As the Coronavirus has blown up recently in the media with the deaths, warnings, and symptoms, it has caused one major issue towards a certain demographic of people, Asians, specifically Chinese. Due to the media attention the virus has garnered, many people are starting to fear people who come from China, as many deaths have occurred in the country.

Some people are taking issue with the racism.

Daniel Taylor, a senior at ERHS said, “It originated from a specific area, people are generalizing and making assumptions that all people from that area, whether or not they have ever been there or not is sick.”

Xzavier Galvan, a senior at ERHS, said, “It influences  people because of the complete lack of knowledge that the average person has of the virus. It’s spread of mass fear and people are overreacting because they don’t fully understand the issue or the virus so they prepare for the worst when it’s not even necessary. Which includes people wanting to remove themselves as far away from what they would see as the ‘source’ of the virus.”

Due to peoples lack of knowledge about the virus, they fear the dangers after hearing the deaths, and persecute the people of the country it originated from. It doesn’t even matter if they’ve come from the country or not, people still fear the people who may be Asian.

Taylor goes on to say, “I’ve had several friends of Chinese decent who happened to be sick this week get joked about, just because the connection is made that ,Chinese equals sick. It opens the door for people to generalize in the sense that all people of Asian decent  are grouped to become ‘carriers of the virus’ despite coming from a place that is nowhere near the epicenter. It’s similar to the Japanese internment camps.”

Galvan says, “This is where racism comes into play because it was first found in Wuhan China. Making some people scared of China, especially the people from there and from China in general.”