Coronavirus scare - She Says

The New Year has just started, barely making it our second month in, and we already have a pile of unsettling news building up. The Wuhan Coronavirus is the 2020 deadly disease imitation of what the world experienced in 2014 with the Ebola virus epidemic.

With each passing day, there is more news about this virus from confirmed cases being spotted in the UK and the US to the causes of the virus being investigated and established. Some universities in the UK even warned students about the likelihood of being quarantined if they chose to visit China for lunar New Year celebrations. Measures of all nature are being taken as the World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared this pandemic a ‘global health emergency’.

In times of such serious events, the internet finds solace in providing contextual memes and jokes. I find myself, as an avid social media user, coming across multiple variations of these memes reminiscent of the Ebola virus era. Jokes of not wanting to cough more than once, as to prevent suspicion towards one’s self still remain a popular contender after all these years.

However, it is sad to see other headlines discussing cases of xenophobia being presented. Images of people covering their mouths and noses when sitting across from people of East Asian descent on trains are a common find. Although more detrimental and disgusting is news I have recently read about.

A Chinese man was left to die on a pavement in the Chinatown district in Sydney after collapsing from a suspected heart attack. Onlookers were too scared to give CPR and attempt resuscitation in the case that he had coronavirus.

The small chance that this man had coronavirus is not what caused his death; it was the ignorance of others that had failed him.

Regardless of a person’s proximity to the Wuhan area, people of Chinese ethnicity are being automatically treated as carriers of the virus. Similar to how Ebola was subtly touted as an ‘African’ illness, the recent coronavirus has been racialised as ‘Chinese’.

Contrary to popular belief, ignorance is not bliss.