A Hidden Plague

This article was written in late February, and we kept it so that it could be released in the COVID issue. Many of the points brought up, however, are still incredibly relevant.

As the month of February draws to a close, the year just seems to be building up. Term 3 is on its way, impeachment trials have come and gone, legendary icons have tragically passed, and tensions between countries have worsened. However, through all of this, coronavirus has settled itself in the world and the minds of the people. The talk of the town and the pervasive fear, it only seems to be getting worse. More contagious than SARS, it’s a threat to be reckoned with, starting to be known by all and feared.

How are we dealing with it? Some of us are questioning the capacity of the Quebec healthcare system to deal with it, others are avoiding travel, fearing the worst. Cruise ships have become barren, countries like Italy have grown infected, and Wuhan, the original epicenter located in mainland China is a ghost town. However, by far the worst reaction or change is we’ve developed a subconscious reaction and bias towards the illness. Stigma towards Chinese people has slowly spread like a plague, poisoning people’s minds, only because of their nationality, the place where COVID-19 originated. Simply seeing a Chinese person cough or seeing someone wear a mask over their mouth sets off warning triggers within people’s minds, the fear of coronavirus getting them causing irrational thinking. Before there was even a confirmed case in Quebec, people were avoiding Chinatown more and more. Social media is just inflaming the situation and its expansion, letting people express their harmful opinions. People make coronavirus jokes that push false assumptions and the correlation between all Chinese people and the coronavirus deepens. Chinese-Canadian people and Southeast Asian-people are reported to be menaced with eviction and firing, not having even lived in China or been close to the area. These stereotypes are splitting apart our community and hurting our unity.

There’s a really simple way to solve this pervasive problem, but it requires everyone. It’s being aware of your actions and words, opting for kindness and not pointless harm. Taking the time to spread awareness about the actual issues and educate yourself and others can stem the flow of ignorance and the direct racist actions, but as for coronavirus-related humour, that has to come from ourselves. It unconsciously spreads racism in seemingly harmless mediums, and we feel that by laughing the harm is mitigated, even if we know that this isn’t a laughing matter. We need to be the bigger person and stop, not make assumptions or jump to conclusions. How we treat each other can have an infinitely greater impact than we realize, people’s psychology and mindset hurt even if we don’t realize it. Self-awareness is the key to being better, and even one person taking the lead to stop can get others to be better too, to get communal change. If our school wants to live up to being a place of acceptance, a place of inclusivity, then we need to remove the underlying stigma. The Chinese New Year celebration at assembly showed how much we cared. Now, we need to keep up support, keep acting as one, united, and supportive school.

We now know that although the vast majority of cases in Canada came from the United States, China was the first border to be closed to Canadians, and America the last.