Moralising the way diseases and viruses are transferred is a very human, and particularly nasty trait. “We don’t need this kind of riff-raff on our shores,” screamed The New York Times in 1892 in response to Russian Jewish immigrants arriving at Ellis Island by boat. (The occupants hosted lice which, in turn, led to typhus).
Italian immigrants in the United States would be also accused as being the bearers and spreaders of polio in 1916. Given that many, as a study by Alan Kraut from 2010 documents, lived in “tightly concentrated neighbourhoods, and because immigrants were viewed by many as a marginal and potentially subversive influence upon society, the incidence of Italian polio made a dramatic impact upon the imagination of a public already shaken by the virulence of the epidemic and the youth of its victims.”
In more recent times, the jaundiced eye nervously looked to the origin of AIDs, seeing dark Africa, exotic primates, bestiality. Ebola, as sociologist Kevin J.A. Thomas notes, received much the same press. When it infected some 28,000 across 10 countries some five years ago, “many people were surprised to learn that four of these cases were diagnosed on US soil.”
Follow the virus, find the maligned scapegoat. For COVID-19 (2019 novel coronavirus), a not negligible spray of suggestions claim that China, from eating habits, to politburo to laboratory, is responsible for cultivation and transmission. One purportedly scientific paper authored by Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao claimed that the supposed origin of the virus – bats carrying CoV ZC45 – “were originally found in Yunnan or Zhejiang province, both of which were more than 900 kilometres from the seafood market [in Wuhan].” As the authors observed drily, “The probability was very low for the bats to fly to the market.”
That paper has since been withdrawn, but the Wuhan Institute of Virology looms large in the conspiratorial consciousness. Why, for instance, did it have the highest security level – biosafety level 4? What were its researchers doing studying coronaviruses from bats? “Speculations,” claims Jon Cohen in Science, “have included the possibility that the virus was bioengineered in the lab or that a lab worker was infected while handling a bat and then transmitted the disease to others outside the lab.”
Such accounts of attribution have paved the way of fanciful presumptions. As a group of 27 public health scientists wrote in rebuke in The Lancet, “The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation about its origins. We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.” The point to keep reiterating, urged the authors, is that “this coronavirus originated in wildlife as have so many other emerging pathogens.”
In the case of coronavirus, the xenophobes have come out barracking, and bigotry has taken root. At the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, staff have faced irate patients beside themselves at being treated by those of a certain race. (While not always reported, the imputation about Chinese appearance is never far away). The Australasian College of Emergency Medicine has also issued warnings of a spike in racist abuse in emergency departments across the country.
Dr Stuart Lewena, director of emergency medicine at the RCH, spoke of a particular incident. “One of our staff let us know that she had a family refuse to let her provide care for their child on the basis of her race, and what they declared was their concern that she was a risk of spreading coronavirus to them and their child.” To date, the state of Victoria has seen seven of Australia’s 23 confirmed cases of COVID-19. None of these have been transmitted locally within Australia.
Such instances have not been confined to hospital wards or those in need of treatment. Earlier this month, a woman wearing a face mask was allegedly assaulted in the New York City subway at the Grand Street station in Chinatown. An eyewitness reportedly claimed to hear the words “diseased b—-” uttered.
In the detritus of the social media sphere, campaigns combating “coronaracism” have also found legs. #JuNeSuisPasUnVirus made its debut on French twitter feeds in January 2020, and was duly replicated on other platforms such as Instagram. Australia’s own modest contribution to this came from Avani Dias, a journalist pushing the hashtag #DontDumpTheDumplings on February 13. This was, at least in part, intended as a remedy for dramatic declines in the patronage of Chinese restaurants in Sydney’s Chinatown. As Victor Tan, manager of the New Chilli House, told the radio program Hack, “We may not be killed by the virus but instead killed by the business environment.”
An even more concrete suggestion is to circulate material – visual and textual – that focuses on efforts at combating COVID-19. Leave aside the ghoulish images of alien bats and desperate masked Asian faces; focus, instead, on what Amanda Darrach of the Columbia Journalism Review calls “the logistics of providing care – an aspect of the story that involves Chinese people as medical professionals and activists.”
The great COVID-19 legacy will leave far fewer deaths than common influenza when the panic has dissipated. But fingers of stern accusation will continue being pointed, perceptions muddled by race and behaviour will continue to thrive, and losses, be it in terms of personal liberty or finance, will be tremendous.
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COVID, or Conservative Obnoxious Vicious Idiot Deficiency, a country party diease, has given rise to the spread of lies, disinformation, propaganda, exaggeration, bias and B Joyce’s latest utterings (drunk or less drunk), so, what is Australia’s most virulent infection?
Cunning buggers, bats. I worried about the Pangolins which are rare and persecuted enough already,
the vid of the woman eating one was vile, of course, but one has to remember, even now, that we don’t have a clear idea of the spread and consequences yet.
Ok, so it may be a fizzer, but it did not seem that way when media reported the two thousandth victim in Wuhan alone a couple of weeks ago. Interesting they seem to have stopped daily death toll releases from that city and surrounds.
I agree it is probably no worse than the 2019 flu, a newish strain from 2017 that killed somewhere round the thousand mark folk last winter here, but I think the next few months will show whether or not it is over rated or not, locally and globally.
Uncertainty is what is fuelling the anxiety, which means politics, hence racism, will be dragged into it more and more as politicians and media jostle for advantage involving the event.
David Tyler’s post this a.m. is relevant:
‘Morrison’s mob has a plan, even if it can’t say what that plan is – apart from such caution as calling pandemic when the World Health ‘Organisation warns against panic. Banning travellers from China? A fake ban. It’s soon exposed as a hoax by travellers such as Rob Garrington who writes a letter to the editor of Nine’s The Age,
The Prime Minister has announced a plan for handling a pandemic. Is he for real or playing politics again? On Thursday I flew from Singapore to Melbourne and my plane included passengers from China. At Melbourne Airport there were no temperature checks, hand-sanitising stations or information about the virus’ symptoms. At the Malaysian and Singapore airports I travelled through, temperature checks were made and hand-sanitising stations were everywhere.
The Prime Minister says he and Border Security are doing everything to protect us and check incoming passengers. None of this was evident between 11.45am and 12.30pm at the airport on Thursday. Scott Morrison again appears to be all spin. Rob’s on to something. Next is the spin given to the word “plan”’
This appeared in the Guardian comments and shows that the more things change, the more……well you know the rest.
TheCedarRoom 2d ago
Guardian Pick
21
22
In the 1500s, when syphilis broke out in Europe and ran rampant through the continent the peoples of Europe were quick to blame their enemies and others for this new scourge. So it went by different names. The French called it the ‘disease of Naples’, while the Neapolitans called it the ‘French disease’. The Dutch, the Danish, the Portuguese and the people of North Africa named it the ‘Spanish disease’, the Russians dubbed it the ‘Polish disease’, the Polish termed it the ‘German disease’, the Siberians hailed it as the ‘Russian disease’, the Turkish called it the ‘Christian disease’, and the Italians, Germans and British all referred to it as the ‘French disease’. Someone else was always to blame. The naming reinforced political propaganda.
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I blame Pauline Hanson and John Howard for the Coronavirus.
And Angus Taylor and Michaelia Cash, M.
Y2K deja vu, poo paper a sell out.