As the deadly coronavirus has spread worldwide, it has carried with it xenophobia — and Asian communities around the world are finding themselves subject to suspicion and fear.
When a patient on Australia's Gold Coast refused to shake the hand of her surgeon Rhea Liang, citing the virus that has killed hundreds, the medic's first response was shock.
But after tweeting about the incident and receiving a flood of responses, the respected doctor learned her experience was all too common.
There has been a spike in reports of anti-Chinese rhetoric directed at people of Asian origin, regardless of whether they have ever visited the centre of the epidemic or been in contact with the virus.
Chinese tourists have reportedly been spat at in the Italian city of Venice, a family in Turin was accused of carrying the disease, and mothers in Milan have used social media to call for children to be kept away from Chinese classmates.
In Canada, a white man was filmed telling a Chinese-Canadian woman "you dropped your coronavirus" in the parking lot of a local mall.
In Malaysia, a petition to "bar Chinese people from entering our beloved country" received almost 500,000 signatures in one week.
The incidents are part of what the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine has described as "misinformation" which it says is fuelling "racial profiling" where "deeply distressing assumptions are being made about 'Chinese' or 'Asian-looking' people."
– Typhoid Marys –
Disease has long been accompanied by suspicions of foreigners — from Irish immigrants being targeted in the Typhoid Mary panic of 1900s America to Nepali peacekeepers being accused of bringing cholera to earthquake-struck Haiti in the last decade.
"It's a common phenomenon," said Rob Grenfell, director of health and biosecurity for Australia's science and research agency CSIRO.
"With outbreaks and epidemics along human history, we've always tried to vilify certain subsets of the population," he said, comparing the behaviour to 1300s plague-ridden medieval Europe, where foreigners and religious groups were often blamed.
"Sure it emerged in China," he said of the coronavirus, "but that's no reason to actually vilify Chinese people."
In a commentary for the British Medical Journal, doctor Abraar Karan warned this behaviour could discourage people with symptoms from coming forward.
Claire Hooker, a health lecturer at the University of Sydney, said the responses from governments may have compounded prejudice.
The World Health Organization has warned against "measures that unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade", but this has not stopped scores of countries from introducing travel bans.
The tiny Pacific nation of Micronesia has banned its citizens from visiting mainland China altogether.
"Travel bans respond largely to people's fears," said Hooker, and while sometimes warranted, they often "have the effect of cementing an association between Chinese people and scary viruses".
Abbey Shi, a Shanghai-born student in Sydney, said the attitude shown by some of her peers has "become almost an attack on students who are Chinese".
While Australia's conservative government has banished its citizens returning from Wuhan — the central Chinese city at the epicentre of the virus — to a remote island for quarantine, thousands of students still stuck in China risk their studies being torpedoed.
"Right now it looks like they have to miss the semester's start and potentially the whole year, because of the way the courses are set up," Shi said.
According to Hooker, studies in Toronto on the impact of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS — another global coronavirus outbreak in 2002 — showed the impact of xenophobic sentiment often lasted much longer than the public health scare.
"While there may be a cessation of direct forms of racism as news about the disease dies down, it takes quite a bit of time for economic recovery and people continue to feel unsafe," she said.
People may not rush back to Chinese businesses or restaurants, and may even heed some of the more outlandish viral social media disinformation — such as one popular post imploring people to avoid eating noodles for their own safety.
"In one sense you might think the effects lasted from the last coronavirus to this one, because the representation as China being a place where diseases come from has been persistent," Hooker said.
Art Basel cancels Hong Kong fair over virus outbreak
Hong Kong (AFP) Feb 7, 2020 –
Art Basel is to cancel its Hong Kong fair because of the coronavirus outbreak, it said Friday, scrapping one of the international art market's largest and most prestigious events.
The decision is fresh misery for Hong Kong, which has seen multiple major sporting and entertainment events pulled thanks to months of political unrest and now a growing health crisis.
In a statement, Art Basel blamed the "severe outbreak and spread of the new coronavirus" for its decision in cancelling the fair, which is a major draw for regional art buyers, especially among China's super-wealthy.
Bernd Stadlwieser, CEO of MCH Group, the Swiss-based company behind the fair, said the decision to cancel was "an extremely difficult one".
"We explored every other possible option, including postponing the fair, and gathered advice and perspectives from many gallerists, partners, and external experts," he said in a statement.
"However, today, we have no other option but to cancel the fair."
The fair had been due to take place in late March.
Art Basel said it remained committed to Hong Kong and planned to host its next edition there in March 2021.
Hong Kong is currently in recession thanks to the triple-whammy of the US-China trade war, seething pro-democracy protests and the emergence of a new virus.
Alongside the Philippines, Hong Kong is the only place outside mainland China to have reported the death of an infected patient.
So far 22 people have tested positive for the virus in the city.
In mainland China, where the epidemic broke out, more than 600 people have died with 30,000 confirmed infections.
Virus specialists warn the true number of carriers is likely to be much higher.
Hong Kong has reduced the flow of mainland Chinese across the border.
From Saturday, anyone coming from the mainland will face a 14-day mandatory quarantine, although the city authorities have yet to explain how that will work.
Doctors battling the virus have warned that people with no recent history of travel to the mainland are now being infected, suggesting the city has its own self-sustaining local outbreak.
