#disease and xenophobia are definitely old friends

[wastrelwoods]

imagining a world in which people chose to talk about BSE/vCJD in the same way they talk about kuru and made weird misinformed posts about how only isolated backward primitive cultures and crazy suicidal people eat beef because eating beef gives you a special rare illness that melts your brain into mush. oh is it more nuanced than that? is there some kind of deep internalized bias about the boundaries of correct human behavior that’s leading you to mythologize and fearmonger about one illness and not the other?

[foxymoxynoona]

As an extremely white American, I would say wearing shoes inside is less about feeling bare feet are dirty and more about the formality of the situation.

In my own home, I usually take my shoes off when I get home just because it's more comfortable for me, but I'm not opposed to walking around the house in my shoes. Especially if I'm in the kitchen, I'll often put shoes on to protect my feet from hot things that could spill and crumbs that will inevitably get on the floor as I cook. It also depends on how familiar and formal the situation is. If I went to my friends house or I had friends over and we were posted up on the couch watching movies, I'd probably remove my shoes. If I went to a dinner party at someone's house or was hosting one myself, having someone over I didn't know well, or generally in a dressier situation I would wear my shoes inside. Being barefoot around someone or in someone's home is more of a sign of comfort level?

And then yeah, to your point, I don't really think of wearing shoes inside as being dirty and it's probably because we don't use our floors in the same way (ie sitting or eating on the ground). I also agree that it's also probably due to cultural differences in terms of germ tolerance. Even post pandemic, I don't think we are as cautious or wary of germs in America. We didn't mask before the pandemic and I think most people hardly mask now. But of course that's also because we live in a privileged country where being more lax about germs doesn't mean I'm putting my health at major risk. Sometimes when I watch old BTS videos and they are wearing masks it strikes me that if I had discovered BTS before 2020, it probably would have seemed foreign to me to see them in masks all the time, whereas post-pandemic I am used to it.

I feel like hard floors vs. carpet makes a difference too! Like it's more normal to be wearing shoes in the kitchen on tile or wood, but then take your shoes off in the living room that has a carpet. Or like when I lived in a bigger house growing up I would wear shoes more often downstairs in more common and formal areas, but take them off to go upstairs to the bedrooms and personal spaces.

That's just my two cents but also I am respectful of anyone else's preferences and if someone asks me to take off my shoes at their house, I will happily do it without comment. I really don't care! If someone does have a reaction to it, it's probably more about their own xenophobia/prejudice to things that are different or the American aversion to being told what to do in general lol. People will look for any excuse that someone else is infringing on their "liberty".

The formality! Yes thank you, I know there were probably some rationales I was forgetting. So I grew up in a place that has much more stringest ideas of etiquette and formality and it would definitely be considered impolite to be bare-foot around others, that's what i was sort of getting at with the feet thing but you're right it's not necessarily a belief that feet are dirty. It's just in the bucket of I was raised that it's something rude to do. In contrast, my husband expects all shoes off and has no issue telling contractors they need to take theri shoes off to come inside etc haha, which they then sometimes have to explain they can't because of insurance purposes or whatever, and then it's not a big deal, or if a guest says they'd be uncomfortable that's fine.

I do think we also have a great deal of privilege in terms of the diseases we can catch (or rather lack thereof), at least for those who aren't immunocomrpomised, and that leads to some laxity in germs. This is another thing my husband is way more particular on; I'm tidier, he's more concerned with germ management.

Thanks for these additions!

[jobsearchtips02]

Wuhan coronavirus: Asian people seeing more racism amid outbreak fears

A man’s temperature being taken.

Stringer/Getty Images

As fears over the deadly coronavirus from China grow, so are racist and xenophobic incidents against Asian communities in the US, Canada, and Europe.

People of Asian descent have described to Business Insider and other outlets being discriminated at work, Costco, and a university campus.

In larger-scale incidents, customers from mainland China were banned from businesses in Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam, and more than 126,000 people in Singapore called for Chinese nationals to be banned from the country. 

“We tend to exist in social silos where we’re surrounded by people who look like us, think like us, and act like us, and we are innately suspicious of folk that we don’t have contact with and we don’t understand,” Robert Fullilove, a professor of sociomedical sciences told Business Insider.

He also said it’s “almost impossible to contain stories” of misinformation and xenophobia when news moves so quickly in the media.

Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

The novel coronavirus from Wuhan, China, has killed more than 304 people in less than two months after its first case.

Authorities in China have quarantined more than ten cities, and the US, UK, and several other countries are quarantining all travelers who have recently visited China.

Yet some of the virus’ unexpected victims are those who have never even been anywhere near Wuhan.

Members of the Asian diaspora living in the US, Canada, Britain, and Italy have in recent days described, to Business Insider and other outlets, multiple incidents of being racially discriminated and isolated at school, work, and other public places.

Feature China/Barcroft Media via Getty Images

Here’s a roundup of apparently racist and xenophobic incidents, inflicted on Asian residents in foreign countries, in the past two weeks alone: 

An eight-year-old boy — whose mother is Korean-American, and father is a mix of ethnic backgrounds including Filipino, Mexican, Chinese, Native American, and white — wearing a face mask was told by a Costco sample-stand worker to “get away because he may be ‘from China.'” Business Insider’s Sara Al-Arshani has the full story.

Students of east Asian descent at Arizona State University told Business Insider’s Bryan Pietsch their peers have started moving away from them and staring at them “a second longer” whenever they cough or sneeze.

Peter Akman, a reporter at Canada’s CTV broadcaster, tweeted an image of his Asian barber and said: “Hopefully ALL I got today was a haircut.” He has since deleted the post, apologized, and been fired.

The director of Rome’s prestigious Santa Cecilia music conservatory, Roberto Giuliani, suspended the lessons of all “oriental students (Chinese, Korean, Japanese etc.)” due to the epidemic, La Repubblica reported. Most of these students are second-generation Italian immigrants who have no relationship to the countries of origin, the newspaper said.

Le Courrier Picard, a daily regional newspaper in northern France, described the coronavirus as a “yellow alert” in a front-page headline last Sunday. It has since apologized, and French Asians have protested on social media under the hashtag #JeNeSuisPasUnVirus (“I am not a virus”).

Sam Phan, a British-Chinese Masters student at the University of Manchester, described in The Guardian overhearing people fearing going to London’s Chinatown, and seeing people physically move away from them in public areas.

A woman of Cambodian origin told Le Monde that her manager at a Paris bag store told her, “laughing: ‘I hope that your family hasn’t brought the virus back.'”

Frank Ye, a Chinese-Canadian student at the University of Toronto, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation his Asian Canadian friends had been told to move away or cover their mouths. “[It’s] this idea of ‘yellow peril,’ of this Chinese horde coming to destroy Western civilization,” he said.

Instagram users commented on a photo of a Chinese restaurant in Toronto, saying things like “No eating bats please!! That’s how coronavirus started in China!!” and “I ain’t tryna catch no virus.”

In more large-scale incidents, businesses in Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam have posted signs banning customers from mainland China; the hashtag #ChineseDon’tComeToJapan trended in Japan; and more than 126,000 people have signed a Singaporean petition calling for Chinese nationals to be banned from their country.

A woman walks on an empty road on January 27, 2020 in Wuhan, China.

Getty

Some of the conspiracy theories and misinformation circulating about the coronavirus also have tinges of racism and xenophobia.

A video appearing to show a young Chinese woman eating a raw bat with chopsticks has gone viral in recent weeks, with thousands of social media users — and some media outlets — claiming that the footage was taken in Wuhan, and suggesting that this is part of the normal Chinese diet.

(The video was actually taken in Palau, the Pacific Island country, in 2016 and was part of an online travel show about eating unusual local delicacies. Earlier this week she apologized for eating the food, saying she had “no idea during filming that there was such a virus.”)

The bat has since spurred multiple memes mocking what users think are Chinese eating habits, like “bats and bamboo and rats and s—,” and linking them to the disease.

Other misinformation surrounding the virus include theories that it can be cured with toxic bleach or oregano oil, or that it stems from a leak from China’s bioweapons program or 5G network.

—Rossalyn Warren (@RossalynWarren) January 30, 2020

—werner herzHog (@post_hog) January 23, 2020

The Wuhan coronavirus is spread from human to human, and has now spread to more than 20 countries. It is believed to have jumped from bats to snakes to humans.

The virus doesn’t seem to be as deadly as the SARS coronavirus — which, at current comparison levels, had a higher mortality rate — with experts telling Business Insider’s Holly Secon that global panic over the Wuhan virus is unproductive and unwarranted.

Blaming ‘the other’

Many people of Asian descent faced racist and xenophobic comments during the SARS epidemic too. SARS, like the Wuhan coronavirus, also originated from China.

Robert Fullilove, a professor of sociomedical sciences at the Columbia University Medical Center, told Business Insider the xenophobic fear surrounding coronarvirus is similar to the reaction toward HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, when there were no clear answers as to what caused the virus.

He said at the time, people blamed anyone but themselves — or “the other” — for AIDS, which was becoming rapidly deadly in communities of Haitians, intravenous drug users, and gay men.

This sort of reaction isn’t new, either. It dates as far back as Bubonic Plague in the 1300s, when there were false notions that Jewish people were poisoning peoples’ water to spread the infection, Fullilove said. The accusations led to the destruction of Jewish communities, and in parts of France and Switzerland, some Jews were banned from consuming food and drinks meant for Christians, while others were burned alive.

“We tend to exist in social silos where we’re surrounded by people who look like us, think like us, and act like us, and we are innately suspicious of folk that we don’t have contact with and we don’t understand,” he said of why xenophobic views spread in times of panic, adding that people use others as scapegoats. 

Taxi drivers in protective suits are seen in front of a residential area, following an outbreak of the new coronavirus and the city’s lockdown, in Wuhan

Reuters

Fullilove said the best way to stop misinformation, especially when it comes to blaming a specific person or race, can be to make sure people have a clear idea of what’s happening with the virus.

Because of how quickly news spreads today on the internet, it becomes “almost impossible to contain stories” of misinformation and xenophobia, Fullilove said.

“Xenophobia works at its worst if people decide that the only thing they have to do is stay away from folk who are from China,” he said.

“There will come a point when it’s much more diverse in terms of who’s impacted, and if we’re unable to get people a clear message about what they have to do to protect themselves, not only will we not do the things that will help us stay reasonably safe, we’ll also create a lot of social damage that it will be very difficult to clean up.”

Women and children walk past personnel in protective clothing after arriving on US State Department-chartered aircraft to evacuate Americans back home from Wuhan.

Reuters

John C. Yang, president of the Asian Americans Advancing Justice civil-rights group, told NBC News that when people play off stereotypes to come to conclusions about the virus, they are “going for a simplistic and completely misinformed and frankly, ignorant answer.”

With the coronavirus, people have focused on stereotypes about Chinese people when coming to conclusions about the virus, he said.

“Unfortunately, there are definitely those people that still believe that somehow, Chinese culture generally, it’s backwards and foods are considered ‘exotic,'” Yang told NBC News. “That certainly leads to misperception and, even worse, misinformation or disinformation about what actually happens and what is the source of the coronavirus.”

The stigma appears to have become so prevalent that the medical officer of Toronto Public Health, Dr. Eileen de Villa, had to warn in a Wednesday statement: “Inaccurate information continues to spread and this is creating unnecessary stigma against members of our community … Discrimination is not acceptable.”

Read more:

A Costco sample stand worker turned away a kid wearing a face mask because she thought he was ‘from China’ and could give her coronavirus

People are spreading memes and fake news online as the deadly coronavirus spreads across the globe

UC Berkeley is getting called out for saying anti-Chinese xenophobia is a ‘normal reaction’ to the coronavirus

China just completed work on the emergency hospital it set up to tackle the Wuhan coronavirus, and it took just 8 days to do it

More:

Wuhan Virus China Xenophobia Racism

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