater joint efforts and empathy.

A netizen in Wuhan named "Achioo" uploaded on Weibo the audio file, which was taken from a WeChat group on Saturday, welcoming others to feel "a Wuhan-style curse," and complaining about her community's irresponsible efforts on carrying out disinfections and inability to provide vegetables to residents. 

In the audio clip, the woman shouted, "Bastard!" and asks, "Dare you guys make public the things you did for the community in this group discussion?" 

The woman can be heard talking about how grass-roots officials and community volunteers failed to resolve any problems and hardly responded to residents, except to complain about how busy and stressed out they were.  

"I know you are frontline workers and are busy, but that's the job. We did our jobs, and you should have done yours," she said, and later mentioned that residents procured by themselves their disinfectant supplies and face masks, which should have been handled by community officials. 

She slammed the Zhongbai supermarket manager and said he was "making troubles," as his company only provided two versions of mandatory "supply packages," which meant that when people wanted to buy rice, they also had to purchase paper or soy sauce. 

"We have to save ourselves. Had we waited for the community officials to help buy food, we would have starved to death," she shouted.

A Wuhan resident told the Global Times that it is almost impossible to buy necessities, and many local supermarkets are only open to collective institutes and communities rather than individuals. If community officials failed to get daily supplies to residents trapped in their homes, then they can expect to face problems. 

Self-proclaimed Wuhan residents online commented they had encountered similar situations, as grassroots officials had reportedly asked residents to buy their food online as an alternative, but the prices are still too high.

Netizens praised the woman as the Zhongbai supermarket canceled the two "food packages" after the audio clip went viral. A branch under the supermarket also confirmed its authenticity to the Global Times on Sunday. 

Global Times also discovered that Wuhan residents had complained about the level of inaction from grassroots officials as government employees did not knock on their doors to check to register them.

As for the grassroots officials, many said they are short-staffed, despite about 30,000 Party members who have already joined the battle at the grassroots level to relieve pressure from the bottom.

Global Times also learned that a community at the Port of Wuhan set a good example in taking care of residents. With assistance from over 60 Party members, grassroots officials conducted door-to-door health inspection and delivered medicine and vegetables to senior citizens. 

"It is impossible to satisfy everyone when communities are locked down, and over 10 million people in Wuhan are relying on local government workers to mobilize daily goods," He Xuefeng, a research fellow at Wuhan University, told the Global Times Sunday.

He said employee shortages are a problem in some communities, especially in older neighborhoods with larger populations. Also, most of the employees use WeChat on their phones, so elderly residents who do not know how to access the internet have encountered problems. 

He called for Wuhan residents to show sympathy and calm during the fight against the epidemic. 

"The entire nation is watching Wuhan, where it has seen gradual improvement in preventing and controlling the virus. Some community employees have stayed up days and also haven't enough food, but they still try to meet the demands of residents. Nobody has experienced this before," He said.