@虎式坦克568 commented angrily, "The concealment is quite malicious. Can he endanger public safety just because his personal rights were trampled on? It's like those HIV-carriers who use needles with their blood to stab passers-by to infect them on purpose. The victims of this man's actions could be anyone who comes into contact with the hospital, and most likely other patients. Can he undermine our faith in society just because he is discriminated against? Can he put others' lives in danger just because he is discriminated against?"

Another microblogger, @羽曦最爱杰伦 wrote, "This guy is like a tumor, living at the hospital for ten days...His behavior was selfish and despicable. Where did he put the health and safety of others?"

Others were however more sympathetic, if in the minority and softer in their fury. @夜D百合 argued, "It's not like people want to have AIDS. I do not believe if you were in the situation you would not do the same thing?!"

One censored post from @爪机杀手天师露 that appears on Free Weibo, a new web tool that is able retrieve censored posts, revealed the user's anger toward the lack of transparency in hospitals, of the way the AIDS epidemic has been routinely covered up by the government: "It's not rare for surgeons to pierce their hands and becoming accidentally infected. Concealing the AIDS epidemic is tantamount to murder ... So only the doctor's and the patient's rights to know aren't human rights?"

The state-run CCTV, on the other hand, wrote a sympathetic synopsis of the story via their Weibo account, arguing that the young man acted out in desperation. They quoted a disease specialist as saying that occupational exposure from HIV is very rare, with only 500 to 700 reported cases each year.

The government, too, has expressed a different viewpoint from that of its netizens. Li Keqiang, China's second most-powerful man, who was a top official in Henan Province in late 1990's and early 2000's when one of the most serious AIDS outbreak in China took place, was quick to intervene in the Tianjin hospital case. By his request, China's Ministry of Health issued an emergency announcement that banned hospitals from turning away patients infected with HIV. Li also met with AIDS rights activists on November 28.

The incident occurred, however, days before International AIDs Day on December 1, making Li Keqiang's intervention and the Ministry of Health's announcement a preemptive response to curb international criticism.

What makes the government's move unusual is that, in the West, the government usually enters the AIDS conversation after a swell of public discourse. In the U.S., it wasn't until activists and writers like Randy Shilts debunked AIDS as a "gay man's cancer" that Ronald Reagan made his first public statement about the epidemic-a decade after it first broke.