The coronavirus showing how it fends off racism earlier today
Coronavirus has had exactly the range of effects one might have expected, not from a medical point of view, but from close observation of the reaction of the new, unhinged Left.
Firstly, the Left’s love of China meant that, to begin with, the Left just denied that there was a problem. Now, China is a Communist state which has used the bits of capitalism it likes to make money to fund itself. It is a little like the America-hating jihadi running around in his Nike training shoes. And so the Left don’t want to hear a bad word said about a country which embodies its secret – and sometimes not so secret – yearning for Communism in the West.
As the situation unfolded, and given the disinformation a country such as China is bound by its nature to disseminate, it became clear that this was an epidemic with the potential to become a pandemic. There began to be suggestions that the, shall we say, somewhat cavalier attitude the Chinese take to standards of food hygiene might be at the very least a contributory factor in the escalating death and infection toll. Racist, screamed the Left. How dare you criticize the eating habits, and by extension the culture, of another country, particularly one in which the inhabitants are not white? At this point, you have to understand that race is a social construct until it isn’t, which is when the Left cultural policy makers decide it isn’t.
And it isn’t just ranting progressive types trying to hide their heads in the sand while lambasting everyone else. The international organisation supposed to maintain and observe world health – it’s called the World Health Organisation for ease of reference – has stressed that the flow of people between nations must not be affected by racial stigma. Die in agony, but under no circumstances be racist as you slip away.
So, when Vice magazine trumpets the following headline: Racists are having an idiotic field day over Coronavirus, be aware that this is not, or not simply, kook journalism. It’s spreading as fast as the virus itself. There are many outlets more concerned about the phrase ‘kung flu’ than they are about Spanish Flu 2.0.
When historians of the future – who may not be as Chinese as we thought they would be six months ago – come to write the chapter into which this time period falls, they will wonder why mankind was more concerned with racism than with Chinese wet markets, described here by NPR reporter Jason Beaubien with particular reference to the market at Wuhan, largely accepted as the epicentre of the outbreak;
‘Patients who came down with disease at the end of December all had connections to the Hunan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China. The complex of stalls selling live fish, meat and wild animals is known in the region as a "wet market." Researchers believe the new virus probably mutated from a coronavirus common in animals and jumped over to humans in the Wuhan bazaar… researchers of zoonotic diseases — diseases that jump from animals to humans – pinpoint the wet markets in mainland China as particularly problematic for several reasons. First, these markets often have many different kinds of animals – some wild, some domesticated but not necessarily native to that part of Asia. The stress of captivity in these chaotic markets weakens the animals' immune systems and creates an environment where viruses from different species can mingle, swap bits of their genetic code and spread from one species to another…’
Well, at least one important point will be proved if people across the world do begin dying in their tens of thousands. It is possible to die of racism. Just not in the way you thought.
Photo credit
By https://www.scientificanimations.com - https://www.scientificanimations.com/wiki-images/ , https://phil.cdc.gov/Details.aspx (its the originating source), CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=86436446